MUMBAI: After five days of impeachment trial in the United States Senate, former President Donald Trump was acquitted of charges relating to 'incitement of insurrection' in relation to the January 6 riot at the United States Capitol.

The vote was largely split along party lines with 57 lawmakers voting to convict and 43 voting to acquit, thereby falling short of the two-thirds needed in the Senate. Apparently seven Republicans Senators broke ranks with their party and joined with Democrats to seek Trump's conviction, making it the most bipartisan impeachment trial in US history.

This was 74-year-old Trump’s second impeachment trial which began on February 9, the only time a president has been through this process twice. The first impeachment trial, which took place in February 2020, ended in an acquittal of charges that he tried to put pressure upon Ukraine's president to investigate the current President Joe Biden and his son.

Trump who is living at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he has established an office to handle his post-presidential activities as provided for by the American constitution expressed his happiness on the outcome of the trial as he decried the ‘witch hunt’ impeachment trial after Senate fails to convict him. “Yet another phase of the greatest witch hunt in the history of our country,” he said.

The former President defended himself as a champion of law and order, and offered no apologies for his actions that preceded the deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6.

“No president has ever gone through anything like it, and it continues because our opponents cannot forget the almost 75 million people, the highest number ever for a sitting president, who voted for us just a few short months ago,” Trump said.

Hinted at a possible political future Trump said, “Our historic, patriotic and beautiful movement to make America great again has only just begun."