Wednesday, December 18th, 2019 was a “Sad day for America” and “A great day for the Constitution,” according to the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On this day President Trump made history by becoming the 3rd President impeached in U.S. history. After the grand announcement of, what seemed like a victory for the blue party, Pelosi quickly shut down the fellow Democrats applause: the process was far from being over.

The glare Pelosi gave her caucus when some Dems started to clap after she announced the first article of impeachment passed pic.twitter.com/8vONZlEyZ3 — Peter Stevenson (@PeterWStevenson) December 19, 2019

How did we get here?

The impeachment process isn’t easy to follow, and it’s not supposed to be. Here is the timeline of everything that has happened so far along with the general scheme of how the process is described in the Constitution.

Source: The New Voice

The investigations on President Trump started roughly in spring 2019. The House Committees looked into seven different president’s dealings: Mueller report, Russia’s interference in 2016 elections, foreign payments to the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, conflict of interest with Mr. Neil, financial connections with Russia, Trump Hotel leases, and connections with Putin. Cases on Mueller’s report and connections with Ukraine made the “final cut”; although on December 4th Democrats decided to sideline the Mueller’s report during the caucus, citing the narrower approach of the Ukraine case.

Source: The New Voice

The president was officially impeached by the House on December 18th, 2019 with two articles of impeachment: abuse of power (230-197) and obstruction of Congress ( 229 – 198). This result was fairly predictable to most people as the House of Representatives is majority Democrat and today’s hyper-partisanship is stronger than ever.

Source: The New Voice

This is where the process gets tricky: the Senate trial has only happened 19 times in US history, only two of those trials were concerning presidents.

The official trial will start on Tuesday, January 21st and will end with a vote on the articles of impeachment. Interestingly, since President Trump has been charged with two articles in the House, there will be two votes and a supermajority even on one of the articles will result in removal.

Just like in a “regular” trial, there will be the prosecutors and the defense. Nancy Pelosi has recently named seven members of the House who will be arguing for the removal: Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Val Demings (D-FL), Jason Crow (D-CO), Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA). The defense of President Trump will be represented by the White House counsel Pat Cipollone, his personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, Michael Purpura, and Patrick Philbin from the White House Counsel’s Office, the independent counsel Ken Starr, Robert Ray, and celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz (the list is still tentative).

Predictions?

Today’s Congress is plagued with hyper-partisanship, making politics less fair but slightly easier to predict outcomes. The Senate is majority Republican and, it seems, many of the presiding senators have already made up their minds about not removing the president. “There is only one outcome that is suited to the paucity of evidence, the failed inquiry, the slapdash case,” says Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “I (have) clearly made up my mind, I’m not trying to hide the fact that I have disdain for the accusations in the process, so I don’t need any witnesses,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

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