And the story behind Mitt Romney's historic vote.
Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. Impeachment is done. President Trump was acquitted. |
- By an almost straight party-line vote, the Senate acquitted President Trump on the charges that he abused his power and obstructed Congress to aid his own re-election, bringing the impeachment trial to a close and allowing Mr. Trump to claim vindication and exoneration.
- As expected, the tally in favor of conviction fell far below the 67-vote threshold necessary for removal on each article. Fifty-two senators voted against the abuse of power charge, while 48 of them voted to support it. And 53 senators — the entire Republican caucus — voted against the obstruction of Congress charge, while 47 voted for it.
- Despite weeks of speculation about moderates crossing party lines, there was only one who did: Senator Mitt Romney. He sided with Democrats on the first article, and became the first senator in American history to vote to remove a president of his own party from office.
- In an emotional speech on the Senate floor hours before the vote — even Democrats in the room teared up — Mr. Romney declared that Mr. Trump was “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.” He said Mr. Trump’s Ukraine pressure campaign was “a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values.”
- Mr. Trump was eager to deliver a public statement declaring victory after the acquittal, but his advisers argued against the move. Shortly after the Senate vote, he said he would wait until noon on Thursday to appear at the White House “to discuss our Country’s VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax.”
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Wednesday’s only surprise |
It was his “inescapable conviction,” he said. |
Shocking the Senate, Mr. Romney announced in an emotional speech this afternoon that he would vote to convict the president, taking his place alone in American history. |
“A president can indeed commit acts against the public trust that are so egregious that while they’re not statutory crimes, they would demand removal from office,” he said. |
Mr. Romney resisted the pleas of those he said had contacted him and encouraged him to “stand with the team.” And he said that with his vote, he would tell his children and grandchildren that he did his duty to the best of his ability. |
“I will only be one name among many, no more, no less to future generations of Americans who look at the record of this trial,” Mr. Romney said. “They will note merely that I was among the senators who determined that what the president did was wrong, grievously wrong.” |
He added, “We are all footnotes at best in the annals of history, but in the most powerful nation on Earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that distinction is enough for any citizen.” |
My colleague Mark Leibovich visited Mr. Romney in his Senate office this morning to interview him about his decision. I asked Mark what he took away from it. |
How did Mitt Romney get to the point where he was ready to act alone? |
He said he woke up before 4 a.m. every day and did a lot of agonizing. He read a lot: the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, a lot of political biographies. He took this very seriously. It’s an easy thing for a politician to say, but I actually believed him. Mitt Romney doesn’t exactly wear a lot of angst on his face. Spending time with him this morning, you could see that this decision wore on him. |
Did his own political health influence him? |
Mitt Romney is in a rare position. He’s at the end of his career. He doesn’t have to stand for an election for another four and a half years. He has his own stand-alone “brand,” if you want to call it that. He was the nominee in 2012. Whether or not the Trump people want to admit this, he was an elder statesman in the party. He has quite a bit of stature. He took the ultimate lonely position. |
What is it about the circumstances of our politics now — the pressures that both parties put on their members to fall in line — that meant Mr. Romney would be the only one? |
Republican politics in Washington in the time of Donald Trump is a vise grip. Loyalty has never been a more important virtue in the party than it is now. The Republican Party has shrunk a lot, by weeding out the Trump-ambivalents. A lot of the Republicans who broke with Donald Trump in 2016 are no longer Republicans. |
Mr. Romney is a Mormon. On the Senate floor today he said that as a juror in the trial, he had sworn an oath “before God” to act impartially. He cited a Mormon hymn in explaining his decision on Fox News. |
The example of his father, George Romney, who was very active in the Mormon Church and who was the moderate Republican governor of Michigan, was very powerful to him. George was also a lonely dissident voice in the Republican Party during the Vietnam War. He paid a big price for it. To this day, Mitt says he reveres his father for that. |
Mitt used to say when he was running for president that when he went up to the debate lectern, he would write the word “dad” to remind himself of the example his dad set. He said to me this morning that George Romney was an example he looked to regularly in the process of making this impeachment decision. |
He told you he thought there would be “unimaginable” consequences to his vote. What do you think he meant? |
He is as lonely a voice inside the G.O.P. as there is right now in the Senate. It takes different forms, like being heckled in grocery stores, which happened to him in Florida over the weekend. God knows what people say about you on social media. There are calls for his expulsion, led by Donald Trump Jr. He said he was prepared for it. He said he was willing to do this for the privilege of voting his conscience. |
A few minutes after 4 p.m., Chief Justice John Roberts called the impeachment trial into session for the last time. Approximately a half-hour later, Mr. Trump had been fully acquitted on the two charges. In between, each senator stood twice to register votes on both articles of impeachment. |
My colleagues Emily Cochrane and Catie Edmondson were in the room, seated with dozens of other reporters directly above the chief justice looking out at the senators. I asked them to narrate what they saw, with some help from the chief justice’s script during the proceedings. |
“The Senate will convene as a court of impeachment.” |
CATIE: The press and public galleries were completely full, as full as they’ve been during the trial. Members of the House of Representatives came over from the other side of the Capitol to see the proceedings to sit in the back of the chamber. There were so many lawmakers and Republican staff that they had to sit in an overflow area on the Democratic side. |
EMILY: The clerk methodically read the two articles of impeachment into the record before the votes took place. Then Chief Justice Roberts read out his instructions. |
“Each senator when his or her name is called will stand in his or her place and vote guilty or not guilty … Senators, how say you? Is the respondent, Donald John Trump, guilty or not guilty? |
CATIE: Normally when senators vote, they make a hand motion or say “yea” or “nay.” The combination of having senators stand at their desks and utter the words “guilty” or “not guilty” reminded you that you were in a room with the 100 people vested with the task of determining whether the president should be removed from office. That brought home the gravity for me. |
“On this article of impeachment, 48 senators have pronounced Donald John Trump, president of the United States, guilty as charged. Fifty-two of the senators have pronounced him not guilty as charged. Two-thirds of the senators present not having pronounced him guilty, the Senate adjudges that the respondent, Donald John Trump, president of the United States, is not guilty as charged.” |
CATIE: There were long pauses before the chief justice read out the vote counts, as the Senate clerk formally tallied everything. |
EMILY: During Chief Justice Roberts’s announcement of the votes, you could hear a pin drop in the room. The old-fashioned language added to the formality of the moment. It reminded you of how old this process is, and how no one has updated that language since it’s used so rarely. |
“The Senate, having tried Donald John Trump, president of the United States, upon two articles of impeachment exhibited against him by the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the senators present not having found him guilty of the charges contained therein, it is therefore ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John Trump be, and he is hereby, acquitted of the charges in said articles.” |
CATIE: After the conclusion, Chief Justice Roberts was escorted out of the chamber by a group of Democratic and Republican senators. Everyone stood. It underscored this somewhat bipartisan notion in all of this, the idea that the judicial branch needed to remain above the fray of politics. No one wanted the judicial branch to be tainted by partisanship. |
EMILY: Mr. Romney appeared to be one of the first senators to leave. He seemed to dart out pretty quickly. Most senators stayed in the room, milling around like they normally do. The weight had been taken off the chamber. |
What else we’re following |
- After months of investigation, partisan posturing and parliamentary wrangling, we’re left with a set of facts that is largely beyond dispute: The president of the United States pressured a foreign government to take actions aimed at his political opponents. My colleague Ken Vogel organized the evidence against the president.
- CNN talked to a number of the witnesses in the House’s impeachment inquiry about their views on Mr. Trump’s trial and acquittal and found that they were disgusted. “All the carnage for something that doesn’t mean very much,” one of the officials said. “Our domestic political battles have just trampled over what our national interests are.”
- Our photographers documented every facet of this impeachment, from moments of pomp in grand Capitol rotundas to planning sessions in cramped offices. Here’s a collection of their best photos.
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A briefing programming note: |
With impeachment officially over, the Impeachment Briefing will soon be coming to an end, too. Before then, we’d love to hear your thoughts — on impeachment, on this newsletter, and any lingering questions you might have. Email us at briefing@nytimes.com. |
