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Donald Trump faces a trial in the Senate after becoming the first president of the United States to be charged with misconduct in office for the second time.
Trump is accused of inciting a mob that stormed Congress last week after he repeated false accusations of voter fraud. Five people died.
The trial will take place after the president leaves office next Wednesday.
If Trump is convicted, senators could also vote to ban him from holding public office again.
The trial follows Wednesday’s vote in the House of Representatives that formally indicted, or accused the president of “inciting insurrection” for his role in the riots.
The Republican president has rejected responsibility for the violence. In a video posted after the vote, he asked his supporters to remain in peace, without mentioning his impeachment.
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Can Trump be removed or banned from politics?
- ‘Symbolic but necessary’: American voters react
- What about the accused presidents?
The FBI warned of possible armed protests planned for Washington DC and the 50 US state capitals in the days before Joe Biden, a Democrat, takes office as the new US president.
What happens next
The Senate, the upper house of the United States Congress, will hold a trial to determine the guilt of the president, but this will not happen during Trump’s remaining week in office.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said “there was simply no chance that a fair or serious trial” could conclude given the “Senate rules, procedures and precedents” that govern trials involving presidents.
It will take a two-thirds majority to convict Trump, meaning that at least 17 Republicans would have to vote with Democrats in the 100-seat chamber, divided equally.
Up to 20 Republicans are open to condemning the president, the New York Times reported Tuesday. In a note to his colleagues, McConnell said he had not made a final decision on how he would vote.
If Trump is convicted, senators could hold another vote to prevent him from running again for elected office, which he has indicated he planned to do in 2024.
Trump was indicted by the House in 2019 for his dealings with Ukraine, but the Senate acquitted him.
Indictment: The Basics
- What is the accusation? The indictment is when a sitting president is accused of crimes. In this case, President Trump was accused of inciting insurrection by encouraging his supporters to storm the Capitol.
- Could Trump be removed from office? The House of Representatives has indicted him, moving the case to the Senate for trial. But there will be no trial before Trump leaves office on January 20.
- So what does it mean? A trial can occur after your term ends, and senators can vote to ban you from holding public office again.
What was Trump accused of?
The charges are political, not criminal. The president was accused by the House of inciting the assault on the Capitol, the seat of the United States Congress, with a speech on January 6 to supporters outside the White House.
He urged them to make their voices heard “in a peaceful and patriotic way”, but also to “fight like hell” against an election that falsely told them they had been robbed.
Following Trump’s comments, his supporters stormed the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to suspend the certification of election results and take refuge while the building closed.
The impeachment article stated that Trump “repeatedly issued false statements claiming that the results of the presidential elections were fraudulent and should not be accepted.”
He says he then repeated these claims and “deliberately made statements to the crowd that encouraged and predictably resulted in illegal actions on Capitol Hill,” leading to violence and loss of life.
“President Trump seriously endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of government, threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and endangered an equivalent branch of government.”
Trump makes history again
Donald Trump has made history again, this time as the first president to be indicted twice.
A year ago, the Republican Party opposed the same move. This time, a handful of conservatives backed the measure. It is a reflection not only of the gravity of the moment, but also of the declining influence of the president in the last days of his administration.
The impeachment sets up a Senate trial for Trump that now appears destined to extend into the early days of Joe Biden’s presidency, creating another challenge for the incoming president. It will also fuel an ongoing debate among Republicans about the direction his party will take in the coming days.
The party goes down a path that forks in two very different directions. On the one hand, there’s continued loyalty to the president’s kind of policy, one that created a new coalition of voters that gave up the White House and Congress in 2016, but lost both in 2020.
On the other hand, there is an uncertain future, but free of the president’s unique style of heat and rhetoric, unfiltered invective that even many Republicans now believe contributed to last week’s Capitol riot.
What happened in the House vote?
For two hours, members of the Democratic-controlled House made statements for and against the vote on impeachment as National Guard troops stood guard inside and outside the Capitol.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said: “The President of the United States incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion against our common country. He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation we all love. “.
Most Republicans did not seek to defend Trump’s rhetoric, instead arguing that the impeachment had bypassed the regular hearings and called on Democrats to drop it for the sake of national unity.
“To impeach the president in such a short time would be a mistake,” said Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican. “That doesn’t mean the president is blameless. The president is responsible for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.”
Trump was indicted 232-197, with ten Republicans siding with the Democrats. Among them was third-rank House Republican Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
In a grim and conciliatory tone, Trump said in his video after the vote: “Violence and vandalism have no place in our country … No true supporter of mine would ever endorse political violence.”
Aware that his first days in office could be bogged down in impeachment drama, Biden said he hoped senators would not neglect “other pressing matters of this nation,” such as approving his cabinet nominees, coronavirus relief. and the national vaccination program.
