President Donald Trump has been cleared in his impeachment trial, ending a congressional bid to oust him from office that bitterly divided the US.<\/p>\n
The Senate, run by the president’s fellow Republicans, voted to acquit him 52-48 on charges of abuse of power and 53-47 on obstruction of Congress.<\/p>\n
Democrats charged Mr Trump in December with pressuring Ukraine to smear a potential White House rival.<\/p>\n
In November, Mr Trump will be the first impeached president to go for election.<\/p>\n
In its historic vote on Wednesday, the Senate decided not to remove America’s 45th president from office on charges arising from his dealings with Ukraine.<\/p>\n
If convicted on either charge, Mr Trump would have had to turn over his office to Vice-President Mike Pence.<\/p>\n
The Democratic-led House of Representatives approved the articles of impeachment on 18 December.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump, who is seeking a second four-year term in the 3 November election, always denied wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
His re-election campaign said in a statement: “President Trump has been totally vindicated and it’s now time to get back to the business of the American people.<\/p>\n
“The do-nothing Democrats know they can’t beat him, so they had to impeach him.”<\/p>\n
It said “this terrible ordeal” and “nonsense” was merely a Democratic campaign tactic.<\/p>\n
The statement added: “This impeachment hoax will go down as the worst miscalculation in American political history.”<\/p>\n
Mr Trump – whose personal approval rating with American voters hit a personal best of 49% this week, according to Gallup – tweeted that he would speak on Thursday about the case.<\/p>\n
Mitt Romney of Utah was the only Republican senator to cross the aisle and convict Mr Trump, on the first charge of abuse of power.<\/p>\n
Mr Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said earlier on the Senate floor that the president was “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust”.<\/p>\n
Despite Democratic hopes, two other moderate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, did not join Mr Romney in voting to convict the president.<\/p>\n
Some Republican senators criticised Mr Trump’s behaviour in recent days, but said it did not rise to the level of impeachment.<\/p>\n
Three centrist Democratic senators who Republicans had hoped would side with them instead voted to convict Mr Trump.<\/p>\n
They were Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Doug Jones of Alabama.<\/p>\n
A two-thirds majority vote was needed to remove Mr Trump, which was always going to be a long shot in a chamber controlled by his party.<\/p>\n
The impeachment charges focused on Mr Trump’s request that Kyiv announce a corruption investigation into Joe Biden, a Democratic White House candidate, and his son Hunter Biden.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump has argued that the younger Biden improperly held a board position with a Ukrainian natural gas firm while his father was US vice-president and in charge of American-Ukrainian relations.<\/p>\n
Democrats accused Mr Trump of abusing his power by withholding $391m (\u00a3300m) in security aid to prod Ukraine’s president into digging up dirt on the Bidens.<\/p>\n
They also charged Mr Trump with obstruction of Congress after the White House blocked testimony and documents sought by the House impeachment investigators.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump is the third US president to have been impeached.<\/p>\n
The two others, Bill Clinton in 1999 and Andrew Johnson in 1868, were left in power by the Senate and did not seek re-election.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump has probably not heard the last of the Ukraine investigation.<\/p>\n
Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday the chamber would “likely” issue a subpoena to Mr Trump’s former National Security Adviser, John Bolton.<\/p>\n
Senate Republicans ultimately declined to seek Mr Bolton’s testimony during the president’s impeachment trial, provoking uproar from Democrats.<\/p>\n
A manuscript of a forthcoming Bolton memoir reportedly alleges Mr Trump told his former national security adviser to help him pressure Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"