U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, seen as a potentially vulnerable Democratic lawmaker from a Republican state, announced on the floor of the Senate that he will vote to convict President Donald Trump for abusing his office and obstructing Congress at the conclusion of the impeachment trial Wednesday.
"The president's actions demonstrate a belief that he is above the law.
That Congress has no power whatsoever in questioning or examining his actions, and that all who do so, do so at their peril," Jones said.
"That belief, unprecedented in the history of this chamber, simply must not be permitted to stand." Jones is among three Democratic senators, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who found themselves in the spotlight as Trump's impeachment trial drew to a close.
The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to acquit the Republican president, but the three Democrats were seen as potentially crossing the aisle to vote with the opposite party.
Jones, a former federal prosecutor, used his time to decry the partisanship that he suggested blinded Senators to the facts of the trial.
"Candidly, to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I fear that moral courage, country before party, is a rare commodity," he said.
"Nowhere is the dilemma more difficult that in an impeachment of the President of the United States."