A U.S. Senate still bruised from the most violent attack on the Capitol in two centuries acquitted former President Donald Trump on Saturday in his second impeachment trial, as all but a few Republicans locked arms to reject a case that he incited the Jan. 6 rampage in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power.
Under the watch of National Guard troops still patrolling the historic building, a bipartisan majority voted to find Trump guilty of the House’s single charge of incitement of insurrection. They included seven Republicans, more members of a president’s party than have ever returned an adverse verdict in an impeachment trial.
But with most of Trump’s party coalescing around him, the 57-43 tally fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict him and to allow the Senate to move to disqualify him from holding future office.