THE CIVIC RECORDOCTOBER 30, 2026 · CORRECTIONS OPEN
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February 5, 2020 · February 13, 2021

The Senate acquittals belong in the record

READING DEPTH

One minute

Donald Trump was impeached twice and acquitted twice. Both results are in the Senate's official records, and both belong in this one.

On February 5, 2020, the Senate voted on two articles. Article I: 48 guilty, 52 not guilty. Article II: 47 guilty, 53 not guilty. On February 13, 2021, the vote was 57 guilty, 43 not guilty.

The roll-call pages state that conviction requires a two-thirds majority. All three votes fell short, and the Senate records the result of each as Not Guilty.

An impeachment acquittal is not a criminal verdict. It is the Senate's judgment, reached under its own rules and threshold.

Our assessment. A record that shows accusations and hides outcomes is not a record. These are outcomes, and our editorial requirement is that they carry the same weight as everything else here.

Open: this entry does not reconstruct the House articles, the trial evidence, or the defense.

The fuller account

What happened. Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives twice and acquitted by the Senate twice. The Senate's own roll-call records are the source.

In the first trial, the Senate voted on February 5, 2020, on two articles. On Article I, 48 senators voted guilty and 52 not guilty. On Article II, 47 voted guilty and 53 not guilty. In the second trial, the Senate voted on February 13, 2021: 57 guilty, 43 not guilty.

Why those numbers are acquittals. The roll-call pages state a two-thirds requirement for conviction. With all 100 senators present, conviction requires at least 67 votes. The highest total recorded across the three votes is 57. Each therefore fell short, and the Senate records the result of each as Not Guilty.

The 2021 vote is worth stating precisely: a majority of senators voted to convict, and the result was still acquittal. That is the threshold working as written. The Senate's explanation of impeachment quotes the constitutional requirement: conviction needs two thirds of the members present.

What an acquittal here is, and is not. Impeachment is a constitutional process conducted by Congress, with its own rules and its own standard. An acquittal in the Senate is not a criminal verdict and is not a finding by any court about the underlying conduct.

Nor is it nothing. People sometimes argue that because senators vote politically, an acquittal is meaningless. That is not our position. It is the recorded constitutional outcome of the process the Constitution provides, and a publication that reported the accusations while treating the outcomes as noise would not be keeping a record. It would be keeping a brief.

What this entry does not reach. It does not reconstruct the articles the House adopted. It does not summarize the evidence presented at either trial, the defense arguments, or the procedural disputes. We have not reconstructed individual senators' explanations, and we therefore characterize none.

Vote totals support an account of institutional action — what the body did, and when. They do not establish why any senator voted as they did.

Our assessment. Editorial opinion, separate from the above.

This entry exists because of a rule we apply to ourselves: a ruling for a president gets the same plain language and the same prominence as a ruling against one. It would be easy to write a record of this presidency in which the impeachments appear and the acquittals are a footnote. That record would be dishonest, and a reader would be right to distrust everything else in it once they noticed.

Our editorial requirement is therefore that these outcomes appear at full size, in the Senate's own numbers. Readers assessing how congressional checks functioned need both halves: that the House twice brought charges, and that the Senate twice declined to convict.

Open items. House articles of impeachment, both proceedings. Trial records, evidence, defense arguments. Attributed explanations by individual senators. All OPEN.

Evidence dossier

The full entry includes the one-minute account, fuller account and assessment above, followed by this dossier.

Chronology

  • February 5, 2020 — Senate votes on two articles. Article I: 48–52. Article II: 47–53. Result recorded: Not Guilty.
  • February 13, 2021 — Senate votes. 57–43. Result recorded: Not Guilty.
  • October 9, 2026 — three Senate roll-call pages read by the verification desk.
  • October 11, 2026 — link audit confirms all three pages land as expected. Orion's reconciliation rechecked dates, questions, two-thirds requirements, results and totals.

Governing material. The Senate's official roll-call records, including the two-thirds requirement they state.

The response. The acquittals are themselves outcomes favorable to the subject, reported here at full size by editorial requirement. No separate defense is reconstructed — see qualifications.

Qualifications

  1. Impeachment outcomes are not criminal verdicts.
  2. The roll-call pages state a two-thirds requirement. With all 100 senators present, that is at least 67 votes. Any exposition beyond what those pages state would need its own source pinpoint.
  3. A majority favoring conviction in 2021 did not meet the requirement.
  4. The entry does not reconstruct House articles, trial evidence, or defense arguments. OPEN.
  5. No senator's rationale is reported. Votes do not establish motive. OPEN.
  6. Comparable prominence for all three results is an editorial requirement of this draft. Implementation has not been inspected here.

Source pinpoints

  • U.S. Senate, 2020 Article I, vote 33 — date, question, two-thirds requirement, result, totals.
  • U.S. Senate, 2020 Article II, vote 34 — date, question, two-thirds requirement, result, totals.
  • U.S. Senate, 2021 article, vote 59 — date, question, two-thirds requirement, result, totals.

Unresolved questions. What the articles charged. What evidence each trial received. What the defense argued. How individual senators explained their votes.

Open the sources

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