Trump impeachment acquittal on track ahead of Senate vote

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is on the verge of acquittal by the Senate, bringing an end to only the third presidential impeachment trial in American history in a vote at the start of the tumultuous campaign for the White House.

A majority of senators have now expressed unease with Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine that resulted in the two articles of impeachment.

But there’s nowhere near the two-thirds support necessary in the Republican-held Senate for the Constitution’s bar of high crimes and misdemeanours to convict and remove the president from office.

One key Democrat, Doug Jones — perhaps the most endangered politically for reelection in a state where Trump is popular — announced ahead of the vote that after many sleepless nights he had decided to vote to convict on both charges.

“Senators are elected to make tough choices,” Jones said in a statement.

He noted the “gravity of this moment,” and said Trump’s actions were “more than simply inappropriate.

They were an abuse of power.

With impeachment as the only check on such presidential wrongdoing, I felt I must vote to convict.”

The outcome expected Wednesday caps nearly five months of remarkable impeachment proceedings launched in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House, ending in Mitch McConnell’s Senate and reflective of the nation’s unrelenting partisan divide three years into the Trump presidency.

No president has ever been removed by the Senate, and Trump arrived at the Capitol for his State of the Union address on the eve of the vote eager to use the tally as vindication, a political anthem in his reelection bid.

Allies chanted “four more years!”

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