{"id":9167,"date":"2020-02-05T23:57:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T07:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9167"},"modified":"2020-02-06T08:27:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T16:27:22","slug":"post2-74","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=9167","title":{"rendered":"“Trump Acquitted of Two Impeachment Charges in Near Party-Line Vote”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nicholas Fandos, Feb. 5, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n

As Republicans rallied behind President Trump, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the party\u2019s 2012 presidential nominee, joined Democrats in voting to convict, the only senator to cross party lines.<\/em><\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2014 After five months of hearings, investigations and revelations about President Trump\u2019s dealings with Ukraine, a divided United States Senate acquitted him on Wednesday of charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress to aid his own re-election, bringing an acrimonious impeachment trial to its expected end.<\/p>\n

In a pair of votes whose outcome was never in doubt, the Senate fell well short of the two-thirds margin that would have been needed to remove the 45th president. The verdicts came down \u2014 after three weeks of debate \u2014 almost entirely along party lines, with every Democrat voting \u201cguilty\u201d on both charges and Republicans uniformly voting \u201cnot guilty\u201d on the obstruction of Congress charge.<\/p>\n

Only one Republican, Senator Mitt Romney<\/a> of Utah, broke with his party to judge Mr. Trump guilty of abuse of power.<\/p>\n

It was the third impeachment trial of a president and the third acquittal in American history, and it ended the way it began: with Republicans and Democrats at odds. They disagreed over Mr. Trump\u2019s conduct and his fitness for office, even as some members of his own party conceded the basic allegations that undergirded the charges, that he sought to pressure Ukraine to smear his political rivals.<\/p>\n

But in a sign of the widening partisan divide testing the country and its institutions, the verdict did not promise finality, which members of both parties conceded would come only after the November election.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The president himself did not directly address his acquittal, but shortly afterward, he announced on Twitter<\/a> that he would make a public statement on Thursday at the White House about what he called \u201cour Country\u2019s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax.\u201d He then tweeted an attack ad<\/a> against Mr. Romney that called the senator a \u201cDemocrat secret asset.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n