Trump acquitted in historic impeachment vote as re-election campaign looms

Trump was acquitted largely along party lines on two articles of impeachment approved by the Democratic-led House of Representatives on Dec. 18

President Donald Trump was acquitted on Wednesday in his U.S. Senate impeachment trial, saved by fellow Republicans who rallied to protect him nine months before he asks voters in a deeply divided America to give him a second White House term.

The businessman-turned-politician, 73, survived only the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history – just like the two other impeached presidents – in his turbulent presidency’s darkest chapter. Trump now plunges into an election season that promises to further polarize the country. Trump was acquitted largely along party lines on two articles of Donald Trump impeachment approved by the Democratic-led House of Representatives on Dec. 18. The votes to convict Trump fell far short of the two-thirds majority required in the 100-seat Senate to remove him from office under the U.S. Constitution.

The Senate voted 52-48 to acquit Trump of abuse of power stemming from his request that Ukraine investigate political rival Joe Biden, a contender for the Democratic nomination to face him in the Nov. 3 election. Republican Senator Mitt Romney joined the Democrats in voting to convict. No Democrat voted to acquit. The Senate then voted 53-47 to acquit him of obstruction of Congress by blocking witnesses and documents sought by the House. Romney joined the rest of the Republican senators in voting to acquit on the obstruction charge. No Democrat voted to acquit…

Impeachment trial: Trump repeatedly, flagrantly abused power, say Democrats

President Trump used the powers of his office to solicit a foreign nation to interfere in our elections for his own personal benefit: Democrats

International News: Democrats told President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial Thursday that he openly and dangerously abused his powers to gain political advantage. House impeachment managers laid out the evidence for the first of two articles of impeachment against the US leader in the second day of arguments, methodically dismantling Republican claims that Trump did nothing wrong in soliciting electoral help from Ukraine last year.

As the 100 senators sat as jurors, the prosecutors played old videos in which two of the president’s closest defenders said that abuse of power is a clear impeachable offense, puncturing a key White House argument that the US constitution requires a specific crime to remove a president.

“President Donald Trump used the powers of his office to solicit a foreign nation to interfere in our elections for his own personal benefit,” House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler, one of the impeachment managers, told the chamber. “Since President George Washington took office in 1789, no president has abused his power in this way,” Nadler said. “The president has repeatedly, flagrantly, violated his oath… The president’s conduct is wrong. It is illegal. And it is dangerous.”

Lawless impeachment will be political suicide for Democrats, says Trump

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic lawmakers ‘have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame,’ Trump said

President Donald Trump laid out a blistering attack in real time Wednesday against House Democrats’ vote to impeach him, saying the party showed “deep hatred and disdain for the American voter” and would pay for it in the 2020 election. “This lawless, partisan impeachment is a political suicide march for the Democratic party,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Battle Creek, Michigan, as the final tally of a vote to impeach him was being counted on the House floor.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic lawmakers “have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame,” he added. Back in Washington, the House adopted two articles of impeachment against the president as he spoke at the rally, offering an unprecedented split-screen spectacle of the political strife dividing the nation. Underscoring the political reckoning for  Trump, he spent the evening in Battle Creek — a Republican stronghold that helped him win the otherwise Democratic state in 2016.

The setting offered the president a receptive audience to make his rebuttal. When a protester disrupted his speech, the crowd booed loudly and the president faulted the event’s security guards for not being more physical in removing the woman, who he called “disgusting.” “You got to get a little bit stronger than that, folks,” Trump said.

The first portion of the speech touched on a range of issues unrelated to impeachment. As votes were counted on the first of two articles of impeachment — that Donald Trump abused the power of his office — he was praising F-35 fighter pilots. When the House adopted the article, he was assailing the “crooked media.” The frustration Trump has displayed reflects the potential harm impeachment does to his re-election campaign, which will be the first in postwar American history waged by an impeached president.

Donald Trump impeached by US House of Representatives for abuse of power

The House voted 230 to 197 largely along party lines to adopt the first of two impeachment articles, alleging he misused the power of his office to withhold military assistance

The US House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstructing Congress, the culmination of an effort by Democrats that further inflamed partisan tensions in Washington and deepened the nation’s ideological divide.

The historic votes on Wednesday evening, which won the support of almost all Democrats in the House chamber but not a single Republican, leave Trump as only the third president in US history to be impeached — and the only impeached president likely to win his party’s nomination for re-election. The Senate will hold a trial early next year to decide whether the president should be convicted on the charges and removed from office, though the Republicans who have the majority in that chamber will almost certainly acquit him.

House Democrats took depositions from more than a dozen witnesses, held weeks of hearings, and wrote hundreds of pages documenting Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Yet public support for Trump’s impeachment and removal rarely went much above 50% in polling, and there is little evidence that the proceedings left him in a worse position politically on the eve of the 2020 election.

After more than six hours of debate, the House voted 230 to 197 to adopt the first of two impeachment articles, one alleging he misused the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. The House voted 229 to 198 on a second article accusing him of obstructing Congress. The final vote left all sides dissatisfied. Republicans fumed at what they called a rushed process, accusing Democrats of ignoring their demands for witnesses and trying to tarnish Trump heading into his campaign….