In Historic Vote, Senate Acquits Trump In Impeachment Trial

The Senate has voted to acquit President Trump on both articles of impeachment. Senators voted 48-52 on the first article, which charged him with abuse of power, and 47-53 on the second charge, obstruction of Congress.

Senators wrapped up their statements Wednesday, ahead of the final vote. In an impassioned statement, and at times fighting back tears, Romney said ahead of the vote that he will vote to remove Trump, making him the only Republican to break ranks.

After sitting for days as jurors, Senators got a chance to say their piece during the impeachment trial. Of note, Main Sen. Susan Collins, long viewed as a possible Republican vote for removal, said she will vote to acquit the Trump.

Read a full recap of the twelfth day of the trial here.

House impeachment managers and President Trump's defense team made their closing arguments Monday, signaling the beginning of the end for the Senate trial.

The House Democrats prosecuting Trump were given two hours to make their final case, followed by the rebuttal from the president's lawyers for the same amount of time.

Read a full recap of the eleventh day of the trial here.

Voting largely along party lines, the Senate defeated a motion to call witnesses as part of the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump, all but assuring his acquittal.

Republican Sens. Susan Collins, of Maine, and Mitt Romney, of Utah, said they would vote in favor of the motion. But two other senators who were previously on the fence, Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, announced they would oppose the motion, crushing Demcorats' hopes to hear sworn testimony from former National Security Advisor John Bolton.

Read a full recap of the tenth day of the trial here.

The question and answer portion of the trial continued Thursday, but much focus continued to be on the debate over whether to allow witnesses in the trial — namely, former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Republicans would like Trump to be acquitted as early as Friday, but Democrats are working behind the scenes to recruit enough conservatives to support bringing in witnesses to testify, NPR reports.

The much-anticipated vote for whether to allow additional evidence and witnesses is likely to come up on Friday.

Read a full recap of the ninth day of the trial here. Watch the key moments here. 

With opening arguments finished, the Senate moved into the written question and answer phase of the impeachment trial.

Senators were given 16 hours to submit questions to House impeachment managers and Trump's legal team. Presiding Chief Justice John Roberts read questions aloud on the Senate floor.

But many members used the time to write arguments for and against including witnesses in the trial.

Read a full recap of the eighth day of the trial here. Watch the key moments here. 

The president's lawyers utilized just a couple hours of their remaining time on the Senate floor to wrap up their case against impeachment.

Much focus has been on former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who apparently makes revelations in an unpublished book about the president's role in withholding Ukraine aid. But the defense attorneys on Tuesday continued to resist calls for admission of new witnesses to the trial.

Democrats need to convince at least four Republicans to defect from their party's leadership in order to support a subpoena of Bolton, a threshold that Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said on Monday appeared "increasingly likely," NPR reports.

The Senate is expected to reach that crossroads on Friday.

The end of opening arguments from both sides signals the start of a new phase in the trial: asking written questions.

Read a full recap of the seventh day of the trial here. Watch the key moments here. 

In its second day of rebuttal against the case for impeachment, the president's legal team staunchly rejected new allegations against Trump from former national security adviser John Bolton.

Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz argued that even if the Bolton revelations — first reported by The New York Times over the weekend — were true, they did not "rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense."

The president's lawyers also homed in on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was paid by a Ukrainian gas company while the then-vice president was responsible for handling some affairs with the country. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi outlined why she believed an investigation should instead be executed into the Biden family's dealings.

Dershowitz closed the hearing by reiterating his claims that the arguments for impeachment against Trump are unconstitutional.

Read a full recap of the sixth day of the trial here. Watch the key moments here.

President Trump's legal team presented the first part of their defense Saturday morning, arguing that the president "did absolutely nothing wrong."

The team spent about two hours beginning their defense against the charges made by the House of Representatives, and argued that the House managers selectively withheld evidence.

Read a full recap of the fifth day of the trial here. 

House impeachment managers delivered their opening arguments for President Trump's removal from office for a third and final day.

The Democratic managers focused on obstruction of Congress — one of two articles of impeachment passed by the House. The other charges Trump with abuse of power for his role in the now-infamous Ukraine affair.

Read a full recap of the fourth day of the trial here. 

The Senate continued to hear arguments in favor of President Trump's impeachment on Thursday from House managers.

The managers argued that Congress has the power to impeach and remove a president, and that President Trump's actions qualify him for just that.

"Abuse of power is clearly an impeachable offense under the Constitution. To be honest, this should not be a controversial statement," Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said. "I find it amazing that the president rejects it. Yet he does."

Trump's defense team and most Senate Republicans continue to argue that he didn't break laws in the Ukraine affair. But Democrats pushed back, saying that the president doesn't have to break a law in order to commit an impeachable offense.

Read a full recap of the third day of the trial here. Watch the key moments here. 

House impeachment managers on Wednesday began making their case for the impeachment of President Trump on the Senate floor.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is the lead house impeachment manager, argued in his closing remarks that the impeachment process is an important check on the executive branch's power.

Speaking of the nation's founders, Schiff said: "They knew what it was like to like under a despot, and they risked their lives to be free of it. They knew they were creating an enormously powerful executive, and they knew they needed to constrain it."

Other house impeachment managers also laid out their case against Trump, arguing that the president withheld aid from Ukraine in order to pressure the country's leadership for his own gain and obstructed Congress.

Read a full recap of the second day of the trial here. Watch the key moments here. 

The long-awaited impeachment trial of President Trump got underway in the Republican-dominant Senate on Tuesday afternoon.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out proposed rules for the trial in a resolution released Monday night. He wanted to give each side 24 hours to present their case, spread over the first two days, but first needed approval from at least 51 of the 53 Senate Republicans. The Senate's first order of business was debating the resolution. (Here's what WBUR's political analysts said about McConnell's proposal.)

After more than 12 hours of debate and a last-minute revision by McConnell,  ground rules were adopted, expanding the timing to three days. He also allowed evidence from the House to be automatically entered into the record unless there were an objection, NPR reports.

Senate Republicans also voted down 11 proposed amendments, which were mostly aimed at filing subpoenas to obtain documents from the White House, State Department and other officials.

Read a full recap of the first day of the trial here.