President Trump Is Acquitted

The trial in the Senate came after the Democrat-controlled House impeached President Trump in January for allegedly pressuring Ukrainian leaders to publicly announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden, a top Democratic challenger in the 2020 election, and his son Hunter Biden. During the House’s impeachment inquiry, several witnesses testified that the Trump administration, in an effort to pressure Ukrainian officials to announce those investigations, withheld some $400 million in military aid that Congress had approved.

During the Senate trial, which began on January 21, the House managers—members of the House who served as the prosecution—argued that by soliciting foreign interference in the 2020 election, the president abused the powers of the Oval Office for his own personal gain.

President Trump’s lawyers argued that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him, and that regardless, the charges against him didn’t amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors”—the standard set in the U.S. Constitution for removing a president from office.

Going into the Senate trial, most observers expected that the Republican-controlled Senate would acquit the president roughly along party lines. The drama became about whether senators would vote to call witnesses, in particular John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser. In an unpublished manuscript revealed mid-trial, Bolton alleges that President Trump told him directly that he wanted to continue freezing the aid to Ukraine until officials there helped with the investigations into the Bidens.

The House managers argued that the new revelation increased the need to call Bolton to testify and that all trials have witnesses, including the previous two presidential impeachment trials (Andrew Johnson’s in 1868 and Bill Clinton’s in 1998).

The president’s lawyers, however, argued that the House of Representatives should have called all relevant witnesses during its impeachment inquiry, and that it’s not the Senate’s job to do so.

After hearing the arguments from both sides, the Senate voted last Friday, 51 to 49, to block witnesses from testifying, with only two Republicans (Romney and Susan Collins of Maine) siding with the Democrats. 

Five days later, the impeachment trial itself has come to a close, with the Senate’s acquittal of President Trump.

In the days leading up to the acquittal—when the final outcome was already all but certain—Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, called the impeachment a politically motivated attack by the Democrats.

“Washington Democrats think President Donald Trump committed a high crime or misdemeanor the moment he defeated Hillary Clinton,” McConnell said, referring to the president’s victory in 2016. “That is the original sin of this presidency: that he won and they lost.”

However, Senator Romney, the lone Republican to join the Democrats in favor of convicting the president on abuse of power, said on Wednesday that he came to his decision because the evidence against Trump was overwhelming. He argued that the president’s actions were an “egregious assault on our Constitution.”

“Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine," he said.

Several other Republicans said that what Trump did was wrong. But they argued that whether he should remain in office or not is a question that voters should answer in November.

“The president's behavior was shameful and wrong. His personal interests do not take precedence over those of this great nation,” Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said earlier this week.

But she added that the president’s behavior didn’t merit removal. "The voters will pronounce a verdict in nine months, and we must trust their judgment," she said.

Although the impeachment trial is now over, many questions remain. Perhaps most immediate are what effect President Trump’s acquittal might have on the 2020 election and whether the nation can move on from the deep divisions so clearly on display throughout the impeachment process.

“I think we heal in part by surprising the people and coming out from our partisan corners and getting stuff done,” Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said on Wednesday. Addressing the opioid crisis and fixing America’s crumbling infrastructure are two examples he cited. “Stuff that [Americans] care about that affects the families we were sent here to represent.”