The months-long impeachment saga concluded on Wednesday, and as expected, President Trump will remain in office.
The Senate voted to acquit the president on both impeachment charges — one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress — that were approved in December by the House of Representatives.
The vote on the abuse-of-power charge fell along party lines, except for the vote of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who said earlier on Wednesday that he planned to vote to convict the president. All 53 Republican senators, including Romney, voted to acquit Trump on the charge of obstruction of Congress.
The House voted to impeach Trump over his dealings with Ukraine. Trump directed his aides to leverage congressionally approved military funding for Ukraine in an attempt to get the country’s new president to announce a corruption investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, one of Trump’s potential rivals in the 2020 presidential election.
Removing Trump from office would have required a two-thirds majority of senators, an outcome that was always out of reach due to Republicans’ near-unanimous fealty to the president. But Democrats maintained that a failure to impeach Trump would send a message to future presidents that their conduct was beyond Congress’ reproach or the law’s reach.
Immediately after the Senate voted to acquit, the sitting president of the United States of America tweeted a graphic of yard signs for his presidential campaigns that would extend his term past the year 2020 to 2024, 2028, 2088, 2400, 40000 and eventually “4EVA.”
