Sen. Pat Toomey breaks with Republicans to vote for Trump’s conviction

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., voted Saturday to convict former President Donald J. Trump in his second impeachment trial.

Toomey is one of seven Republican senators who voted “guilty” on the charge of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

All 50 Democratic senators voted to convict. But without the 67 votes needed to convict, the Senate has acquitted Trump by a vote of 57-43.

A year ago, when Trump was impeached for the first time, Sens. Toomey and Bob Casey found themselves on opposite sides. Toomey voted to acquit the president for allegedly withholding foreign aid from Ukraine to pressure officials there to investigate his rival, Joe Biden. Casey, a Democrat, voted to remove Trump from office.

Toomey, who is not seeking reelection in 2022, always maintained some distance from Trump but explicitly condemned the former president’s claims of election fraud in the 2020 election. He called on Trump to resign after the assault on the Capitol and was one of just five Republican senators who found the former president could be impeached after leaving office.

Casey, like most Democratic senators, said Trump was guilty of high crimes against the country. The day after the Capitol attack, Casey joined a host of other politicians and called on then-Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power. The president, he said in a series of tweets, inspired and emboldened domestic terrorists to attempt a coup against the U.S. government.