Claim: Both of Trump's First-Term Impeachments Ended in Senate Acquittal — TRUE

The claim is that both of Trump's first-term impeachments ended in Senate acquittals. That is correct on every count, and no element of it is in factual dispute.

The first impeachment began when the House passed H.Res. 755 on December 18, 2019, by votes of 230–197 on Article I (Abuse of Power) and 229–198 on Article II (Obstruction of Congress), according to congressional records. The Senate trial concluded on February 5, 2020, with acquittal on both articles — 48 votes to convict on Article I and 47 on Article II — neither close to the two-thirds supermajority the Constitution requires. The Congressional Research Service confirms that threshold is 67 votes when all 100 senators are present.

The second impeachment followed the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The House passed H.Res. 24 on January 13, 2021, charging Trump with Incitement of Insurrection by a 232–197 vote, with 10 Republicans joining Democrats — making it the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in U.S. history, per congressional records. The Senate trial ended February 13, 2021, with a 57–43 vote to convict. That number is historically significant: seven Republican senators crossed party lines, producing the most bipartisan impeachment conviction vote ever recorded. It was still 10 votes short of 67, and Trump was acquitted.

The one place this claim sometimes generates confusion is the second trial's 57-vote tally. Because 57 is a clear majority, some people assume it should have been enough to convict. It was not. The U.S. Constitution's Article I, Section 3 sets the bar at two-thirds of senators present — not a simple majority — specifically to make removal of a president a high-threshold, deliberate act. The CRS report on impeachment and the Constitution makes this unambiguous. The 57 votes were remarkable politically but legally insufficient.

There is nothing to steelman here in the sense of a hidden error — the claim is accurate. What is worth noting is context that sometimes gets dropped in political shorthand: Trump was not exonerated on the merits in either trial. In the second trial, a bipartisan majority of the Senate voted that he was guilty of inciting an insurrection. Acquittal meant the Senate did not remove him; it did not mean the Senate found him innocent. That distinction matters when the acquittals are cited as vindication.

The pattern to watch for is selective framing: citing the acquittals without the vote tallies, or citing the vote tallies without the constitutional threshold. Either half of the story, presented alone, misleads. The full picture — two impeachments, three articles, three acquittals, with conviction votes ranging from 47 to 57 against a required 67 — is what the Senate's own records show.