Trump was acquitted in the impeachment process
Everything went as planned, except for Republican Mitt Romney, who voted against his party president
US President Donald Trump was acquitted in the impeachment process against him after a Republican majority vote in the Senate. The vote was held after the Senate had previously decided, on January 31, not to call new witnesses. The impeachment - a political process in which it is decided whether or not to remove the incumbent president - began on January 17, with the formal opening of the trial in which Trump was accused of abuse of power and obstruction to the work of Congress. in the complicated case involving Ukraine and his phone call to President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he pressured him to open an investigation against Joe Biden, his potential opponent in the 2020 presidential election. The outcome of the vote was rather predictable, given that Republicans have practically no cooperation in the process and have always defended Trump rather tightly.
In the first of the two votes, on the abuse of power, the "Not guilty" were 52 and the "Guilty" 48; in addition to the 47 Democratic senators, Republican Mitt Romney, who has long been critical of Trump, also voted “Guilty”. In the second vote, on the obstruction of Congress, the "Not guilty" were 53 and the "Guilty" 47. For the impeachment process to continue, there should have been a two-thirds majority (equal to 67 votes) in favor of at least one of the two charges.
The result of the vote was the one expected more or less from the start of the impeachment process: it was considered unlikely that the Republican senators would not support the president. The outcome had become definitively clear after the Senate rejected the Democrats' request to admit new witnesses to the trial and new evidence.
The main witness the Democrats wanted to bring to the Senate was John Bolton, Trump's former National Security Advisor. According to the anticipations of a book he is about to publish, released by the New York Times, Bolton would have probably said that in July 2019 Trump had blocked economic and military aid to Ukraine to ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his staff to open an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, thus confirming the allegations by the Democrats. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said investigations into Trump's behavior would continue and other prominent Democrats said the president's acquittal was illegitimate because no other witnesses were heard.
The trial concluded on February 5 was the third impeachment trial of a president in US history, following those against Andrew Johnson in 1868 and against Bill Clinton in 1999, and the third to result in acquittal. It was also the fastest: only twenty days, compared to five weeks of the impeachment trial against Clinton and three months of the one against Johnson. Romney, on the other hand, was the first senator in the history of the United States to vote in favor of the impeachment of a president of his own party: he said he did it for reasons of conscience.
Many other Republican politicians acknowledged that Trump lobbied the Ukrainian government to get an investigation into Biden, but most felt that this conduct was not serious enough to remove the president from his post. presidential elections, which will be in November. Trump is currently hugely popular in the Republican electorate: his approval rate has reached 49 percent and is higher than that of his predecessor Barack Obama at this point in office.
Donald Trump did not speak after he was acquitted but on Twitter he wrote that today he will give a speech from the White House to "talk about the VICTORY of the country over the impeachment scam". He also released a video accusing Mitt Romney of being a double agent for the Democrats and criticizing the senator for losing the presidential election to Barack Obama in 2012.
