NYT Donald Trump was impeached yesterday for a second time

Donald Trump was impeached yesterday for a second time, becoming the only president in United States history to face a Senate trial more than once. The House of Representatives voted to impeach the president on one count — incitement of insurrection — in response to the storming of the Capitol last week. Ten Republicans joined all 222 Democratic members of the chamber in voting to impeach. Just after the vote, the president posted a video condemning the violence at the Capitol in his clearest terms yet, and urging supporters to remain peaceful on Inauguration Day. But he said nothing about his role in having instigated the riot. Even some Republicans who opposed impeachment went out of their way to distance themselves from the president. Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, said impeachment would be needlessly divisive, but he condemned Trump’s actions. “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said yesterday. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.” Impeachment proceedings will now move to the Senate, but Mitch McConnell, the departing majority leader, said yesterday that he had no intention of bringing senators back early to hear the case. That means the Senate will return just a day before Trump leaves office on Jan. 20, making it virtually impossible that he would be removed before his term ends. Still, there could be more than symbolic significance to convicting him, even if it comes after his term ends. If Trump were convicted by a two-thirds majority in the Senate of inciting insurrection, a second vote could then be held on whether to bar him from public office permanently. That vote would require only a simple majority to pass. In a note to Republican colleagues yesterday, McConnell didn’t deny that he supported the impeachment push, but he said that he had “not made a final decision on how I will vote, and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”