Trump Acquitted By U.S. Senate On All Charges

On Wednesday afternoon the U.S. Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump on the both articles of impeachment against him.

The first article alleging abuse of power was voted down, an outcome many expected since the trial began on January 21.

Trump Acquitted

Removing Trump from office would have required the support of at least 67 members of the GOP-led Senate, or two-thirds. Only Senator Mitt Romney broke ranks with the 53 Republicans to buck his party and vote to convict.

RELATED: Trump Wins Witness Vote 51-49 – Acquittal Looks Solid

No president in America’s history has ever been removed from office through the impeachment process.

Trump Acquitted on Both Articles

On to voting on the second article of impeachment, the obstruction of Congress charge, Trump was acquitted 53-47. Romney voted with Republicans on this second charge.

The two Articles of Impeachment against the President were approved in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives in December, both centering on Trump’s alleged request that Ukraine probe former US Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, over their dealings in Ukraine.

Democrats have insisted Trump made a phone call in July 2019 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that constituted a quid pro quo because $391 million in US military aid to Ukraine was being withheld at the time.

RELATED: Trump Lawyer to Schiff’s Team: You’re Conducting ‘Massive Election Interference’ And Americans Will Make You Pay

Trump Described Impeachment as a ‘Witch Hunt’ Throughout

Throughout the impeachment process, Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and repeatedly described the entire event as a partisan “witch hunt.”

Even though the articles pass the House, impeachment was expected to fail in the Senate.

The beginning of the end for impeachment truly happened when the Senate voted last week, 51 to 49, to not call any witnesses in the trial.

The post Trump Acquitted By U.S. Senate On All Charges appeared first on The Political Insider.

Three Democratic Senators May Vote to Acquit Trump of Impeachment

According to a new report, three moderate Democratic senators have signaled they might vote to acquit President Donald Trump in the upper chamber’s impeachment trial.

Sens. Joe Manchin, Doug Jones and Kyrsten Sinema Might Vote to Acquit Trump

Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Doug Jones of Alabama and Kyrsten Sinema could break ranks with their Democratic colleagues. At least one of them has also said they could vote in favor of only one impeachment article — the abuse of power — but oppose obstruction of Congress.

This week in an interview with Politico, Manchin said he will only support only one of the articles if he “can explain one and not the other.” He has yet to decide on whether he will run for re-election in 2024, said he won’t make a final decision on how he will vote until after the trial concludes.

“I know it’s hard to believe that. But I really am [undecided]. But I have not made a final decision. Every day, I hear something, I think ‘this is compelling, that’s compelling,’” Manchin said. “Everyone’s struggling a little bit.”

RELATED: Adam Schiff Wants Trump Removed Because He Won’t Do “What’s Right For This Country”

The most vulnerable Senate incumbent among Democrats is Jones, who had previously criticized the “obstruction of Congress” article and has said he is “troubled” that House Democrats failed to call White House officials as witnesses.

“I don’t think I’ve totally decided. I certainly have [been] leaning one way or the other. That needle moves” Jones told Politico. “I am leaning in certain ways but I want to hear, I truly, honestly, want to hear the entire trial.”

Sinema’s silence on impeachment suggests her vote is still undecided. A spokesperson said she supports gathering more evidence to “make a more fully informed decision at the end of the trial.”

Dems Push for John Bolton to Testify

Theses senators’ comments come as Democrats now want to call former White House National Security Advisor John Bolton to testify as a witness. The New York Times reported Sunday that Bolton’s upcoming book reveals that President Trump wanted to tie U.S. military to Ukraine to inquiries into allegations of corruption in former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden.

President Trump has rejected these claims, and took direct aim at Bolton Wednesday morning in a pair of tweets.

“For a guy who couldn’t get approved for the Ambassador to the U.N. years ago, couldn’t get approved for anything since, ‘begged’ me for a non Senate approved job, which I gave him despite many saying ‘Don’t do it, sir,’ takes the job, mistakenly says ‘Libyan Model’ on T.V., and many more mistakes of judgement [sic], gets fired because frankly, if I listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now, and goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security. Who would do this?” the president wrote.

RELATED: Trump Blasts Bolton Over ‘Nasty’ and ‘Untrue’ Book

Some liberals have urged others to call these senators and ask them to impeach Donald Trump.

What’s stopping conservatives from urging them to do the opposite?

The post Three Democratic Senators May Vote to Acquit Trump of Impeachment appeared first on The Political Insider.

‘Get your facts straight!’ Chris Wallace gets testy with Fox News pundit’s spin on Bolton

Fox News’ Chris Wallace slammed conservative pundit Katie Pavlich on air, telling her to “Get your facts straight” after she tried to claim all kinds of made-up facts in her defense of Donald Trump. In question was Pavlich’s revisionist retelling of how the Democratic House’s impeachment inquiry was hampered by obstruction. In Pavlich’s imagineering, the Democratic Party is breaking with impeachment tradition by pushing an incomplete case, “and every impeachment beforehand, the witnesses that were called had been called in the House before being brought to the Senate. So there are questions here about the process.”

That’s not true. It’s not even a little bit true, and Wallace cut Pavlich off to tell her as much: “They hadn’t all been called in the House, and in the Clinton impeachment, they’d been called by the general independent counsel. They had not been called by the House.” 

Right-wing pundit Katie Pavlich is just the kind of dumb that Trump’s Republican Party loves: willing to toe any line of misinformation, no matter how many obvious facts and contradictions there are. Appearing on Fox News with conservative luminaries such as Brett Baier, Pavlich was promoting the old conservative trope that the difference between Clinton’s impeachment trial and Trump’s is that the Democratic Party keeps trying to add new things to it, because it’s going so terribly. The basis of this bit of bullshit is that Donald Trump’s White House has refused to allow anyone to testify, while his Department of Justice has done more work trying to cover up his criminal behavior than any of the actual work it’s supposed to do as a department. 

Wallace has been as critical of President Trump as anyone can be on the Fox News network, even admitting to the public that Trump has damaged our freedom of the press. But it’s hard to tell whether Wallace is angry at the lies being spread, or how stupid the spin is. The segment opened with Wallace saying proof that the John Bolton news that broke over the weekend was “big” was how intensely people like Pavlich were trying to spin it. 

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Trump doesn’t just confess to obstruction—he brags about it

Being in the gold-plated, billionaire-infused reaches of Davos clearly makes Donald Trump comfortable. At an early-Wednesday press shindig, Trump scoffed at the impeachment trial that opened in the Senate on Tuesday afternoon. In particular, Trump was amused by the idea that the legislature might actually want the information he’s been withholding from both the House and the Senate—an action that’s the second article of Trump’s impeachment.

"Honestly, we have all the material," said Trump. "They don't have the material." That’s right: Trump isn’t just admitting that he’s blocking the Congress and the public from seeing critical information that reveals the truth behind the charges. He’s doing it with a big, proud middle finger delivered from a meeting of the world’s wealthiest.

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