Susan Collins Will Vote to Acquit Trump: His ‘Flawed’ Actions Don’t Warrant ‘Extreme Step’ of Removal

Senator Susan Collins, one of only two Republicans in the Senate who voted in favor of calling witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial, announced this afternoon she will vote to acquit President Donald Trump on both counts.

Collins said it’s clear to her that that investigations request from POTUS to the president of Ukraine “was improper and demonstrated very poor judgment.”

Whatever Trump’s motivations were, she continued, “it was wrong for President Trump to mention former Vice President Biden on that phone call, and it was wrong for him to ask a foreign country to investigate a political rival.”

But she was also critical of the case the House managers made:

“The House Judiciary Committee identified in this report crimes they believe the president committed. Article I, however does not even attempt to assert that the president committed a crime. I sought to reconcile this contradiction between the report and the articles in a question I posed to the House managers. But they failed to address that point in their response. While I do not believe that the conviction of a president requires a criminal act, the high bar for removal from office is perhaps even higher when the impeachment is for difficult to define noncriminal act. In any event, the house did little to support its assertions in Article I that the president will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office.”

“I do not believe that the House has met its burden of showing that the president’s conduct, however flawed, warrants the extreme step of immediate removal from office,” she concluded. “For all of the reasons I have just discussed, I will vote to acquit on Article I.”

She also said she would vote to acquit on the article of impeachment pertaining to obstruction of Congress, criticizing the way the House went about the inquiry in the first place.

Collins also spoke with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell today to explain her decision, expressing her belief that Trump “has learned from this case” when asked about concerns he’ll seek foreign assistance against.

CBS NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) tells @NorahODonnell she will vote to acquit Pres. Trump in the Senate impeachment trial, adding that she believes "the president has learned from this case."

Watch more tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET. https://t.co/oxGYtYgjBw pic.twitter.com/Wv4PmGINZk

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) February 4, 2020

“He was impeached and there has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call. I believe he will be much more cautious in the future,” Collins added.

You can watch part of her Senate floor remarks above, via Fox News.