Former US president Donald Trump has welcomed his second impeachment acquittal and says his movement “has only just begun”.
Trump in a lengthy statement on Saturday (local time) thanked his lawyers and his defenders in the House and Senate, who he said “stood proudly for the Constitution we all revere and for the sacred legal principles at the heart of our country”.
He slammed the trial as “yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country”.
The former president told his supporters “our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to Make America Great Again has only just begun” and he would have more to share with them in the months ahead.
While Trump was acquitted by the Senate, seven Republicans voted to convict him, making it the most bipartisan vote in the history of presidential impeachments.
The Senate vote of 57-43 fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump on a charge of incitement of insurrection after a five-day trial in the same building ransacked by his followers on January 6 shortly after they heard him deliver an incendiary speech.
In the vote, seven of the 50 Senate Republicans joined the chamber’s unified Democrats in favouring conviction.
Trump left office on January 20, so impeachment could not be used to remove him from power.
But Democrats had hoped to secure a conviction to hold him responsible for a siege that left five people including a police officer dead and to set the stage for a vote to bar him from ever serving in public office again.
Given the chance to hold office in the future, they argued, Trump would not hesitate to encourage political violence again.
Trump’s attorneys argued that his words at the rally were protected by his constitutional right to free speech and said he was not given due process in the proceedings.
