How to Watch the Second Impeachment Proceedings Against Trump
The House of Representatives convened on Wednesday and, for the second time, voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump. The president was impeached on one count of incitement to insurrection, one week after he urged a mob of his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol. For Trump to be removed from office, the Constitution now requires a two-thirds vote to convict him in the United States Senate. A date for the trial in the Senate has yet to be set.
How We Got Here:
Trump, who has spent the last two months baselessly claiming that president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 United States election was illegitimate, held a rally on Wednesday, Jan. 6 where he claimed that “we will never concede.” A mob of the president’s supporters breached the U.S. Capitol while Biden’s victory was being certified; five people died in the ensuing chaos. Trump repeatedly praised the rioters on his social media accounts, which caused Twitter and other social media companies to ban the president from their platforms.
The article of impeachment accuses the president of “willfully inciting violence against the Government of the United States.”
The First Impeachment Story
Investigators for the House of Representatives looked into whether Trump abused his public office for private gain, specifically in his dealings with Ukraine, in 2019. From attempting to pressure the Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden (and his son Hunter) for corruption and asking Zelensky to investigate the conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine than interfered in the 2016 election — on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign — to White House officials concealing records of phone correspondence on July 25 between Trump and Zelensky, a number of government officials already testified about these impeachable offenses to Congress behind closed doors.
These witnesses testified that Trump and his allies — including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, United States Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, the United States’ former Special Representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, and outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry — leveraged military aid to Ukraine under the condition that Zelensky publicly announce the investigations Trump wanted.
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives in December 2019 but was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020.
Where and How to Watch the Second Impeachment Proceedings Against Trump
The proceedings in the Senate — on a still to be determined date — will be live on a number of broadcasters and cable news networks, including PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, C-SPAN, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN — as well as on their official websites.
