John Roberts Declares Trump Acquitted, Gavels Out Impeachment Trial

The U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump on charges he abused his power and obstructed Congress, ending a historic, bitterly partisan fight and leaving the final judgment on his actions up to voters in November.

Trump became the third U.S. president to escape removal from office after being impeached by the House in December. Utah Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican on Wednesday to break with his party and find Trump guilty of seeking a political favor from the Ukrainian government. He voted to clear the president of the obstruction charge.

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The Republican-led Senate voted 52-48 to find Trump not guilty of abusing his power and 53-47 to find him not guilty of obstructing Congress.

“It is therefore ordered and adjudged that Donald John Trump be, and is, hereby acquitted of the charges,” Chief Justice John Roberts said to close the trial.

Wednesday’s final vote sends Trump into his re-election campaign emboldened and unrestrained by congressional checks on his actions. But it robs Trump and his allies of what they hoped would be a bipartisan acquittal on articles of impeachment brought solely by Democrats in the House.

Trump said on Twitter that he’ll address the public from the White House at noon on Thursday “to discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!”

Most Republicans accepted the bedrock argument by the president’s lawyers: that even if Trump held back security aid to pressure Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation into Democratic rival Joe Biden, it wasn’t sufficient cause to remove him from office.

Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager said Trump has been “totally vindicated” and called the impeachment process a “terrible ordeal.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said impeachment was “a colossal political mistake” for Democrats.

The president previewed his post-impeachment pitch to voters Tuesday night in his State of the Union address, both highlighting his own accomplishments and disparaging Democratic policies and values. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made no secret of her reaction -- she ripped the text of his speech in half.

Democrats are now left to grapple with the political impact of the impeachment they knew would probably fail to get the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to remove Trump from office. Still, both parties will try to use impeachment fallout to sway voters for November’s election, when the White House and both chambers of Congress will be in play.

In a Gallup poll released Tuesday, Trump’s approval ratings rose to 49% -- a high for his presidency. Other opinion polls in the weeks leading up to the trial showed the public evenly divided on whether the Senate should remove Trump from office.

The Senate trial, which lasted just over two weeks, largely recounted familiar arguments from Trump’s defense team and the seven Democratic representatives prosecuting the House’s case. Roberts, as the presiding officer, played a largely ceremonial role in the trial, which began most days in the afternoon and often lasted late into the night.

The main uncertainty at the trial’s start was whether a simple majority of senators would vote to seek new evidence. A motion to subpoena documents and witnesses like former National Security Advisor John Bolton fell short on Friday.

Only two Republicans -- Romney and Susan Collins of Maine -- voted with Democrats to demand the evidence that the White House blocked from the House investigation.

Explaining his vote on the abuse of power charge, Romney said Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to investigate a political rival “was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security interests, and our fundamental values.”

“Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine,” he said.

Democratic leaders said the verdict in a trial without evidence doesn’t count as an acquittal at all. They warned that Trump will continue to seek foreign interference to help his re-election.

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