Senator Mitt Romney on Wednesday declared that he would vote to convict President Donald Trump at his Impeachment Trial for “abuse of power” making him the first Republican to support the removal of Trump for pressurizing Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
“This has been the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life,” he told me yesterday afternoon in his Senate office.
Roughly 24 hours later, Romney would deliver a speech announcing that he was voting to convict President Donald Trump on the first article of impeachment—abuse of power.
For weeks, the senator from Utah had sat silently in the impeachment trial alongside his 99 colleagues, reviewing the evidence at night and praying for guidance. The gravity of the moment weighed on him, as did the pressure from members of his own party to acquit their leader.
As his conscience tugged at him, he said, the exercise took on a spiritual dimension.
Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, described to me the power of taking an oath before God: “It’s something which I take very seriously.”
Throughout the trial, he said, he was guided by his father’s favorite verse of Mormon scripture: Search diligently, pray always, and be believing, and all things shall work together for your good. “I have gone through a process of very thorough analysis and searching, and I have prayed through this process,” he told me. “But I don’t pretend that God told me what to do.”
