For more than four years, President Donald Trump has dominated the national discourse like no one before him. Yet when his legacy was set in stone on Wednesday, he was stunningly left on the sidelines.
President was yesterday impeached by the House for inciting an insurrection
He now faces the prospect of a criminal trial - but may even pardon himself first
Legal experts say Trump would represent a flight risk if he left the United States, with vast wealth at his disposal, his own jet and properties across the world
Trump previously joked he would leave the country if he lost the election
The House made history by impeaching a president for a second time, indicting President Donald Trump a week before he leaves office for inciting a riot.
With only a week left in Trump s term, there were no bellicose messages from the White House fighting the proceedings on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and no organised legal response. Some congressional Republicans did defend the President during House debate on impeachment, their words carrying across the same space violated by rioters one week earlier during a siege of the citadel of democracy that left five dead.
In the end, 10 Republicans voted to impeach.
It was a marked change from Trump’s first impeachment. That December 2019 vote in the House, which made Trump only the third president ever impeached, played out along partisan lines. The charges then were that he had used the powers of the office to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political foe, Joe Biden, now the President-elect.