The United States Senate just voted to acquit President Donald Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — bringing an end to a five-month saga that began with a whistleblower’s complaint and ended up in just the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history.
“The Senate, having tried Donald John Trump, president of the United States, upon two articles of impeachment exhibited against him by the House of Representatives, and two-thirds of the senators present not having found him guilty of the charges contained therein, it is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges in said articles,” Chief Justice John Roberts declared.
The acquittal is the third time in US history the Senate has acquitted a president who had previously been impeached, after Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Clinton in 1999. Trump is now the first American president to be impeached in a re-election year.
While several Republican senators acknowledged the president’s wrongdoing, nearly all of them eventually voted to acquit Trump of both articles. Sen. Mitt Romney was the only senator to break with his party and vote to convict him on the abuse of power charge.
As a result, the vote on the two articles was slightly different. Senators voted 52-48 to acquit the president of abuse of power, and 53-47 to acquit him of obstruction of Congress.
It would have taken 67 votes to convict the president, meaning 20 Republicans would have had to cross over and join the Democrats’ 47-member caucus.
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