Trump impeachment fight ready for Senate
WASHINGTON: One year after his first impeachment, former president Donald Trump finds himself the subject of an unprecedented second trial beginning on Tuesday in the Senate, whose members must determine whether he incited a deadly assault on the US Capitol.
The 100 senators will also step into controversial, uncharted territory when they sit in judgment of a president who is no longer in office.
At the heart of the highstakes proceedings is the January 6 melee, when several hundred pro-Trump rioters stormed Congress, fought police and sought to stop the ceremonial certification of Joe Biden’s election victory.
On January 13 the House of Representatives indicted Mr Trump for “incitement of insurrection,” forever branding Mr Trump a twice-impeached president. No other commander-in-chief has been so disgraced.
Yet no US president has ever been convicted in a court of impeachment, and the odds are that such a record will stand.
One of the main goals of Democrats driving the trial would be to ban Mr Trump from holding federal office in the future, were they able to win a conviction.
The mob riot itself is beyond dispute. US networks covered the mayhem live, and thousands of self-incriminating photographs and video clips – including of some rioters insisting Mr Trump “wants us here” storming the Capitol – made their way into the media.
Critics say Mr Trump’s role was such that he violated his oath of office by inciting the attack.
The Republican billionaire and his allies, however, argue that the trial itself is unconstitutional, because the Senate can convict and remove from office a current president, but not a private citizen.
Such an approach would allow the defence team and Republican senators to avoid having to defend the fiery tweets and diatribes by Mr Trump in the run-up to the violence.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the trial should go on, and that failing to convict him would damage American democracy.
Convicting Mr Trump would require the vote of more than two-thirds of the senators, meaning 17 Republicans would need to break ranks and join all 50 Democrats, an unlikely stretch at this point.