The United States Senate acquitted President Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on Wednesday following a historic two-week trial.
The Republican-majority Senate voted 52-48 to acquit Trump of abuse of power and 53-47 to acquit him of obstruction of Congress, The guardian reported.
Fifty-two Republicans voted to acquit Trump of abuse of power while all 47 Democrats voted to convict and remove him from office.
Utah Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican to break ranks, voting for conviction on the abuse of power charge.
But Romney sided with the Republican majority on the obstruction of Congress charge.
The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives impeached Trump on December 18 for withholding military aid to Ukraine to pressure Kiev to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.
Donald Trump has been acquitted in his Senate trial on both of the articles of impeachment he faced, ending the threat that he would be removed from office and concluding the impeachment process.
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Voting largely along party lines, the senators found Trump not guilty of the first article of impeachment, abuse of power, by a 52-48 tally, and not guilty of the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress, by a 53-47 tally.
Trump became the third president in US history to be impeached by the House of Representatives but acquitted in a Senate trial. A two-thirds majority of 67 senators would have been required to remove him.
As the historic vote landed, Democrats protested Trump had not won a true acquittal because, in the words of Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the trial was “a show trial”. The acquittal votes came after the chamber’s Republican majority defeated an effort to call witnesses at the trial who could have testified directly to Trump’s alleged misconduct.
Republican Mitt Romney of Utah was the only Republican to vote in favor of convicting Trump – and he became the only senator in history to vote to remove a president from his own party in an impeachment trial. Romney said he would vote in favor of article I, for abuse of power, and against article II, for obstruction of Congress.
“I support a great deal of what the president has done,” Romney said on the Senate floor. “But my promise before God to apply impartial justice required that I put my personal feelings and political biases aside.
