Which senators crossed party lines during the Trump impeachment vote in 2021?
Executive summary
Seven Republican U.S. senators crossed party lines and voted to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial in February 2021: Richard Burr (N.C.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Neb.), and Patrick Toomey (Pa.), producing a 57–43 conviction vote but falling short of the 67 votes required for removal from office [1] [2] [3]. This was the most bipartisan Senate impeachment conviction tally in modern history and triggered both praise for independence and swift partisan backlash from within the Republican Party [4] [5].
1. The vote and the seven who broke with their conference
On Feb. 13, 2021, the Senate recorded a 57–43 vote to convict Trump on the article of incitement of insurrection, with seven Republicans joining all Democrats to vote "Guilty"; the seven Republicans were Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse and Patrick Toomey, a list confirmed in contemporaneous reporting by CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS, NPR and others [1] [2] [3] [6] [4].
2. How this compared to past party-line behavior and prior trials
That tally markedly exceeded the lone Republican defection in Trump’s first Senate impeachment trial—Mitt Romney in 2020—but still fell well short of the 17 GOP defections that would have been necessary to reach a two‑thirds majority and remove Trump, underscoring how unusual yet insufficient the bipartisan split was [1] [2].
3. The procedural votes that preceded the final verdict
Before the final guilty/ not‑guilty vote, there were earlier procedural and jurisdictional votes in which a smaller group of Republicans broke with party leaders—six Republicans voted that the Senate could constitutionally try a former president—specifically Romney, Sasse, Collins, Murkowski and Toomey were among those identified as crossing on that question, and Bill Cassidy would later say he was persuaded by the House managers in the merits phase [7] [4].
4. Motivations and public statements from the dissenting senators
The seven senators publicly framed their choices in different terms: some, like Collins and Cassidy, emphasized institutional duty and adherence to oaths; Romney explicitly tied his vote to his long-standing criticism of Trump’s conduct; Toomey and Sasse cited constitutional and civic concerns that, in their view, outweighed partisan loyalty—these individual explanations were reported alongside the vote tally in outlets such as NPR, The Washington Post and CBS [4] [2] [6].
5. Political consequences and party reactions
The decision to vote to convict drew swift reprisals from state GOP organizations and party leaders seeking to shore up loyalty to Trump’s base; several state parties moved to censure or criticize their senators, and outlets including Politico and CNBC documented the early backlash and disciplinary threats aimed at those who crossed the aisle [5] [8].
6. What the cross-party votes signaled about Republican fissures
Analysts and reporters framed the seven defections as evidence of fissures within the Republican conference—some senators appeared willing to break with Trump-era orthodoxy based on personal principle or political calculation while a larger cohort remained aligned with acquittal or with public criticism short of conviction—an interpretation consistently presented in the coverage [1] [9] [2].
7. Limitations in the reporting and remaining context
Contemporaneous news accounts reliably identify the seven Republican senators and document immediate political fallout, but available reporting in these sources focuses on names, vote counts and reactions rather than exhaustive, uniform timelines of each senator’s internal deliberations or private pressures; those granular details are not fully captured in the cited coverage [1] [4] [5].