Senate acquits Trump on charge of abuse of power

ORIGINAL STORY: 

The end of President Donald Trump’s impeachment saga is in sight.

The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon to acquit Trump on charges that he abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political opponents, and then stonewalled Congress’ investigation of the matter. 

The likely party-line vote was sealed this week when nearly every Republican senator declared their intent to reject the House’s articles of impeachment, ensuring that far fewer than the required two-thirds of the Senate would vote to remove him from office. Just one Republican senator, Mitt Romney of Utah, will vote to convict Trump, depriving the president of a unified GOP front. It remains to be seen whether centrist Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginiawill cross party lines and vote to acquit the president on either impeachment article.

In an emotional speech on Wednesday afternoon, Romney said his impeachment verdict was “the most difficult decision I have ever faced.”

“I am sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters,” Romney acknowledged. “Does anyone seriously believe I would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?”

The vote will seal an episode that accelerated an already dysfunctional Congress’ slide into permanent warfare. Democrats amassed a roster of evidence that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine, a foreign ally at war with Russia, in order to coerce its government to investigate his political adversaries. But Republicans responded by hugging Trump closer, attacking the House’s impeachment process and the format of their articles of impeachment as a primary defense.

A handful of Senate Republicans — Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — even argued that the House had largely proven its case and that Trump's actions were wrong, but concluded the charges didn’t merit removing a president, and all the associated national turmoil that would come with it.

The acquittal vote came days after a Democrat-led effort to subpoena additional witnesses and documents failed, largely on party lines. Romney and Collins were the only Republicans to join all 47 Democrats to support the motion for new witnesses. When that vote failed on Friday, the result seemed certain.

“Today, the president will be acquitted for life,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Wednesday at his weekly press conference, countering a comment made earlier this month by Speaker Nancy Pelosi who said Trump had been "impeached for life."

Trump's likely acquittal bookended the Sept. 24 launch of the House’s impeachment investigation by Pelosi, which was followed by a breakneck flurry of depositions and public hearings that featured senior State Department and White House officials defying Trump's orders and testifying on the alleged scheme.

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