Trump’s Second Impeachment Puts Jan. 6 Back at the Center of Washington

By Jan. 15, 2021, Donald Trump was not just facing the fallout from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He was already a twice-impeached president, with the House having approved a single article of impeachment two days earlier on Jan. 13, charging him with incitement of insurrection. The House action sent the case to the Senate, setting up a trial process that would come later. The central facts were not in dispute. In the weeks before the attack, Trump kept repeating false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen. On Jan. 6, after speaking to supporters in Washington, a crowd moved toward the Capitol while Congress met to certify the Electoral College vote. The House impeachment article tied that sequence together and said Trump’s conduct helped trigger the assault. What followed was a political and constitutional fight played out in real time on Capitol Hill. Members of the House used the impeachment debate to lay out their case, and the Congressional Record shows lawmakers describing Jan. 6 as the result of a broader effort to overturn or delegitimize the election. That was a matter of argument and record, not a separate formal investigation with a neat start and finish on Jan. 15. Trump issued a statement on Jan. 13 saying there should be no violence and no lawbreaking. But that did not erase the events that had already led to impeachment, or the fact that the House had voted to adopt the article charging him with incitement of insurrection. By then, the case had moved from the House floor to the Senate, and the final days of his presidency were now defined by the trial that was coming next. The result was a stark narrowing of Trump’s political room to maneuver. His allies could still call the process rushed or partisan, and Trump could still insist he had not wanted violence. But the official record had already advanced past argument and into procedure: the House had impeached him, the article had been sent over, and the Senate was next.