“Yes, he did.” Those words apply both to Donald Trump and to Mitt Romney. It’s with those words that Romney announced that “the president was guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust” and that he would be voting to convict Trump of abuse of power. Romney cited his record as a staunch Republican, but also his “promise before God” to do impartial justice, and said that voting otherwise would “expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.”
Frequently choking up, Romney mentioned on the one hand his religious faith and his oaths to the Constitution, and on the other hand the retribution he will face from his fellow Republicans. He voted to call former national security adviser John Bolton as a witness, he said, because he hoped that Bolton would give him grounds for reasonable doubt that Trump had committed offenses worthy of conviction.
“With my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me.”