The second impeachment of Donald Trump in January 2021 marked a moment without precedent in American constitutional history: never before had a president been impeached twice, and never before had the Senate conducted an impeachment trial for a president who had already left office. The proceedings arose directly from the events of January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results, a day of violence that left five people dead and shook democratic institutions that many had assumed were self-sustaining.
The weeks preceding the Capitol attack saw Trump make numerous attempts to overturn the outcome of the November 2020 election, which his opponent, Democrat Joe Biden, had won decisively. These efforts took multiple forms: pressure on state election officials to alter certified results, litigation that failed almost universally in the courts, appeals to the Vice President to refuse to certify the electoral count, and sustained public messaging that the election had been stolen through widespread fraud. No court, election official, or independent audit substantiated these claims.
On January 6, the day designated by the Constitution for Congress to formally count and certify the electoral votes, Trump convened a large rally at The Ellipse near the White House in Washington, D.C., branded the March to Save America. Before thousands of supporters, Trump and other speakers repeated false claims of a stolen election, used combative language including the word fight and analogies to boxing, and explicitly suggested that those present had the power to prevent Biden from taking office. Trump encouraged the crowd to march to the Capitol. Shortly afterward, a substantial portion of the crowd did exactly that, crossing the National Mall, breaching security barriers, and forcing their way into the Capitol building itself.
The rioters occupied the building for hours, interrupting the congressional proceedings, ransacking offices, confronting and in some cases physically attacking police officers, and forcing members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to shelter in secure locations or flee. Five people died in connection with the events of that day, including a Capitol Police officer who died from injuries sustained during the assault. Several improvised explosive devices were found on and near Capitol grounds. Another Capitol Police officer who was on duty during the riots died by suicide in the days that followed. During the unfolding attack, Trump was reported to have been initially pleased by what he was watching on television and took no action for hours. When he eventually addressed his supporters, he told them We love you and You are very special, reiterated his false claims about the election, and asked them to go home. Congress reconvened after the mob was cleared and certified the electoral votes in the early morning hours of January 7.
One week later, on January 13, 2021, just one week before Trump's term was scheduled to expire, the House of Representatives of the 117th Congress voted to adopt a single article of impeachment charging Trump with incitement of insurrection. The vote crossed party lines to a degree unusual for such proceedings, with a number of Republican members joining the Democratic majority. The House impeachment managers formally delivered the charge to the Senate on January 25, triggering the start of the trial process. Because Trump's term expired on January 20 before the Senate trial could begin, the proceedings opened on February 9 with Trump already a private citizen.
The constitutional legitimacy of trying a former president was itself contested during the Senate proceedings. Many Republican senators argued that the Senate lacked jurisdiction over a president who had already left office, rendering the entire proceeding improper. Proponents of the trial's constitutionality cited as precedent the 1876 Senate trial of William W. Belknap, the Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant, who had resigned from office immediately before a House impeachment vote and was nevertheless tried by the Senate, though not convicted.
When the Senate voted on February 13, 2021, fifty-seven senators voted guilty and forty-three voted not guilty. Conviction required a two-thirds supermajority of sixty-seven votes, meaning Trump was acquitted despite a majority of senators finding him guilty of the charge. It was the first impeachment trial in American history conducted for a president no longer in office, and it was Trump's second impeachment overall, following his first in December 2019 on charges related to Ukraine. In August 2023, Trump was indicted twice for conduct related to the events addressed by the impeachment, once in Georgia and once by federal prosecutors. The federal charges were dismissed without prejudice in November 2024 following his re-election that month, under the Department of Justice's longstanding policy against prosecuting a sitting president. The Georgia state charges were dropped on November 28, 2025.
