Image source: indialegallive.com
Prosecutors at Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial have laid out a strong case against the former president, showing previously undisclosed and chilling security camera footage of the mayhem that erupted at the US Capitol last month after a pro-Trump mob smashed their way into the building and posed a threat to the lawmakers.
The Capitol building was stormed on January 6 after thousands of supporters of Trump gathered in support of false claims that widespread fraud denied him victory in last November’s presidential election. Five people died, including a Capitol police officer, as the mob breached the building where the November 3 election result was being certified.
The US Senate began the impeachment trial of Trump, a Republican, on Wednesday with impeachment managers from the Democratic Party-controlled House of Representatives making a strong case against the former president accusing him of inciting the insurrection.
Led by Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, a battery of his party colleagues from the House of Representatives alleged that Trump incited his supporters for violence on January 6 as they stormed the Capitol Hill wherein Congressmen and Senators were performing their constitutional duty of counting and certification of the presidential election results.
Trump lost the elections to Joe Biden, who was sworn in as the 46th president on January 20. While the House, where the Democrats have the majority, impeached him before January 20, when he was still the president, the Senate impeachment trial has begun three weeks after he left office.
This is for the first time in American history that a former US president is being impeached. Trump, 74, is also the first president ever to have been impeached twice.