Donald Trump now has a clear run to ensuring he remains in the White House for a second term after being acquitted at his impeachment trial in the US Senate in Washington. Photo: AP Photo / Andrew Harnik
The US Senate on Wednesday (Thursday NZT) acquitted Donald Trump of abuse of power in his historic impeachment trial, the first of two charges brought against the Republican president that forced senators to vote on whether to remove him from office.
The businessman-turned-politician, 73, faced only the third presidential impeachment trial in US history - his turbulent presidency's darkest chapter - after being impeached by the Democratic-led House of Representatives on 18 December on charges arising from his conduct toward Ukraine and a desire to find incriminating details on one of his presidential rivals, Joe Biden.
The Republican-controlled Senate voted 52-48 to acquit him of abuse of power stemming from his request that Ukraine investigate political rival Joe Biden, a contender for the Democratic nomination to face Trump in the 3 November election. One Republican, Mitt Romney, joined the Democrats in voting for conviction. No Democrats voted for acquittal.
They voted 53 to 47 on the second charge, obstruction of Congress.
Both votes fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to remove the president from office.
A conviction on either count would have elevated Vice President Mike Pence, another Republican, into the presidency. Romney joined the rest of the Republican senators in voting to acquit on the obstruction charge. No Democrat voted to acquit.
On each of the two charges, the senators voted one by one on the Senate floor with US Chief Justice John Roberts presiding.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans engineered a stripped-down trial with no witnesses or new evidence. Democrats called the trial a sham and a cover-up.
Trump called the impeachment an attempted coup and a Democratic attempt to annul his 2016 election victory.
Throughout the impeachment drama, Trump and his Republican allies kept up their attacks on Biden's integrity.
It remains to be seen how much political damage that inflicted. In the first of the state-by-state contests to determine the Democratic challenger to Trump, Biden placed a disappointing fourth in Iowa, according to incomplete results from Monday's voting.
Biden has accused Trump of "lies, smears, distortions and name-calling".
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ensured Donald Trump would face a stripped-down trial with no witnesses or new evidence. Photo: AFP
The White House welcomed the US Senate vote to acquit Trump, calling the impeachment process a "witch hunt ... based on a series of lies".
"Today, the sham impeachment attempt concocted by Democrats ended in the full vindication and exoneration of President Donald J Trump. As we have said all along, he is not guilty," the White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
Trump offered his first commentary on the impeachment trial, resharing a meme imagining his presidency extending well beyond the two-term limit established by the Constitution.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2020
Trump said he would make a fuller statement about the acquittal tomorrow.
"President Trump has been totally vindicated and it's now time to get back to the business of the American people," Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement.
"The do-nothing Democrats know they can't beat him, so they had to impeach him.
"And since the President's campaign only got bigger and stronger as a result of this nonsense, this impeachment hoax will go down as the worst miscalculation in American political history."
President has 'normalised lawlessness'
Speaking to reporters after the acquittal vote, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said vulnerable Republicans facing difficult reelections have been politically aided by the impeachment trial.
"I can tell you as a poll watcher who's looking at polls in certain Senate races, every one of our people in tough races … is in better shape today than they were before the impeachment trial started," McConnell said.
The majority leader added he was "surprised and disappointed" by Mitt Romney's decision to convict on the first article of impeachment, but he did not seem to give any credence to the idea of expelling Romney from the Republican conference.
However, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said the verdict came from "a kangaroo court".
"The verdict of this kangaroo court will be meaningless. By refusing the facts; by refusing witnesses and documents, the Republican majority has placed a giant asterisk, the asterisk of a sham trial, next to the acquittal of President Trump, written in permanent ink.
"Acquittal in an unfair trial with this giant asterisk, the asterisk of a sham trial is worth nothing at all, to President Trump or anybody else."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has issued a statement denouncing the Senate's vote to acquit Trump and reiterating that he will be impeached "forever."
"Today, the President and Senate Republicans have normalised lawlessness and rejected the system of checks and balances of our Constitution," Pelosi said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has condemned the Republicans for exonerating Donald Trump. Photo: AFP / Getty Images
The Speaker once again lamented the Senate's decision not to hear from new witnesses, arguing the lack of evidence de-legitimised Trump's acquittal.
"The President will boast that he has been acquitted. There can be no acquittal without a trial, and there is no trial without witnesses, documents and evidence," Pelosi said. "The President has been impeached forever."
Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has weighed in on Trump's acquittal, accusing the Republican senators who opposed the president's removal of betraying their oath to defend the Constitution.
As the president's impeachment trial began, Republican senators pledged an oath to defend the Constitution.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 5, 2020
Today, 52 of them voted to betray that oath—and all of us.
We’re entering dangerous territory for our democracy. It’ll take all of us working together to restore it.
'Appalling abuse'
Trump faces no serious challengers for his party's presidential nomination. He is poised to claim the nomination at the party's convention in August and previewed in his State of the Union address on Tuesday campaign themes such as American renewal, economic vitality and hardline immigration policies.
Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, broke with his party to vote to convict Trump on the abuse-of-power charge. Romney called the president's actions in pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden "grievously wrong" and said Trump was "guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust."
"What he did was not 'perfect,'" Romney said on the Senate floor, as Trump has described his call with Ukraine's president that was at the heart of the scandal.
"No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep one's self in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine."
Romney, a moderate and elder statesman in his party, paused during his speech as he became choked with emotion after mentioning the importance of his religious faith.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham lashed out at Democrats, saying: "What you have done is unleash the partisan forces of hell."
Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, said Trump's acquittal in an unfair trial was worth nothing.
"No doubt, the president will boast he received total exoneration. But we know better. We know this wasn't a trial by any stretch of the definition."
In his speech, McConnell said: "The architects of this impeachment claimed they were defending norms and traditions. In reality, it was an assault on both."
Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, predicts Donald Trump will claim he has been totally exonerated which is not the truth. Photo: AFP
Biggest victory yet
Democrats expressed concern that an acquittal would further embolden a president who already challenges political norms.
They have painted him as threat to US democracy and a demagogue who has acted lawlessly and exhibited a contempt for the powers of Congress and other institutions.
They also have voiced concern over Russia interfering in another American election.
Trump's legal team offered a vision of nearly unlimited presidential powers, a view Democrats said placed any president above the law.
The acquittal handed Trump his biggest victory yet over his Democratic adversaries in Congress.
Democrats vowed to press ahead with investigations - they are fighting in court for access to his financial records - and voiced hope that the facts unearthed during the impeachment process about his conduct would help persuade voters to make him a one-term president.
Trump's job approval ratings have remained fairly consistent throughout his presidency and the impeachment process as his core conservative supporters - especially white men, rural Americans, evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics - stick with him.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, showed 42 percent of American adults approved of his performance, while 54 percent disapproved. That is nearly the same as when the House launched its impeachment inquiry in September, when his approval stood at 43 percent and disapproval at 53 percent.
The trial formally began on 16 January. The Senate voted 51-49 last Friday to defeat the Democrats' bid to call witnesses such as Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, with only two Republicans joining them.
In the previous presidential impeachment trials, Andrew Johnson was acquitted in 1868 in the aftermath of the American Civil War and Bill Clinton was acquitted in 1999 of charges stemming from a sex scandal.
In the hours before the vote, numerous senators gave speeches on the Senate floor explaining their vote.
Shadow of investigation
Trump, now seeking a second four-year term, has been under the shadow of some sort of investigation for most of his presidency. The acquittal marked the second time in 10 months that he withstood an existential threat to his presidency.
In March 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found insufficient evidence that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia in its interference on his behalf in the 2016 election.
Mueller did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice in seeking to impede the investigation but stopped short of concluding the president acted unlawfully. Trump declared full vindication.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller found insufficient evidence that Trump engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Russia in its interference on his behalf in the 2016 election. Photo: AP
Last July, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a phone call to "do us a favour" and open an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter Biden and into a discredited theory beneficial to Russia that Ukraine colluded with Democrats to meddle in the 2016 election to harm Trump.
Hunter Biden had joined the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was US vice president. Trump accused the Bidens of corruption without offering substantiation. The Bidens denied wrongdoing.
Democrats said Trump further abused his power by withholding $391 million in security aid approved by Congress to help Ukraine battle Russia-backed separatists and by dangling a coveted White House meeting as leverage to pressure Zelenskiy to announce the investigations.
Under the Constitution, impeachment is the mechanism for removing a president or certain other federal officials for "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours."
- Reuters
