Who are seven Republicans voting to convict Donald Trump - Political Hightlights, Trump's critic

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) voted to convict Trump.

Trump was charged with inciting an insurrection on January 6, after a mob of his supporters stormed Capitol Hill as Congress began certifying the 2020 presidential election vote.

The Senate vote failed 57-43, failing to meet the two-thirds majority threshold need to convict the former president.

Seven Republicans joined Democrats in finding the former president guilty.

Who is Sen. Mitt Romney?

Senator Mitt Romney was sworn in as Utah’s newest senator on January 3, 2019. He currently serves on the Foreign Relations; Health, Education, Labor & Pensions; Homeland Security & Government Affairs; and Budget committees. He is chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism. Senator Romney is also a member of the Senate National Security Working Group.

Before entering public service, he led a successful business career as the co-founder of Bain Capital, a leading investment company, and the turnaround CEO of Bain & Company, an international management consulting firm.

Prior to serving as the Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007, Senator Romney led the 2002 Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Winter Olympics and, with a team of volunteers and managers, helped turn the struggling Games into a Utah success story. He was a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and Republican nominee for president in 2012.

Senator Romney earned his bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and his JD/MBA from Harvard University. He is the proud husband to Ann, father to five sons, and grandfather to 25 grandchildren.

A frequent Trump critic, he was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump during his first impeachment trial last year — within hours of the riot at the U.S. Capitol last month, Romney unequivocally blamed Trump for inciting the mob, and he expressed the same sentiments after his vote on Saturday (his term ends in 2024).

Who is Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine)?

Susan Collins (Republican Party) is a member of the U.S. Senate from Maine. She assumed office on January 7, 1997. Her current term ends on January 3, 2027.

Collins (Republican Party) ran for re-election to the U.S. Senate to represent Maine. She won in the general election on November 3, 2020.

Collins' yes vote was needed in order to nominate Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, making her a key player in the nomination process. Her vote also played a key role in the ACA repeal and replace effort; Collins, John McCain (R-Ariz.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) all voted with Democrats against the American Health Care Act of 2017, meaning the bill did not pass.

Prior to her election to the Senate, Collins served as Deputy State Treasurer of Massachusetts.

Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026, blamed Trump for the riots on Jan. 6: “Context was everything. Tossing a lit match into a pile of dry leaves is very different to tossing it in a pool of water,” she said on the Senate floor Saturday.

READ MORE: Trump’s impeachment trial: Who are Republicans Voting to Convict Trump? What’s Next?

Who is Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)

Murkowski is the senior senator from Alaska and is a Republican. She has served since Jan 7, 2003. Murkowski is next up for reelection in 2022 and serves until Jan 3, 2023.

Murkowski cosponsored 1 bills introduced in the current Congress by Republican legislators who fomented the terrorist attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by calling for entire states to be disenfranchised in the 2020 presidential election.

Just one Republican senator that voted to convict President Donald Trump on Saturday has to face voters next year. But she does not seem to care about the political fallout, according to Politico.

“If I can't say what I believe that our president should stand for, then why should I ask Alaskans to stand with me?” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in a lengthy interview after she joined six other Republicans to convict Trump. “This was consequential on many levels, but I cannot allow the significance of my vote, to be devalued by whether or not I feel that this is helpful for my political ambitions.”

Shortly after the Jan. 6 riots, Murkowski called on Trump to resign from office, telling a local newspaper “he has caused enough damage” — after voting to convict on Saturday, she said “if I can’t say what I believe our president should stand for, why should I ask Alaskans to stand with me?” (she’s up for reelection in two years).

Who is Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.)?

Ben Sasse is a fifth-generation Nebraskan with the honor of representing the Cornhusker state in the U.S. Senate. Having never run for anything before, he and his family campaigned tirelessly in a rickety old campaign bus in 2013 and 2014, ultimately winning all of Nebraska's 93 counties in one of the biggest landslides in state history.

Like many Nebraskans, Ben learned about hard work in corn and bean fields at an early age. The son of a coach and a graduate of Fremont High, he was recruited to wrestle at Harvard and subsequently earned a PhD in American history at Yale. An occasional professor, Ben has spent most of his worklife helping companies and institutions through technological and leadership disruptions. He’s worked with the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey and Company, as well as private equity firms and not-for-profit organizations, to tackle failing strategies across dozens of sectors and nations.

Before being elected to the Senate, Ben spent five years as a college president. When he was recruited to lead Midland University, Ben was just 37, making him one of the youngest college presidents in the nation. The 130-year-old Lutheran college in Ben’s hometown was on the verge of bankruptcy when he arrived, but became one of the nation's fastest-growing schools just three years later.

A member of the intelligence, judiciary, finance, and budget committees, Ben is focused on the future of work, the future of war, and the First Amendment. He worries that the Senate lacks urgency about cyber and about the nation’s generational debt crisis. An opponent of perpetual incumbency, he has no intention of spending his life in the Senate.

When Ben Sasse heard that GOP activists in Nebraska were primed to censure him for insufficiently supporting Donald Trump, the Republican senator didn’t try to talk them out it. Instead, he punched first.

In a five-minute video posted to Facebook and YouTube, Sasse ripped fellow Republicans for following a “cult of personality” and “acting like politics is religion.”

It’s the no-apologies approach Nebraskans have come to expect — and even appreciate — from their junior senator, who perhaps more than any other rising Republican leader is cultivating anti-Trumpism as his brand.

Sasse has criticized Trump in recent months, a posture that drew criticism from Nebraska Republican leaders (his term ends in 2026) — in a statement before his vote, he faulted Trump both for enflaming the riot on Jan. 6 and for spreading false conspiracy theories about voter fraud in the preceding months.

Sasse’s criticism of Trump is angering plenty of activists in deeply Republican Nebraska. But Sasse is also winning some respect for speaking his mind even when it’s unpopular, a trait that some Republicans said reminded them of the former president himself.

Who is Sen. Pat Toomey?

Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania was one of seven Republicans who voted Saturday to convict former President Donald Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, breaking with most of his party and likely closing the book on a winding and complicated relationship between the two.

Toomey, who is not seeking reelection when his term ends after 2022, was one of 57 total votes in favor of conviction, though that fell short of the two-thirds, or 67, needed to convict Trump, leading to his second impeachment acquittal.

But Toomey’s vote added to what was ultimately the most bipartisan Senate vote to convict a president in history, and amounted to a stark condemnation of a president he had supported.

“A lawless attempt to retain power by a president was one of the founders’ greatest fears,” Toomey said after the vote, later adding, “His betrayal of the Constitution and his oath of office required conviction.”

Toomey, who is retiring when his term ends in two years, said he voted to convict because “a lawless attempt to retain power by a president was one of the founders’ greatest fears motivating the inclusion of the impeachment authorities in the U.S. Constitution.”

Who is Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.)

Political Highlights: Republican nominee for U.S. House, 1992; U.S. House of Representatives, 1995-2005

Born: November 30, 1955; Charlottesville, Va.

Residence: Winston-Salem

Religion: Methodist

Family: Wife, Brooke Burr; two children

Education: Wake Forest U., B.A. 1978

Elected: 2004

Committee Assignments: Finance; Health, Education, Labor & Pensions; Select Intelligence; Special Aging

In a statement, Burr, who is not running for reelection in 2022, said the evidence that Trump incited insurrection is “compelling,” declaring “President Trump violated his oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Who is Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)?

Bill Cassidy (Republican Party) is a member of the U.S. Senate from Louisiana. He assumed office on January 6, 2015. His current term ends on January 3, 2027.

Cassidy (Republican Party) won re-election to the U.S. Senate to represent Louisiana outright in the primary election on November 3, 2020, after the general election was canceled.

Cassidy was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014, defeating incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and becoming the first Republican to hold the seat since 1883.

In July 2017, Cassidy released a healthcare proposal with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to modify the Affordable Care Act.

Cassidy previously represented Louisiana's 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2009 to 2015.

Based on analysis of multiple outside rankings, Cassidy is an average congressional Republican, meaning he will vote with the Republican Party on the majority of bills.

On August 20, 2020, Cassidy announced that he tested positive for coronavirus.

Despite voting last month that the impeachment trial was unconstitutional, Cassidy changed his mind and decided the trial was legal this week — he said in a statement “our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person,” but his vote to convict Trump caused the Louisiana GOP to censure him within hours.