Sen. Mitt Romney will vote to convict Trump of abuse of power in his impeachment trial

• Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah announced on Wednesday that he will vote to convict President Donald Trump for abuse of power.
• "I think the case was made," Romney said. He was also one of just two Republican senators who broke with their party to support a motion to call new witnesses in Trump's trial, though the motion ultimately failed.
• The Senate will hold a final vote on whether to convict or acquit Trump of the two charges against him - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress - beginning at 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
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Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah announced on Wednesday that he will vote to convict President Donald Trump for abuse of power.

"I think the case was made," Romney told the New York Timesin an interview on Wednesday morning.

The Utah Republican said he would not vote to convict Trump for obstruction of Congress, however, contending that Democrats did not use all of their legal options to obtain further evidence and bring forward more witnesses.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Romney signaled he expected to face harsh criticism from fellow Republicans, adding, "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?"

Romney, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told Atlantic staff write McKay Coppins that he prayed for guidance throughout the impeachment proceedings.

"This has been the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life," Romney told Coppins on Tuesday.

"I have gone through a process of very thorough analysis and searching, and I have prayed through this process," Romney added. "But I don't pretend that God told me what to do."

Trump was impeached in December and charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Both articles of impeachment relate to his efforts to strong-arm Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election while withholding $391 million in vital military aid and dangling a White House meeting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky desperately sought and still hasn't gotten.

At the center of the impeachment inquiry was a July 25 phone call during which Trump repeatedly pressured Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, over the latter's employment on the board of the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings.

Trump also asked Zelensky to help discredit the Russia probe by investigating a bogus conspiracy theory suggesting Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to help Democrats and Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Documents and testimony from more than a dozen witnesses eventually revealed that the July phone conversation was just one data point in a months-long effort by Trump and his allies, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, to leverage the weight of the US government and foreign policy to force Ukraine into acceding to his political demands.