WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement after the Senate voted on the abuse of power and on the obstruction of Congress articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
“The actions by the Senate today and throughout this trial reflect as poorly on the Senate itself as on the president. The failure of the Senate to conduct a fair trial has tainted this final verdict and has upset the balance of power between two constitutionally coequal branches of government.
“President Trump is not a monarch. However, by willfully ignoring relevant evidence and disregarding willing, firsthand witnesses, Senate Republicans have strengthened his misguided march toward unabashedly autocratic power. We now have established a precedent that there are few boundaries for presidential behavior that are unconstitutional or harmful to our national security. Congress must continue to conduct vigorous oversight of President Trump’s actions for the remainder of his presidency, and should use all of its constitutional and legislative tools available to hold the president accountable for ongoing misconduct in office.
“The failure of the Senate to convict the president and being ‘exonerated’ are two very different things. Like the Mueller Report before, this Senate vote does not exonerate President Trump’s actions. He leveraged the power of his office to ask a foreign country to interfere in our elections for his own political advantage. He undermined the rule of law, weakened our efforts to fight corruption both at home and abroad, damaged our national security, and helped our adversary, Russia. He has harmed our nation and history will show that his actions were not ‘perfect’ but corrosive to our system of government.”
View Senator Cardin’s full floor speech HERE
Read his full statement for the Senate Record HERE
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