President Donald Trump is slamming Sen. Mitt Romney after he became the only Republican to cross party lines during Wednesday’s final impeachment vote. Although Trump was acquitted on both articles of impeachment – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – in votes of 52-48 and 53-47, Romney had joined Democrats in voting to convict the president on a charge for abuse of power, prompting Trump to hit back with a scathing minute-long video slamming Romney as a “failed presidential candidate.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2020
Shared just hours after the vote on the Senate floor, the video, shared without caption, compares Trump’s 2016 victory with Romney’s 2012 loss, the narrator alleging that Romney is “posing as a Republican” and was “exposed by news reports as a Democrat secret asset.”
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Several hours later, Trump again took to the social media platform with an attack on the senator.
Had failed presidential candidate @MittRomney devoted the same energy and anger to defeating a faltering Barack Obama as he sanctimoniously does to me, he could have won the election. Read the Transcripts!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2020
In a speech made on the Senate floor ahead of Wednesday’s historic vote, Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, explained his decision to vote in favor of conviction on Article I.
“As a Senator-juror, I swore an oath, before God, to exercise ‘impartial justice,’” he began in part, according to Politico. “I am a profoundly religious person. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the President, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong.”
“The verdict is ours to render under our Constitution,” he said. “The people will judge us for how well and faithfully we fulfill our duty. The grave question the Constitution tasked senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. Yes, he did.”
“The president asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival,” he continued. “The president withheld vital military funds from that government to press it to do so. The president delayed funds for an American ally at war with Russian invaders. The president’s purpose was personal and political. Accordingly, the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust.”
“What he did was not perfect. No, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values,” he said. “Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one’s oath of office that I can imagine.”
Romney has not responded to any of Trump’s tweets.
