WASHINGTON Senators voted on Wednesday to acquit President Donald Trump of abuse of power without first hearing from witnesses or examining new documents in his impeachment trial, and even though some Republicans agreed the president had done exactly what he was accused of.

The final vote on the first article of impeachment was 48-52, far short of the supermajority needed to convict.

Democrats remained unified in voting to convict. Only one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, wanted to convict the president for abuse of power.

On the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress, the Senate acquitted Trump by a vote of 47-53. (Romney voted to acquit this time.)

The two votes proceeded solemnly, with senators doing much less fidgeting than theyd displayed during the previous two weeks of the trial. As the clerk called their name, each senator rose, buttoned their jacket, and then said either guilty or not guilty.

In the end, Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate a political rival ahead of the 2020 election, blocked Congress in its efforts to investigate his actions and was still given the OK by the Senate.

He becomes the third president in U.S. history to be acquitted after being impeached in the House. But Trump has his own distinction: He is the only president to go through a Senate impeachment trial that heard from no witnesses.

Democrats have said that his acquittal will always have an asterisk: He is staying in office, but only because the process was rigged in his favor from the start.

The vote was not surprising. Most GOP senators had indicated before the trial even began that they planned to let Trump off the hook. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in December that he was not an impartial juror.

Ahead of the vote on Wednesday, McConnell said the impeachment case was incoherent and reduced it to a conspiracy theory. And he complained about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi questioning the legitimacy of the Senate trial due to its lack of witnesses.

Perhaps she will tear up the verdict like she tore up the State of the Union address, McConnell said.

By acquitting the president, the Senate would fulfill its constitutional obligation to serve as the more stable counterbalance to the House of Representatives, the majority leader argued.

The framers built the Senate to keep temporary rage from doing permanent damage to our republic, McConnell said.

Throughout the trial, which began in earnest on Jan. 21 , Republicans shifted their messages. First, many said Trump hadnt done what he was accused of: hold up congressionally approved security aid for Ukraine in order to push for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. But as the trial continued and new evidence of the presidents misconduct came to light in the media, Republican senators began to argue that Trump was right to pressure the Ukrainians to launch such an investigation that there was a quid pro quo, but it was justified.

The president, for his part, continued to insist he did nothing wrong. He plans to make a public statement at noon on Thursday to discuss, as he described it on Twitter , our Countrys VICTORY on the Impeachment Hoax!

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said that the trial ended in the full vindication and exoneration of Trump and that only his opponents, including one failed Republican presidential candidate, voted to convict him on the articles of impeachment.

In what has now become a consistent tradition for Democrats, this was yet another witch-hunt that deprived the President of his due process rights and was based on a series of lies, Grisham said in a statement.