Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) issued a statement on the Senate votes acquitting President Trump on both articles of impeachment along near unanimous party lines Wednesday afternoon. In her lengthy statement Pelosi called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) a “cowardly” “rogue leader” and said Trump is an “ongoing threat to American democracy”. The Senate voted 52-48 in favor of acquittal on the first article charging abuse of power with Sen.Mitt Romney (R-UT) voting with the Democrats to convict. Romney sided with Republicans on the second article charging obstruction of Congress with the vote being 53-47 to acquit.
McConnell had earlier mocked Pelosi in his Senate floor speech Wednesday before the Senate voted, asking if she would tear up the acquittal verdict like she tore up a copy of Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night.
WATCH: Mitch McConnell slams Nancy Pelosi for saying she "would refuse to accept" an impeachment acquittal.
"Perhaps she will tear up the verdict like the tore up the State of the Union address." pic.twitter.com/WnH7FGTcUw
— MRCTV (@mrctv) February 5, 2020
“Today, the President and Senate Republicans have normalized lawlessness and rejected the system of checks and balances of our Constitution. Our Founders put safeguards in the Constitution to protect against a rogue president. They never imagined that they would at the same time have a rogue leader in the Senate who would cowardly abandon his duty to uphold the Constitution.
“President Trump was impeached with the support of a majority of the American people – a first in our nation’s history. And now he is the first President in history to face a bipartisan vote to convict him in the Senate. A full 75 percent of Americans and many members of the GOP Senate believe the President’s behavior is wrong. But the Senate chose instead to ignore the facts, the will of the American people and their duty to the Constitution.
“The President will boast that he has been acquitted. There can be no acquittal without a trial, and there is no trial without witnesses, documents and evidence. By suppressing the evidence and rejecting the most basic elements of a fair judicial process, the Republican Senate made themselves willing accomplices to the President’s cover-up.
“Even without additional witnesses and documents in the Senate trial, our House Managers laid out an overwhelming, compelling and incriminating case about President Trump’s scheme to corrupt the 2020 elections and proved his guilt. The President’s legal team could not and did not refute the facts of the case. Instead, they argued that the American people have no right to stop the President from using the power of his office to cheat in our elections. They argued that if the President thinks that his re-election is good for the country, he can use any means necessary to win, with no accountability or consequences.
“In December, the House defended democracy by passing two articles of impeachment to hold the President accountable for abusing his office for his own personal, political gain at the expense of our national security and the integrity of our elections. The President has been impeached forever.
“Sadly, because of the Republican Senate’s betrayal of the Constitution, the President remains an ongoing threat to American democracy, with his insistence that he is above the law and that he can corrupt the elections if he wants to. The House will continue to protect and defend the checks and balances in the Constitution that safeguard our Republic, both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion. Democrats will continue to defend our democracy For The People.”
