President Trump acquitted on impeachment charges, Mitt Romney is the only GOP vote for ‘abuse of power’
President Trump was acquitted yesterday in the U.S. Senate yesterday, ending the partisan impeachment process ahead of the 2020 presidential race.
All of the Democratic senators supported convicting the president of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, including Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Doug Jones, D-Ala.
The only party “defection” was on the abuse of power charge from Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who declared hours before the final vote that Trump had engaged in as “destructive an attack on the oath of office and our Constitution as I can imagine.”
Romney voted not guilty on the obstruction charge.
Trump caricature by donkeyhotey
GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring, worried that a guilty verdict would “pour gasoline on the fire” of the nation’s culture wars over Trump. He said the House proved its case but it just didn’t rise to the level of impeachment.
“It would rip the country apart,” Alexander said before his vote.
Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell called the hearings a “circus” and said it’s time to move on, while South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said it was a “sham” designed to destroy a presidency. He called the proceedings a “thoroughly political exercise.”
“This was a political loser for them,” McConnell said. “At least in the short-term, this has been a colossal political mistake.”
“So a widespread coverup blocked a bi-partisan(!) vote to convict @realDonaldTrump and bounce him out of the WH as he rightly deserves,” wrote actor Jeffrey Wright. “BI-PARTISAN. Pure corruption.”
“Thank you @MittRomney for putting #CountryOverParty & voting your conscience,” wrote “Star Wars” icon Mark Hamill. “Is there any doubt the outcome would have been much different had it been a secret ballot? #CowardlyGOP #HistoryIsWatching”
NOTE: The use of “Bi-artisan” is rooted in the single Romney vote, since NOT one single GOP member, in the House or the Senate, voted in favor of impeaching Trump.
Trump turned to Twitter: “I will be making a public statement tomorrow at 12:00pm from the @WhiteHouse to discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!”
Later he wrote, targeting Romney: “Had failed presidential candidate @MittRomney devoted the same energy and anger to defeating a faltering Barack Obama as he sanctimoniously does to me, he could have won the election. Read the Transcripts!”
The White House asserted that the “sham impeachment attempt concocted by Democrats ended in the full vindication and exoneration of President Donald J. Trump,” and slammed Romney as “one failed Republican presidential candidate.”
“In what has now become a consistent tradition for Democrats, this was yet another witch-hunt that deprived the President of his due process rights and was based on a series of lies,” the White House said. “Rep. Adam Schiff lied to Congress and the American people with a totally made up statement about the President’s phone call. Will there be no retribution?”
The White House continued: “Speaker Nancy Pelosi also lied to the American people about the need to swiftly pass impeachment articles they dreamt up, only to sit on them for a month before sending over to the Senate. In the Senate, the Democrats continued to make their political motivations clear – Rep. Schiff proclaimed the issues ‘cannot be decided at the ballot box’ – proving once again they think they know better than the voters of this country. This entire effort by the Democrats was aimed at overturning the results of the 2016 election and interfering with the 2020 election.”
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