Donald Trump ‘Free’ of All Impeachment Charges

US President Donald Trump is finally acquitted of all the impeachment charges including abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he received staunch support from the Republican lawmakers, which enable him to defeat the gravest threat to his three-year-old presidency.

Trump was the third US leader, who was ever placed on trial, but he defeated the effort his opponents to expel him from office for having illegally sought help from Ukraine to strengthen his 2020 reelection effort.

Republicans stayed loyal to Trump, despite being confronted with strong evidence and mustered a majority of votes to clear the President of both charges by 52 to 48 on the first and 53 to 47 on the second, falling far short of the two-thirds majority, which is required for conviction.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who presided over the trial said, “Two-thirds of the senators present not having pronounced him guilty, the Senate adjudges that respondent Donald John Trump, President of the United States, is not guilty as charged.”

The House of Representatives has formally impeached Donald Trump in December, thereby clearing a major hurdle for the President to fully plunge into his campaign for re-election in November. Though, Trump had repeatedly avoided the probe saying it as a ‘hoax’ and a ‘witch hunt’.

Democrats were dejected but not surprised, after an intense 78-day House investigation, Trump was finally not impeached. Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said that whatever happened has happened as Donald Trump would anyway going to join two previous Presidents and being tarred with the ‘impeached’ label.

Thus the vote closed a political chapter that many Democrats had been reluctant to enter. Pelosi has rejected pressure early last year to impeach Donald Trump on the basis of evidence compiled by the then special counsel Robert Mueller.

The evidence showed that from early 2019, Rudy Giuliani, a private lawyer of Trump and his close political ally, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, were pressurizing Kiev to help smear Democrats, including Donald Trump’s potential 2020 rival Joe Biden, by opening investigations against them.

Adam Schiff, who led the House in the investigation, said that the fact that it came after Mueller’s investigation, which shows that Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign also sought help from Russia, forcing Democrats to act.

This week, Schiff also argued on the floor of the Senate and said, “We must say enough is enough! He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again”.

Trump’s defenders and his lawyers meanwhile argued, that Trump’s behavior was not appalling enough for impeachment and removal. Many dubbed the move by Democrats are inspired by just hatred for Donald Trump.

As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said before the vote, “Your hatred of Donald Trump has blinded you to the obvious. This is not about protecting the country, this is about destroying the president of the country. The to end this permanently, the president must get reelected.”