>> 52 to 48 to a quick president's trump of article one abuse of power. the senate then voted 5347 to acquit of article two of obstruction of congress. mitt romney broke ranks with his party to vote on the abuse of power charge. following the vote the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell held a briefing to talk about the end of the impeachment trial. his remarks were followed by chuck schumer and the president's attorney, jay sekulow. >> good afternoon, everyone. some of you are probably wondering what is left to be

said after listening to this for the last two or three weeks. i was rather -- i thought it best to wait until this is behind us before having a more open discussion with all of you about what we have just witnessed. let me start by saying i don't think any of you doubt that this was the most partisan exercise. we fully remember him spend numerous times as the speaker said roughly a year ago that you shouldn't go forward with an impeachment. i watched it very carefully over the years the leadership position overlapped and even before that, we were working together on the appropriation bills in the early days. i'm pretty sure she didn't want

to do this but the fact that she was pulled in this direction against what appeared to be her political instincts a year ago underscores that this was -- having been dragged into something instinctively that she felt was a mistake that's why we have an abbreviated truncated job over in the house but even during that abbreviated period it was pretty clear that they submitted a body of evidence from this is which you heard of

them argue about over here frequently and it was provided to us in the house records testimony from 13 witnesses for depositions from 17 witnesses and then of course we add on top of that 180 questions that we would with this 193 video clips and 28,000 of evidence. i asked my staff to count up the number of times we've heard from the house managers during the presentation how many times it was already proven. it was 60 times which the house managers said the case was either proven or approved 60 times.

what is the nonsense about the witnesses, i have a pretty good idea. after this exercise with the house and came over to the senate there was a lot of data that was taken how we are going to sell it to the american people even though we already have all of this testimony and witnesses. if you ask the citizen. it is in debate a matter to sit on them for a month to laughably

think that that somehow gave me leverage to concede the principle political argument which was that this was all about with this over here on our site. >> that brought a smile to my face, which he witnessed at which i was perplexed by the strategy that was being employed. when it became obvious to everyone that was in a certain position some of our members were saying it the papers came over and we knew full well it was all going to be about with this is. their strategy would be to get it out of the house quickly and leave it in the senate so that

we would have that wrapped around indefinitely and my suspicion was it wasn't so much of the president's trump but rather, taking the senate and finally the last few weeks they pretty much admitted to all of you that this is what this was all about. it was about taking the senate and trying to get my guys have a lot of tough votes. so, i am proud of my colleagues for seeing through that for knowing that even though if you asked a typical voter if they would be witnesses in a trial tl that with the station where there ought to be witnesses. we knew he wasn't going to be removed from office but about trying to take the senate and so i am proud of my members for resisting the temptation to go down that path and also

preventing that the second strategy was, it was pretty clear the democrats if they couldn't win this one too and there is the chief justice to try to get him into this maelstrom, and the way that could have been done obviously was with a 50/55 where h/50-fooe could have been accused that he chose not to rule which of course you can't imagine that he would have, but it's pretty clear that would have dragged the supreme court went into the middlright into themiddle of th. so this was a purely political exercise from the beginning to the end, and the final irony is that the speaker was right in the beginning because here we are today in a position to judge the political impact since it all started with politics founded and there's the highest approval rating since he's been in office. i can tell you looking at

certain senate races every one of our people they are better than when the impeachment trial started. i am not predicting what will be the biggest issue in november but i can tell you this, right now this is a political movement for them. they thought this was a great idea and for the short-term it's been colossal. [inaudible]

responding to you for years, you know what i'm here to talk about today's political impact that we have completed. it all begins for political reasons, the political impact and i think it is pretty clear what i've already said is wheres where we are right now. >> for someone who votes for the president's conviction. >> i was surprised and disappointed, but i still think that they had great team work on this and we are in a good position going into the presidential race with regards to this issue there may be other issues between now and november but i think we are in pretty good shape right now.

>> i've watched these impeachments and investigations over the years by both sides. i think they are more likely to focus at this point and for the rest of the year on how are you feeling about things. are you better off as president ronald reagan put it off from four years ago. i think the investigation would go on. that is what congress does. i would expect it to stop. in the end it isn't likely to have much of an impact on any of the races, the presidential or the senate races.

>> is there any chance of mitt romney [inaudible] i was surprised and disappointed that we have a lot of work to do for the american people, and i think that senator romney has been largely supportive of most everything we've tried to accomplish. to ask the leader of ukraine to investigate the that's what we've been talking about for the past few weeks. there was disagreement about how the trial should go so how would you characterize your relationship with the minority

leader coming out of this? >> the relationship is signed. he was forthright about if we had a discussion before we begin the trial and he wanted to guarantee at least some number of witnesses before we started i thought it was in our best interest of the country served by listening to the arguments and going through the questioning period before we got the question of witnesses because we might or might not conclude at that point that we needed any witnesses because they had a mountain of evidence. was the best argument against additional witnesses.

to say that it was approved or overwhelming. now, when you listen to those arguments being made by the managers, you scratch your head and say really, do we need to hear more, so that was the difference. we were not angry about it. he was trying to achieve an outcome and i felt it made more sense to only for the country that for us. >> talk about why it was so important to make sure you had and how it may have helped to make that decision. >> i obviously hoped the result of the senate would be similar or exactly the same as the result of the house.

the message bear there is don'to partisan impeachment. she said sometimes that we don't want this to become routine. all of us listed a number of things the founders said when they put impeachment in the constitution, and they really were concerned about it becoming kind of routine effort based on policy differences or personality differences. >> sound familiar? they just didn't like him. that's the kind of thing it seems to me the founders did not want to happen that we would do this all the time because of the policy difference with a personality difference.

so i'm glad it ended the way that they did and i hope that the message to the house of representatives don't do this again. how long is the senator romney going to be in the doghouse? >> the most important vote is the next boat. >> what is the agenda going forward into the animosity and y between the speaker and the president of the state of the union speech my biggest is as you know we have pretty different approaches to america's problems in th the hoe and senate. the senate. i think that we have a chance to do some business. i certainly hope so. we work on an infrastructure and there are even in the midst of

the election some things i think we can do together and even though several of you are completely bought into the notion that they are somehow totally dysfunctional, i would point you back to the end of last year there were a number of dramatic bipartisan accomplishments in the overall spending bills at the end of the year that didn't move across the floor independently but in that bill were a huge number of priorities on both sides if they get negotiated on a bipartisan basis. look what the house passes and what we do. we have some big differences thethat we will have more work r the american people to extend

the deadline that he called the equal rights is something you would be open to putting on the floor. >> [inaudible] >> i don't tell the committee chairman want to look at. one of you suggested earlier that houses an investigatory business. i can only suggest the senate would choose to do that as well but we don't have a dictatorship over in the senate.

>> [inaudible] >> i think that is what we just dealt with for three weeks. we've listened and included antenna a number of internal meetings to discuss all this which you ended up doing a great deal about and it's time to move on. this decision has been made as far as i'm concerned it's in the rearview mirror and the

consequences in terms of the future are up to the voters of the country to decide who they want to lead the government for the next four and in our case six years. i'm going to take one more. >> [inaudible] and you had the opposite -- >> i think they are pretty clearly partyline both ways that is what you can take out of it. pretty much partyline." thanks a lot, everybody.