TRUMP IS IN THE CLEAR
PRESIDENT Donald Trump was acquitted by the US Senate last night, bringing an end to only the third impeachment trial in history.
The President’s Republican Party stood firm during yesterday’s vote, with their majority ensuring Trump remained in power.
The vote finished 52-48 in favour of clearing the President.
Senate Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the chamber, and a two-thirds majority was required for conviction.
Mitt Romney was the only Republican to break ranks, voting to convict on abuse of power but to acquit on obstruction of Congress.
He became the only senator in US history to vote to convict a President from the same party.
The Utah senator said: “I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am.”
He added President Trump was “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust”.
Romney had been the Republican Party’s nominee for President in the 2012 election.
Sixty-seven votes were required to convict on each of the two articles of impeachment.
While several Republicans said they believe Trump acted inappropriately in his dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, none, other than Romney, said they believed his conduct was impeachable.
The vote brought an end to nearly five months of the impeachment inquiry and trial, that sprang forth
after a whistleblower’s complaint over Trump’s comments to the President of Ukraine last summer.
He was accused of withholding £309million of military aid to Ukraine that had already been allocated by Congress.
Democrats claimed he did so to force President Zelensky to investigate one of his main Democratic challengers, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. It was said
Hunter joined the board of a Ukrainian company when Joe Biden was US vice president.
The second Trump demand was that Ukraine try to corroborate a conspiracy theory that the country, not Russia, interfered in the last US presidential election.
The Democrat defeat came despite news from former national security adviser John Bolton, who claims Trump told him to contact
the president of Ukraine as part of a push to get investigations of the Bidens. Regardless of the overall vote, President Trump will remain “impeached forever”, his accusers said yesterday,
He has joined former presidents Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson – the 17th president, serving from 1865 to 1869 – as the only three presidents who have faced impeachment proceedings.