Impeachment trial live updates: Trump remains in office after Senate votes to acquit impeached president on obstruction of Congress charge

The Senate voted Wednesday to acquit President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, ending a historic Senate trial that was centered on his conduct toward Ukraine but that did not include live witnesses or new documents.One Republican — Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah — crossed party lines to join Democrats in voting to convict Trump on the first charge, abuse of power.Trump stonewalled the House impeachment probe, blocking witnesses and denying documents. Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father was vice president.●Trump paints strong economy as vindication as he tries to move past impeachment.●Democrats use State of the Union rebuttal to pivot from impeachment.●A look at the reality-show reveals in Trump’s speech.●These Republicans said they hope Trump has learned a lesson from impeachment, but he said he hasn’t.The Senate impeachment trial process | The impeachment managers |Which senators support removing Trump | Trump’s legal team brief | House Democrats’ responseAt 4 p.m., just as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was finishing his remarks, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) walked onto the floor on the Democratic side of the aisle, went straight to the desk of Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and touched his arm.The Democrats whispered to one another and Manchin stood up and hugged her. A couple of minutes later, Schiff and his team departed.At a post-acquittal news conference, McConnell was repeatedly asked about Romney’s political future given his vote to convict Trump on an abuse-of-power charge.A number of influential GOP figures, including Donald Trump Jr., have pressed Senate Republicans to remove Romney from their party’s ranks in the chamber.But McConnell was notably restrained in his criticism of his Utah colleague and declined to say whether he thinks Romney should be expelled.“I was surprised and disappointed, but we have much work to do for the American people, and I think Senator Romney has been largely supportive of most everything we’ve tried to accomplish,” McConnell said.He was far more scathing in his assessment of Democrats, casting their move to impeach the president as a grave misstep.“Right now, this is a political loser for them,” McConnell said. Unlike on the first charge, Romney joined members of his party in voting to acquit Trump on the second charge.Several Trump administration officials, including Vice President Pence and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, had predicted earlier Wednesday that Trump would be acquitted on a bipartisan vote.But that prediction did not come true: Republicans did not succeed in persuading any Democrats to cross the aisle in voting for acquittal on either charge.The Senate voted 52 to 48 Wednesday to acquit Trump on the charge of abuse of power.The near-party-line vote in the Republican-led Senate came on the first article against Trump, the third president to be impeached by the House.Several Republicans said Trump was wrong to leverage U.S. aid to Ukraine to pressure a foreign leader to investigate his domestic political rival but argued that it did not warrant a guilty verdict and ouster from office.Manchin, the last remaining moderate Democrat to announce his position, said Wednesday afternoon that he will vote to convict Trump.White House aides had seen Manchin as their best hope for a Democratic defection. But on the first article, the Utah senator said in a telephone interview that he found the evidence against Trump overwhelming and the arguments by the president’s defense ultimately unconvincing.Read more here.Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) pushed back Wednesday on a suggestion by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that Trump should apologize for his conduct toward Ukraine.During an appearance on Fox News, Cheney said it was Pelosi and Schiff, the lead impeachment manager, who should be apologizing to the country.Among other things, Cheney cited Pelosi’s shredding of Trump’s prepared remarks following his delivery of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.“By doing that she disgraced herself, she brought dishonor on the House of Representatives,” Cheney said.Collins has said that while she found Trump’s actions problematic, she does not believe they merit removal from office. During an interview with CBS on Tuesday, Collins said she thought it would be helpful, however, if Trump apologized, as President Bill Clinton did following his acquittal by the Senate in 1999.As Wednesday’s floor speeches by senators continued, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) argued that the Democratic-led House was wrong to have brought articles of impeachment against Trump.“I will vote against both articles of impeachment brought against President Trump by the very partisan and, quite frankly, ridiculous House of Representatives,” Cramer said.The articles of impeachment, he added, “should have ended at their beginning.”“They are an affront, in fact, to this institution and to our Constitution, representing the very same partisan derangement that worried our Founding Fathers so much that they made the threshold for impeachment this high,” he said.Other senators took to the floor Wednesday as well, including James E. I will vote to impeach this president,” said the senator from Vermont at a campaign stop here, emphasizing his intent to vote to convict Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.For Sanders and three of his colleagues, Wednesday’s anticipated vote could mark the end of a turbulent stretch in which they have had to zip back and forth between Washington and the early nominating states.Sanders, as he often does, accused Trump of being a “pathological liar.” He charged that Trump “probably doesn’t know the difference between the truth and lies.” After taking the stage at an event here, he moved quickly to discussing Trump and the Senate trial.Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) received immediate blowback from his announcement that he will vote to convict Trump, including from former attorney general Jeff Sessions, one of the Republicans seeking to dislodge him from office this year.“@DougJones is a foot soldier for @chuckschumer and the radical left,” Sessions tweeted, referring to Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Cicilline (D-R.I.) said, addressing Trump’s presidential campaign manager, Brad Parscale.Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters Wednesday that House Democrats will likely issue a subpoena to former national security adviser John Bolton in the near future.Nadler, leaving a Democratic caucus Wednesday morning, said the directive might be for Bolton to appear “possibly with both” his panel and the House Intelligence Committee, which led the investigation into Trump’s impeachment.Nadler did not say when the subpoena would be issued but said Democrats need to continue investigating Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine and the issues surrounding the 2016 campaign despite the pending Senate acquittal vote planned Wednesday.“When you have a lawless president you have to bring that to the fore, you have to spotlight that,” Nadler told reporters.Bolton has issued a statement saying he would be willing to appear before the Senate if subpoenaed but has been silent on whether he would appear before the House.The Senate last week voted not to hear from witnesses, including Bolton, during the trial.Senate Minority Leader Charles E. I think what the president wanted done was he wanted the Ukrainians to investigate corruption in the Ukraine,” O’Brien said.Senators have resumed giving floor speeches in advance of the expected vote at 4 p.m. to acquit Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) was the first to offer remarks on Wednesday, saying that the House managers had proved their case against Trump and that “he must be removed from office.” Merkley acknowledged that was unlikely to happen, blaming Republicans for not conducting “a full and fair trial” that included witnesses.Before Wednesday, nearly 50 senators had already come to the floor to offer their perspectives on impeachment.Conway on Wednesday called Pelosi an “incorrigible child” and suggested she should be censured for having torn up a copy of Trump’s speech at the State of the Union.“What is wrong with her?” Conway asked during an appearance on Fox News in which she also noted that Trump is likely to be acquitted today by the Senate.“Why should she be in any of the headlines? She’s irrelevant,” Conway said of Pelosi.As Trump spoke, Pelosi “looked like she was reading the Cheesecake Factory menu all night, going through every single page” of his prepared remarks, Conway said.Conway offered broader criticism of Democrats for “sitting on their hands” during Trump’s remarks Tuesday night.“I think it shows you how petty and peevish and partisan the Democratic Party has become,” Conway said.Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), one of the seven House impeachment managers, pushed back Wednesday against an assertion by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that Trump has learned from his impeachment.“Certainly we hope he stops violating the law and cheating in the election,” Lofgren said during an appearance on CNN in which she added, “I don’t see any basis for reaching that conclusion.”Expanding on a floor speech Tuesday in which Collins announced her plan to vote to acquit Trump, the senator told CBS News: “I believe that the president has learned from this case.