Acquitted: Idaho senators, Republican majority clear Trump in impeachment trial

One of the most significant events in U.S. presidential history concluded Wednesday with the U.S. Senate voting, mostly along party lines, to acquit President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment.

The Senate voted 52-48 to acquit on impeachment article one, abuse of power, and 53-47 to acquit on article two, obstruction of Congress. It would have taken 67 votes to convict and remove Trump from office.

Idaho Republican U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch voted to acquit Trump on both impeachment articles.

One Republican senator, Utah’s Mitt Romney, broke ranks and voted to convict on abuse of power, making him the first U.S. senator in history to vote to remove a president from his or her own party.

The historic vote comes after a 13-day impeachment trial during which the 100 U.S. senators sat as jurors with U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts presiding. Republicans voted to block witnesses from testifying at the trial, making the proceedings more of a debate than anything else.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump on Dec. 18. Idaho U.S. Reps. Mike Simpson and Russ Fulcher, both Republicans, voted against impeachment.

Following the vote, Crapo issued a statement calling the impeachment “highly partisan.”

“The Founders of our nation were clear that impeachment and removal of the president of the United States both from office and from the ballot in future elections must face very high hurdles. They specifically wanted to protect impeachment from being used as a partisan tool,” Crapo stated.

“The case of the House managers does not even purport to allege a crime in either Count I or Count II. Moreover, the allegations fall far short of the high threshold for removal of a U.S. president from office, and undermine Americans’ constitutional right to elect their president at the ballot box.”

Risch said the impeachment “epitomized exactly the sort of hyper-partisan exercise that our Founding Fathers warned against when they penned a Constitutional requirement for a two-thirds vote in the Senate to convict.”

“Their debate indicated strongly they did not want impeachment to be used as a political bludgeon to simply remove a president with whom they disagree. That was attempted here. I therefore cast my vote to acquit the president and seek to return to the important work for Idahoans that they sent me to the Senate to accomplish,” Risch said in his statement.

In his statement on Trump’s acquittal, Fulcher said, “The historic ‘impeachment in search of a crime’ is over for now.”

“I just started my second year as a member of the U.S. Congress, and impeachment efforts have preoccupied the House leadership agenda every day that I have served,” Fulcher continued. “As a result, this Congress has accomplished very little in terms of constructive policy and the level of political polarization is staggering. ... Now that the Senate has acquitted the President, I ask the Speaker (Nancy Pelosi) and my colleagues across the aisle to put history in the rear-view mirror. Let’s fulfill our responsibilities and go to work for the American people.”

Simpson’s office did not issue a statement on Wednesday.

Crapo and Risch, both attorneys, vote against witnesses

Crapo and Risch are both attorneys. Crapo received his law degree from Harvard Law School, Risch received his from the University of Idaho.

Both have extensive courtroom and trial experience.

Crapo clerked for one year at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit before returning to Idaho Falls to work at a private law firm.

Risch was elected Ada County prosecutor in 1970, a post he held for four years before being elected to the Idaho Senate in 1974.

During the 16-hour question-and-answer session held last week, Crapo submitted a question on behalf of himself and Sens. Risch, Lindsey Graham, Deb Fischer and David Perdue, asking how many witnesses, documents, clips and transcripts “have been presented to the Senate in this trial?”

Trump attorney Patrick Philbin responded that 192 video clips from 13 different witnesses and 28,578 pages of documents were in the Senate record. All of the material Philbin cited came from the House’s impeachment hearings.

During the Senate trial no live witnesses were called. The only people the Senate, and the public, heard from were the seven House managers and Trump’s defense counsel.

Following several days of presentations, questioning and arguments, the first vote of the Senate took place Friday on whether to call witnesses and produce documents.

Crapo and Risch voted not to allow witnesses. The vote to allow witnesses failed 49-51, making this the first U.S. Senate impeachment trial to be held without calling any witnesses or producing any documents.

Following the Jan. 31 vote to call for witnesses, Crapo and Risch issued a joint statement.

“First, to be clear, the House impeachment managers have said this is a trial without witnesses. That accusation is false. The Senate has had a full presentation of witnesses and documentary evidence. In fact, the House managers have argued publicly and repeatedly that ‘we have heard from enough witnesses to prove the case beyond any doubt at all.’ Over the course of nine days, we have reviewed testimony from 13 witnesses sworn under oath in the House hearings; over 28,000 pages of evidence; 192 videos; answers to the 180 questions asked by senators; and numerous additional witnesses and documentary evidence for the Senate record including, but not limited to, excerpts from John Bolton’s book manuscript.”

The statement concludes, “The case of the House managers still falls short of justifying the removal of a U.S. president from office and from the ballot in the upcoming election. We have an election only months from now in which the American people can use their constitutionally-given rights to decide who will be our president.”

The election is in November, 9 months from now.

Idaho senators sit as jurors

Asked during a Jan. 9 CNN interview about the upcoming trial, Risch responded: “I am a juror. I have tried hundreds of cases. I know how to be a juror. I am going to act as a juror. The first thing we need to do is hear the opening arguments.”

Risch also claimed to be open-minded: “I’m absolutely, with an open mind, willing to listen to what they have to say. We’ll proceed with a trial and … each of us will cast a vote that we believe is the right thing to do. I fall in that camp.”

Crapo, on the other hand, stayed quiet during the impeachment process and most of the ensuing trial.

On the first day of the trial, Risch made national news for being the first senator to fall asleep during the historical proceedings.

While no media cameras were allowed in the Senate chamber during the impeachment trial, a courtroom sketch artist captured Risch’s senatorial slumber and several national media members in the gallery witnessed it.

Risch owned up to his nap, telling the Statesman in a four-page handwritten statement. “I did doze off briefly after about 4 hours on the first day. I was the first (to fall asleep) and the media are closely watching and keeping track of those who do,” he wrote, noting that this “frailty” is bipartisan with senators from both parties dozing off during the proceedings.

Risch also made news when, during House manager Rep. Adam Schiff’s closing statement, he and two other Republican senators shouted out during the trial in defiance of an impeachment trial rule that “all persons are commanded to keep silent on pain of imprisonment.”

On Friday night, as Schiff was giving his closing statement, he mentioned a news report from earlier in the day in which a CBS reporter stated, “A Trump confidant tells CBS News senators have been warned — vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.”

Schiff’s comment sparked loud shouts of “not true” from Risch and Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska, and Tom Cotton, Arkansas, CNN reporter Manu Raju posted to social media. Risch’s office confirmed to the Statesman the CNN reporter’s account was correct.

Crapo was observed reading a book while the House managers were presenting their case. But it was not light reading. Crapo was reading a scholarly tome on impeachment: “High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump,” by Frank O. Bowman III.

Crapo’s second impeachment trial

Crapo is unique among members of Congress: During the impeachment trial for Democratic President Bill Clinton, Crapo was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives when it voted on the four articles of impeachment. Crapo voted for all four articles.

Then, a month later, Crapo became a member of the U.S. Senate and participated in Clinton’s impeachment trial. Crapo voted to convict Clinton on two articles of impeachment — perjury and obstruction of justice.

The Senate’s votes on each impeachment article failed to reach the two-thirds vote, 67 votes, required to convict and remove Clinton from office. Clinton was acquitted on both articles and finished out his term impeached but not removed.

During the Clinton trial’s closed deliberations, Crapo made a statement:

“There seems to be general consensus that the president committed the acts alleged against him. The core debate is whether these acts rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors as required to impeach and remove the President from office under the Constitution.

“Perjury and obstruction of justice are public crimes that strike at the heart of the rule of law — and therefore our freedom — in America. I conclude that these acts do constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under the impeachment provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, I will vote to convict President Clinton on both of the impeachment articles.”

One vote senators took in 1999 during Clinton’s impeachment trial was whether to subpoena witnesses and admit evidence not in the House record. The Senate voted 56-44 in favor of bringing in new witnesses and evidence. Crapo and fellow Idaho Sen. Larry Craig voted yes.

This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 2:33 PM.