Trump won’t be impeached, it’s inevitable

Sean O'Grady considers what becoming the first president to be impeached twice means for Donald Trump

The trial in the US Senate begins today (Getty)

The most important thing to know about the “latest” impeachment of Donald Trump – he picks them up like Boris Johnson used to get parking tickets – is that he won’t be convicted. He will therefore not have certain of his post-presidential perks and pension withdrawn. Nor, on this occasion, will he be barred from holding elected office again. Current events will not prevent him from running in 2024, legally speaking.

Politically, there are consequences, though impeachment cuts both ways, just as it did first time around with the phone calls to the Ukraine looking for dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. A Democrat-controlled House of Representatives once again had no compunction in charging Trump – this time with incitement to insurrection over the storming of the Capitol on 6 January. On Tuesday, the action will move to the Senate, which will turn into a quasi-courtroom for the trial of the president. He won’t be there, but there will be plenty of evidence and arguments. The proceedings will be presided over by the longest-serving senator, Patrick Leahy (if Trump were still in office, the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts, would be presiding as he did in the first impeachment, in January last year). All of the 100 senators will act as jurors. The president will not be convicted, if only because that would require a two-thirds majority, and there are not enough Republicans who will side with the Democrats to find him guilty – as proved to be the case last time.