Susan Collins will vote to acquit Trump and believes he will be 'much more cautious' about seeking foreign election help, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary

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• Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announced Tuesday that she will vote to acquit President Donald Trump of both charges against him in his impeachment trial.
• Collins said Trump's conduct - bullying Ukraine into interfering in the US election while dangling vital military aid and a White House meeting for Ukraine's president - does not warrant the "extreme step of immediate removal from office."
• She also told "CBS Evening News" that she believes "the president has learned from this case" and will be "much more cautious" about seeking foreign election assistance going forward.
• Soliciting foreign interference in an election is a crime, and there is no evidence to support Collins' view that Trump will be "more cautious" about doing so going forward.
• Scroll down for a non-exhaustive list of times Trump encouraged, solicited, and supported foreign interference in US elections.
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Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine announced Tuesday that she will vote to acquit President Donald Trump of both charges against him in his impeachment trial.

The House of Representatives impeached Trump last year for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Both articles of impeachment relate to the president's efforts to bully Ukraine into interfering in the 2020 election while withholding $391 million in military aid and a White House meeting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky desperately sought and still hasn't gotten.

House impeachment managers, who act as prosecutors, and Trump's defense team spent the last two weeks making their cases for and against conviction and removal for office, respectively.

On Friday, the Republican-controlled Senate voted to move forward without calling new witnesses or subpoenaing new documents.

It was the first time in the history of Senate impeachment trials that the upper chamber refused to hear witness testimony, even though the former national security adviser John Bolton, who is a firsthand witness to Trump's alleged misconduct, agreed to testify.

Collins was one of two Republican senators to vote in favor of calling witnesses (the other was Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah), but the motion ultimately failed by a vote of 49 in favor and 51 against.

On Tuesday, Collins criticized Trump's conduct in the Ukraine controversy but said she would vote to acquit him of the abuse of power charge because "however flawed" his actions were, she does not believe they merit the "extreme step of immediate removal from office."

She said she will also vote to acquit him of the obstruction of Congress charge.

In an interview with "CBS Evening News" on Tuesday, Collins told anchor Norah O'Donnell she believes "the president has learned from this case. The president has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson."

"I'm voting to acquit. Because I do not believe that the behavior alleged reaches the high bar in the Constitution for overturning an election, and removing a duly elected president," Collins said.

She also said she believes Trump will be "much more cautious" about seeking foreign assistance in an election going forward.

There is no evidence to support Collins' view.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of the times Trump encouraged, solicited, and supported foreign interference in US elections:

• In July 2016, while he was a Republican presidential candidate, Trump said during a press conference, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," in reference to the deleted emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email server.
  • Russian operatives working for the GRU, Russia's military intelligence unit, first attempted to breach the Clinton campaign's server the same day, according to an indictment from the former special counsel Robert Mueller.
• Trump praised WikiLeaks consistently and frequently during the 2016 campaign.
  • Mueller's team, which investigated Russia's interference in the 2016 election, found that the Russian government used WikiLeaks as a propaganda tool to amplify its attacks on the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party, and help propel Trump to the Oval Office.
• Trump defended a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between top campaign officials - including his son Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, and his campaign chairman Paul Manafort - and Russia-linked individuals offering the Trump campaign dirt on the Clinton campaign.
  • In August 2018, the president admitted the meeting was to "get information on an opponent" and that there was nothing wrong with doing so.
• Last June, Trump told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, "I think I'd take it," when asked whether he would accept foreign dirt on a political opponent. He added that he wasn't sure whether he would let the FBI know if a foreign power was offering him information on a rival.
• Trump asked Zelensky to launch two politically motivated investigations targeting former Vice President Joe Biden - a 2020 Democratic frontunner - and the Democratic Party as a whole.
• He also asked the Chinese government to investigate the Bidens, telling reporters in October, "China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine."

The president has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing throughout his impeachment, insisting he "did nothing wrong" and that the July 25 phone call during which he pressed Zelensky to target the Bidens was a "perfect phone call."

He also suggested the whistleblower who filed a lawful complaint against him accusing him of violating campaign finance laws was a "spy" who is guilty of treason - a crime punishable by death. He has accused California Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead impeachment manager, of treason as well.

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