A vote to impeach President Donald Trump is expected mid-afternoon in Washington DC. So here’s an overview in three posts
From the Associated Press:
President Donald Trump is on the verge of being impeached for a second time with the House planning the unprecedented vote one week after he encouraged a mob of loyalists to “fight like hell” against election results and the US Capitol became the target of a deadly siege.
While the first impeachment of Mr Trump last year brought no Republican votes in the House, a small but significant number of politicians are breaking with the party to join the Democrats.
They are unwilling to put American decency and democracy at further risk, even with days remaining in the president’s term.
The stunning collapse of Mr Trump’s final days in office, against alarming warnings of more violence ahead by his followers, leaves the nation at an uneasy and unfamiliar juncture before Democrat Joe Biden is inaugurated January 20.
“If inviting a mob to insurrection against your own government is not an impeachable event, then what is?” said Representative Jamie Raskin, who drafted the articles of impeachment.
Mr Trump, who would become the only US president twice impeached, faces a single charge of “incitement of insurrection.”
The four-page impeachment resolution relies on Mr Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric and the falsehoods he spread about Biden’s election victory, including at a White House rally on the day of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, in building its case for high crimes and misdemeanors as demanded in the Constitution.
Democrats in the House of Representatives are set to vote on the matter a week after the President encouraged a mob of supporters to “fight like hell” against election results and the US Capitol became the target of a deadly siege. Follow live.
