The acquittal of President Donald Trump by the US Senate in his impeachment trial is not surprising. But it is highly disappointing. It sends a dangerous signal to the entire world that the US President is above the law.
It was more than obvious from the very beginnng of the impeachment process that Trump would not be removed from office by the Republican-controlled Senate even though it was clear that he had withheld security aid to Ukraine in order to prompt Kiev into investigating former vice president Joe Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, and his son Hunter Biden.
After Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, the Republican Party largely closed ranks, ignored the overwhelming evidence, disregarded the facts and refused to hear additional witnesses. Consequently, the two thirds majority needed in the Senate to remove Trump from office became an impossible goal.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, even stated that Republicans would coordinate their tactics with the White House during Trump’s trial. This is outrageous considering that the Senate’s constitutional duty is to conduct a fair trial of an impeached US president.
The Senate needed only 51 votes to call additional witnesses, but only two Republicans, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, had the courage to vote to allow this. This was not enough as the Republicans have 53 seats in the Senate. The refusal to allow witnesses was indefensible and a grave assault on the rule of law.
This is especially so when one considers that Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton, whom the Democrats wanted to testify, indicated in his yet-to-be-published book that Trump said he was blocking aid to Ukraine unless the country investigated the Bidens. When the Senate voted on whether Trump should be removed from office only one Republican, Romney, voted with the Democrats to convict the President (on the abuse of power charge but not for obstruction of Congress).
Romney, the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential candidate, will no doubt go down in history as a man of principle who put country before party. He said ignoring the evidence of Trump’s abuse of power would “expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience”. Trump, he said, was “guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust” and “a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values”.
Trump is now likely to feel vindicated and use his acquittal as proof that the Democrats were engaged in a partisan “witch hunt” to annul the 2016 election. This is nonsense; the impeachment was the right thing to do because the rule of law is worth fighting for at all times.
The most tragic effect of Trump’s exoneration, however, is that the President might now feel free to continue to act as he pleases with little consideration for the law. Trump’s acquittal has also further sharply dented America’s image as the ‘leader of the free world’. How can the US preach the rule of law to the international community when its adherence to this process has been undermined as a result of blind partisanship?
Trump has probably not heard the last of the Ukraine investigation, as the House Judiciary Committee said it would “likely” subpoena Bolton to appear before the committee. Hopefully, Trump’s former National Security Adviser will speak his mind and voters will do the right thing in November’s presidential election.