Trump slams Democrats in speech after impeachment acquittal - Business Insider - Business Insider

President Donald Trump took a victory lap on Thursday after Senate Republicans voted to acquit him of the two charges against him following a bitter impeachment trial.
„It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops,“ Trump said of his impeachment trial. „It was leakers, liars, and this should never, ever happen to another president, ever.“
„If this happened to President Obama, a lot of people would have been in jail for a long time already, many, many years,“ Trump added.
The president also singled out Utah Sen. Mitt Romney – the lone Republican who sided with Democrats to convict and remove Trump from office – and accused him of using religion „as a crutch.“
Scroll down for a rundown of what Trump said and how it stacks up with reality.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday gave a speech to celebrate the Republican-controlled Senate voted to acquit him of both charges against him following a bitter impeachment trial.

Here’s a rundown of what Trump said and how it stacks up with reality

What Trump said: His impeachment was a „war“ and he was treated „unbelievably unfairly“ by „dirty“ intelligence officials, including former FBI Director James Comey. „It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops. It was leakers, liars, and this should never, ever happen to another president, ever. I don’t know if other presidents would have been able to take it. If this happened to President Obama, a lot of people would have been in jail for a long time already, many, many years.“
- Fact check: Trump is correct that what he went through was a unique occurrence in American history. The FBI has never investigated another presidential campaign for conspiring with a foreign government to tilt a US election in one direction. Ultimately, the former special counsel Robert Mueller found that although the Trump campaign did not conspire with Russia to swing the 2016 election in his favor, the campaign enthusiastically welcomed Russia’s interference and expected to benefit from it.
- Trump is also the first US president to publicly call for multiple foreign powers to investigate or damage his political rivals. In July 2016, he asked Russia to recover the 30,000 emails that were missing from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email server.
- And beginning last year and continuing into the present, Trump called for Ukraine and China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, over unfounded allegations of corruption.
What Trump said: „A corrupt politician named Adam Schiff made up my statement to the Ukrainian president. He brought it out of thin air. Just made it up.
- Fact check: Trump was referring to the way that Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead impeachment manager, characterized his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. During the call, Trump repeatedly asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens and a bogus conspiracy theory suggesting Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US election.
- Schiff was paraphrasing the call when he first described it. He said as much before detailing „the essence of what the president communicates,“ and not „the exact transcribed version of the call.“
- Trump has accused Schiff as being guilty of treason, which is a crime punishable by death.
What Trump said: „If we didn’t win, the stock market would have crashed, and the market was going up a lot before the election because it was looking like we had a good chance to win,“ Trump said. „And it went up tremendously from the time we won the election to when we took office … it was all to our credit.“
- Fact check: The stock market was on an upswing for a while before Trump took office. And while it’s performed well under Trump – in large part because his administration has strongly pushed for financial deregulation – it’s not unprecedented. In fact, as of December, Trump’s stock market rally still lagged behind its performance under former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
What Trump said: Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the lone Republican senator who voted with Democrats to convict and remove Trump from office for abuse of power, uses his religion „as a crutch.“ Trump boasted about how his own poll numbers in Utah are „through the roof,“ while Romney’s „went down big.“
What Trump said: „In the case of Ukraine … we even have a treaty … that we will work together to root out corruption in Ukraine. I probably have a legal obligation to report corruption. But they don’t think it’s corrupt when a son that made no money, that got thrown out of the military, that had no money at all, is working for $3 million up front, $83,000 a month, and that’s only Ukraine. Then goes to China, picks up $1.5 million, then goes to Romania, I hear, and many other countries.“
- Fact check: Trump was referring to Hunter Biden’s employment on the board of the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings. While ethics experts have said the younger Biden’s work for the company could have posed conflicts of interest, there is no evidence that Hunter or Joe Biden engaged in any corrupt activities related to Burisma.
- The Bidens and Burisma were at the center of Trump’s impeachment. He and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, suggested Joe Biden inappropriately used his role as vice president to push for the ouster of Viktor Shokin, then Ukraine’s prosecutor general, in 2016. Trump and Giuliani have said Biden did so to stymie Shokin’s investigation into Burisma, and that was why the president asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens for corruption.
- But the investigation was dormant at the time Biden called for Shokin’s ouster. Moreover, Biden was representing the US’s official position, as well as that of the rest of the western world and financial institutions, when he demanded Shokin be fired for corruption.
- There is also no evidence of Trump showing an interest in rooting out corruption in Ukraine prior to Joe Biden’s decision to run for president.
What Trump said: Regarding European burden-sharing with respect to Ukraine, Trump asked why other countries aren’t paying more to help Ukraine.
- Fact check: Iain King, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies, found that European nations have contributed roughly two-thirds of all aid to Ukraine since Russia annexed the territory of Crimea in 2014 and began encroaching in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

Romney sent shockwaves through Washington when he announced on Wednesday that he would vote to oust the president from office.

„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 said. He also said he expected to face harsh blowback from members of his own party for his decision to break ranks.

„Does anyone seriously believe that I would consent to these consequences, other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?“ he said.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 52-48 to acquit Trump of the abuse of power charge and 53-47 to acquit him of the obstruction charge.

For weeks, the president’s lawyers have claimed the impeachment process against Trump was a partisan „sham.“ The White House was also known to have been courting some Democratic swing votes before the final vote, like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, in hopes of a bipartisan acquittal.

But in the end, Manchin sided with the rest of the Senate Democratic caucus to call for Trump’s removal.

Meanwhile, Romney’s vote to convict made Trump’s impeachment the first time in US history that a member of the president’s own party voted to remove him from office, resulting in a bipartisan vote for conviction. It was also the first time that the entire opposing party voted to convict the president.

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