The officials, including the former chief of the Capitol Police, pointed their fingers at various federal agencies — and each other — for their failure to defend the building as supporters of then-President Donald Trump overwhelmed security barriers, broke windows and doors and sent lawmakers fleeing from the House and Senate chambers. Five people died as a result of the riot, including a Capitol Police officer and a woman who was shot as she tried to enter the House chamber with lawmakers still inside.

Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned under pressure after the attack, and the other officials said they had expected the protests to be similar to two pro-Trump events in late 2020 that were far less violent. He said he hadn’t seen an FBI field office report that warned of potential violence citing online posts about a “war.” And he and a House official disputed each other’s versions of decisions that January day and in advance about calling for the National Guard.

Sund described a scene as the mob arrived at the perimeter that was “like nothing” he had seen in his 30 years of policing and argued that the insurrection was not the result of poor planning by Capitol Police but of failures across the board. Trump had rallied the invaders to protest his election loss at the Capitol, and the House later impeached him on a charge of “incitement of insurrection.” But he noted that he had asked the crowd to protest “peacefully,” and the Senate acquitted him.

Sund insisted the invasion was not his or his agency’s fault. “No single civilian law enforcement agency – and certainly not the USCP – is trained and equipped to repel, without significant military or other law enforcement assistance, an insurrection of thousands of armed, violent, and coordinated individuals focused on breaching a building at all costs,” he testified. The joint hearing, part of an investigation by two Senate committees, was the first time the officials testified publicly about the events of Jan. 6. In addition to Sund, former Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger, former House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving and Robert Contee, the acting chief of police for the Metropolitan Police Department, testified.

Like Sund, Irving and Stenger resigned under pressure after the deadly attack. They were Sund’s supervisors and in charge of security for the House and Senate. “We must have the facts, and the answers are in this room,” Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar said at the beginning of the hearing. The Rules panel is conducting the joint probe with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Much remains unknown about what happened before and during the assault. How much did law enforcement agencies know about plans for violence that day, many of which were public? How did the agencies share that information with each other? And how could the Capitol Police have been so ill-prepared for a violent insurrection that was organized online? Sund told the lawmakers that he learned only after the attack that his officers had received a report from the FBI’s field office in Norfolk, Virginia, that forecast, in detail, the chances that extremists could bring “war” to Washington the following day.

The head of the FBI’s office in Washington has said that once he received the Jan. 5 warning, the information was quickly shared with other law enforcement agencies through a joint terrorism task force. Sund said Tuesday that an officer on the task force had received that memo and forwarded it to a sergeant working on intelligence for the Capitol Police but that the information was not sent on to other supervisors. “How could you not get that vital intelligence?” asked Senate Homeland Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., who said the failure of the report to reach the chief was clearly a major problem. “That information would have been helpful,” Sund acknowledged. Sund said he did see an intelligence report created within his own department warning that Congress could be targeted on Jan. 6.

But he said that report assessed the probability of civil disobedience or arrests, based on the information they had, as “remote” to “improbable” for the groups expected to demonstrate. Contee, the acting city police chief, also suggested that no one had flagged the FBI information from Norfolk, Virginia, which he said came in the form of an email. He said he would have expected that kind of intelligence “would warrant a phone call or something. ” Two officials disagreed on when the National Guard was called and on requests for the guard beforehand. Sund said he spoke to both Stenger and Irving about requesting the National Guard in the days before the riot, and that Irving said he was concerned about the “optics” of having them present. Irving denied that, saying Sund’s account was “categorically false.” Safety, not optics, determined the security posture, he said, and the top question was whether intelligence supported the decision.

“We all agreed the intelligence did not support the troops and collectively decided to let it go,” Stenger said. He added that they were satisfied at the time that there was a “robust” plan to protect Congress. After smashing through the barriers at the perimeter, the invaders engaged in hand-to-hand combat with police officers, injuring dozens of them, and broke into the building. Once the violence had begun, Sund and Irving also disagreed on when the National Guard was requested — Sund said he requested it at 1:09 p.m., but Irving said he didn’t receive a request until after 2 p.m., right as rioters breached the Capitol’s West side. Contee said he was “stunned” over the delayed response.

He said Sund was pleading with Army officials to deploy National Guard troops as the rioting rapidly escalated. Police officers “were out there literally fighting for their lives” but the officials on the call appeared to be going through a ”check the boxes” exercise, he said. Pentagon officials have said it took time to put the troops in position, and there was not enough contingency planning in advance.

They said they offered the assistance beforehand but were turned down. The hearing was the first of many examinations of what happened that day, coming almost seven weeks after the attack and over a week after the Senate voted to acquit Trump of inciting the insurrection by telling his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat. Fencing and National Guard troops still surround the Capitol in a wide perimeter, cutting off streets and sidewalks that are normally full of cars, pedestrians and tourists.

Congress is also considering a bipartisan, independent commission, and multiple congressional committees have said they will look at different aspects of the siege. Federal law enforcement has arrested more than 230 people who were accused of being involved in the attack, and President Joe Biden’s nominee for attorney general, Judge Merrick Garland, said in his confirmation hearing Monday that investigating the riot would be a priority. A second hearing, expected next week, will examine the response of the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

The panels may also hold closed-door interviews. Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, the top Republican on the Rules Committee, said they might want to ask for phone records to clear up some of the discrepancies between officials.

Associated Press writers Lolita Baldor in Washington and Nomaan Merchant in Houston contributed to this report.

MARY CLARE JALONICK, MICHAEL BALSAMO and LISA MASCARO • AP News

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In the still shaken and heavily guarded U.S. Capitol, thousands of National Guard troops still wander the halls. Glass windows remain broken. Doors swing without handles.

And in the grand marble hallways, which amplified the shouts of insurrectionists just over a month ago, there is an uncomfortable silence. The end of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is only the beginning of Congress’ reckoning with the Jan. 6 attack, a violent ransacking of the Capitol that resulted in five deaths.

While the Senate has spoken on Trump’s role in the violence, acquitting him of insurrection after a wrenching five days of impeachment testimony, lawmakers who fled the violent mob are still demanding answers. How, they ask, could security could have failed so catastrophically? And how can they ensure it doesn’t happen again? “This is not a moment where we pivot and move on,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said Saturday, just after the acquittal vote in the impeachment trial. “You cannot view today as the last page of the book. What we were talking about today was the accountability for the leader of the mob.

But we still have to protect against future mobs, we still have to go after members of the mob.” The coming weeks — and likely the coming months and years — will force lawmakers to work through the many unanswered questions about the attack. It’s a complex task that will test whether lawmakers can set aside partisanship, which flared anew during the impeachment process, and turn the harrowing violence that threatened their lives into a restorative moment for their institution.

Since Saturday’s vote, Democratic leaders have said they will take steps to form an independent investigative commission modeled after one that studied security failures before the 9/11 attacks. Two Senate committees have summoned top security officials to testify, the beginning of a comprehensive look at what went wrong.

Separately, retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré is leading an ongoing review of the Capitol’s security process, commissioned by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And several other panels are looking into different aspects of the insurrection, including intelligence lapses and whether it was coordinated. “Security is the order of the day,” Pelosi said in a letter to her House colleagues on Monday. “The security of our country, the security of our Capitol which is the temple of our democracy, and the security of our members.” Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump, said Sunday that there should be a “complete investigation” into what happened. “What was known, who knew it and when they knew, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again,” he said.

Legislation to set up the commission could be introduced in the House as soon as this week, according to a person familiar with the process and granted anonymity to discuss the planning. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to support the commission, and a spokesman said Tuesday that he “looks forward to it being approved by both chambers with overwhelming bipartisan support.” At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden supports it as well. Biden “backs efforts to shed additional light on the facts to ensure something like that never happens again,” she said. In her letter to Democratic colleagues, Pelosi said the House will also put forth supplemental spending to boost security at the Capitol.

The first congressional hearings will come next week, with two Senate panels calling in the former chief of Capitol Police and the former heads of security for the House and Senate, all three of whom resigned immediately after the attack. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Senate Rules Committee announced Tuesday that they had invited former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, former Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger and former House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving to the hearing, along with Robert Contee, the chief of the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department.

The hearing will begin a broad examination of the security failures that led to the breach. In addition to the Feb. 23 hearing, the two committees are pressing for information from almost two dozen agencies and departments about the response. The security breakdown on Jan. 6, as the House and Senate met for a joint session to count electoral votes, was severe. The Capitol Police had planned for a free speech demonstration, not a violent insurrection by Trump supporters to overturn the election. With the diminished security presence, the rioters not only breached the Capitol but entered the Senate chamber minutes after senators had fled. The rioters also tried to break through the doors of the House chamber with lawmakers still inside.

Outside, they engaged in hand-to-hand combat with an outnumbered, ill-prepared Capitol Police force, which was eventually assisted by D.C. police. The acting chief of the Capitol Police, Yogananda Pittman, has acknowledged the department knew before Jan. 6 that extremists and white supremacists could be in the crowd outside the Capitol. But she and other leaders are still pointing fingers about who was responsible for not bolstering security.

The hearings and investigations — which will be conducted in both the House and Senate by several committees — are expected to help inform decisions about the wide perimeter around the building that has been in place since Jan. 6. The show of force has also angered D.C. residents who have to navigate blocked-off roads, and it has frustrated some lawmakers in both parties who believe the building should be open to the public. Outside of Congress, federal law enforcement has arrested more than 200 people who broke into the Capitol, and others have suggested that Trump himself could be criminally liable for his efforts to persuade officials to change election results and encourage his supporters to overturn his defeat.

In a blistering speech that came immediately after his vote to acquit Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pinned responsibility for the riots on Trump and said he didn’t “yet” get away with anything. “We have a criminal justice system in this country, we have civil litigation,” McConnell said. Still, inside the building, people are still dealing with the aftermath. Maine Sen. Angus King, an Independent who voted to convict the former president, said he’s most worried about presidents who come after Trump, and what lessons they will take from the Senate’s decision to acquit. “I do feel sad,” he said.

“This gave us an opportunity for closure which we missed.” Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski reflected on the sights and sounds she heard on Jan. 6 as she walked out of the chamber after the vote. Like Cassidy, she was one of the seven Republicans who voted to convict. “It hits me,” Murkowski said in an interview with Politico, remembering the trash that scattered the same floors she was walking on as she spoke. “I hear the sound of the of the Capitol Police officer who was retching in the bathroom because he had just gotten sprayed with pepper spray and was trying to wash it out. … We’re all witnesses to this. And you have to bear witness to it, I guess.” ___ Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

MARY CLARE JALONICK • AP News

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The U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that Sicknick, who died the next day, was injured “while physically engaging with protesters,” though a final cause of death has not yet been determined. President Joe Biden traveled to the Capitol to pay tribute to Sicknick shortly after the ceremony began Tuesday night, briefly placing his hand on the urn in the center of the Capitol Rotunda, saying a prayer and sadly shaking his head as he observed a memorial wreath nearby.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and a handful of other congressional leaders also paid their respects. The arrival of Sicknick’s remains at 9:30 p.m. was solemn, with dozens of Capitol Police standing at attention as his urn was carried up the Capitol steps. There was a viewing period for Capitol Police overnight, and lawmakers were to pay tribute at a ceremony Wednesday morning.

A ceremonial departure for Arlington National Cemetery was planned later in the day. Members of Congress remain shaken by the attack and are grappling with what it means not only for the future of the country, but for their own security as elected representatives. While lawmakers were united in denouncing the riots, and Trump’s role in them, the parties are now largely split on how to move forward.

House Democrats impeached Trump a week after the attack, sending a charge of “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate, where Republicans are unlikely to provide the votes necessary to convict him. At the same time, the building has been cut off from the public, surrounded by large metal fences and defended by the National Guard. Sicknick, 42, of South River, New Jersey, enlisted in the National Guard six months after graduating high school in 1997, then deployed to Saudi Arabia and later Kyrgyzstan.

He joined the Capitol Police in 2008. Like many Capitol Police officers, he often worked security in the Capitol itself and was known to lawmakers, staff and others who passed through the building’s doors each morning. There are still questions about his death, which was one of five as a result of the rioting. As the mob forced its way in, Sicknick was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher, two law enforcement officials said.

He collapsed later on, was hospitalized and died. The officials could not discuss the ongoing investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Investigators are also examining whether he may have ingested a chemical substance during the riot that may have contributed to his death, the officials said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced last week that Sicknick would lie in honor, which is reserved for a select few.

In a joint statement they said his heroism “helped save lives, defend the temple of our democracy and ensure that the Congress was not diverted from our duty to the Constitution.” His sacrifice, they said, “reminds us every day of our obligation to our country and to the people we serve.” Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues on Tuesday that the Capitol Police “demonstrated extraordinary valor” on Jan. 6 and urged members to pay their respects.

She has also encouraged members to take advantage of trauma resources available to congressional employees. She said protecting the Capitol and the lawmakers who work there is a “highest priority” and that there will be a need for extra money to do so. During the assault, many of the insurrectionists called out for members, including Pelosi. They also targeted Vice President Mike Pence, who was in the building to preside over the electoral count. “The insurrectionist attack on January 6 was not only an attack on the Capitol, but was a traumatic assault targeting Members,” she said.

Sicknick is only the fifth person to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, a designation for those who are not elected officials, judges or military leaders. The others who have lain in honor were John Gibson and Jacob Chestnut, Jr., two officers who were killed in a 1998 shooting at the Capitol; civil rights leader Rosa Parks, who died in 2005; and the Rev. Billy Graham, who died in 2018.

MARY CLARE JALONICK • AP News

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The impeachment case against Donald Trump is heading toward a historic Senate trial, but Republican senators are easing off their criticism of the former president and shunning calls to convict him over the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.

It’s an early sign of Trump’s enduring sway over the party.

House Democrats were to carry the sole impeachment charge of “ incitement of insurrection ” across the Capitol late Monday, the prosecutors making the ceremonial walk to the Senate. But Republican denunciations of Trump have cooled since the Jan. 6 riot. Instead Republicans are presenting a tangle of legal arguments against the legitimacy of the trial and questions whether Trump’s repeated demands to overturn Joe Biden’s election really amounted to incitement.

What seemed for some Democrats like an open-shut case that played out for the world on live television, as Trump encouraged a rally mob to “fight like hell” for his presidency, is running into a Republican Party that feels very differently. Not only are there legal concerns, but senators are wary of crossing the former president and his legions of followers who are their voters. Security remains tight at the Capitol.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said if Congress starts holding impeachment trials of former officials, what’s next: “Could we go back and try President Obama?”

Besides, he suggested, Trump has already been held to account. “One way in our system you get punished is losing an election.”

Arguments in the Senate trial will begin the week of Feb. 8, and the case against Trump, the first former president to face impeachment trial, will test a political party still sorting itself out for the post-Trump era. Republican senators are balancing the demands of deep-pocketed donors who are distancing themselves from Trump and voters who demand loyalty to him. One Republican, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, announced Monday he would not seek reelection in 2022 citing the polarized political atmosphere.

For Democrats the tone, tenor and length of the upcoming trial, so early in Biden’s presidency, poses its own challenge, forcing them to strike a balance between their vow to hold Trump accountable and their eagerness to deliver on the new administration’s priorities following their sweep of control of the House, Senate and White House.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Republicans appear more eager to argue over trial process than the substance of the impeachment case against Trump, perhaps to avoid casting judgment on the former president’s “role in fomenting the despicable attack” on the Capitol.

He said there’s only one question “senators of both parties will have to answer before God and their own conscience: Is former President Trump guilty of inciting an insurrection against the United States?”

Failing to conduct the trial would amount to a “get-out-jail-free card” for other officials accused of wrongdoing on their way out the door, Schumer said.

On Monday, it was learned that Chief Justice John Roberts is not expected to preside at the trial, as he did during Trump’s first impeachment, potentially affecting the gravitas of the proceedings. The shift is said to be in keeping with protocol because Trump is no longer in office.

Instead, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D- Vt., who serves in the largely ceremonial role of Senate president pro-tempore, is set to preside.

Leaders in both parties agreed to a short delay in the proceedings that serves their political and practical interests, even as National Guard troops remain at the Capitol amid security threats on lawmakers ahead of the trial.

The start date gives Trump’s new legal team time to prepare its case, while also providing more than a month’s distance from the passions of the bloody riot. For the Democratic-led Senate, the intervening weeks provide prime time to confirm some of Biden’s key Cabinet nominees.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., questioned how his colleagues who were in the Capitol that day could see the insurrection as anything other than a “stunning violation” of the nation’s history of peaceful transfers of power.

“It is a critical moment in American history,” Coons said Sunday in an interview.

An early vote to dismiss the trial probably would not succeed, given that Democrats now control the Senate. Still, the mounting Republican opposition to the proceedings indicates that many GOP senators would eventually vote to acquit Trump. Democrats would need the support of 17 Republicans — a high bar — to convict him.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said he doesn’t believe the Senate has the constitutional authority to convict Trump after he has left office.

“I think a lot of Americans are going to think it’s strange that the Senate is spending its time trying to convict and remove from office a man who left office a week ago,” Cotton said.

Democrats reject that argument, pointing to an 1876 impeachment of a secretary of war who had already resigned and to opinions by many legal scholars. Democrats also say that a reckoning of the first invasion of the Capitol since the War of 1812, perpetrated by rioters egged on by a president as Electoral College votes were being tallied, is necessary to ensure such a siege never happens again.

A few GOP senators have agreed with Democrats, though not close to the number that will be needed to convict Trump.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said he believes “what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offense.” Romney said, “If not, what is?”

But Romney, the lone Republican to vote to convict Trump when the Senate acquitted the then-president in last year’s trial, appears to be an outlier.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House for a historic second time Wednesday, charged with “incitement of insurrection” over the deadly mob siege of the Capitol in a swift and stunning collapse of his final days in office.

With the Capitol secured by armed National Guard troops inside and out, the House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump. The proceedings moved at lightning speed, with lawmakers voting just one week after violent pro-Trump loyalists stormed the U.S. Capitol, egged on by the president’s calls for them to “fight like hell” against the election results.

Ten Republicans fled Trump, joining Democrats who said he needed to be held accountable and warned ominously of a “clear and present danger” if Congress should leave him unchecked before Democrat Joe Biden’s inauguration Jan. 20.

Trump is the only U.S. president to be twice impeached. It was the most bipartisan presidential impeachment in modern times, more so than against Bill Clinton in 1998.

The Capitol insurrection stunned and angered lawmakers, who were sent scrambling for safety as the mob descended, and it revealed the fragility of the nation’s history of peaceful transfers of power. The riot also forced a reckoning among some Republicans, who have stood by Trump throughout his presidency and largely allowed him to spread false attacks against the integrity of the 2020 election.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invoked Abraham Lincoln and the Bible, imploring lawmakers to uphold their oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign “and domestic.”

She said of Trump: “He must go, he is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love.”

Holed up at the White House, watching the proceedings on TV, Trump later released a video statement in which he made no mention at all of the impeachment but appealed to his supporters to refrain from any further violence or disruption of Biden’s inauguration.

“Like all of you, I was shocked and deeply saddened by the calamity at the Capitol last week,” he said, his first condemnation of the attack. He appealed for unity “to move forward” and said, “Mob violence goes against everything I believe in and everything our movement stands for. … No true supporter of mine could ever disrespect law enforcement.”

Trump was first impeached by the House in 2019 over his dealings with Ukraine, but the Senate voted in 2020 acquit. He is the first president to be impeached twice. None has been convicted by the Senate, but Republicans said Wednesday that could change in the rapidly shifting political environment as officeholders, donors, big business and others peel away from the defeated president.

Biden said in a statement after the vote that it was his hope the Senate leadership “will find a way to deal with their Constitutional responsibilities on impeachment while also working on the other urgent business of this nation.”

The soonest Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell would start an impeachment trial is next Tuesday, the day before Trump is already set to leave the White House, McConnell’s office said. The legislation is also intended to prevent Trump from ever running again.

McConnell believes Trump committed impeachable offenses and considers the Democrats’ impeachment drive an opportunity to reduce the divisive, chaotic president’s hold on the GOP, a Republican strategist told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

McConnell told major donors over the weekend that he was through with Trump, said the strategist, who demanded anonymity to describe McConnell’s conversations.

In a note to colleagues Wednesday, McConnell said he had “not made a final decision on how I will vote.”

Unlike his first time, Trump faces this impeachment as a weakened leader, having lost his own reelection as well as the Senate Republican majority.

Even Trump ally Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader, shifted his position and said Wednesday the president bears responsibility for the horrifying day at the Capitol.

In making a case for the “high crimes and misdemeanors” demanded in the Constitution, the four-page impeachment resolution approved Wednesday relies on Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric and the falsehoods he spread about Biden’s election victory, including at a rally near the White House on the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

A Capitol Police officer died from injuries suffered in the riot, and police shot and killed a woman during the siege. Three other people died in what authorities said were medical emergencies. The riot delayed the tally of Electoral College votes that was the last step in finalizing Biden’s victory.

Ten Republican lawmakers, including third-ranking House GOP leader Liz Cheney of Wyoming, voted to impeach Trump, cleaving the Republican leadership, and the party itself.

Cheney, whose father is the former Republican vice president, said of Trump’s actions summoning the mob that “there has never been a greater betrayal by a President” of his office.

Trump was said to be livid with perceived disloyalty from McConnell and Cheney.

With the team around Trump hollowed out and his Twitter account silenced by the social media company, the president was deeply frustrated that he could not hit back, according to White House officials and Republicans close to the West Wing who weren’t authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

From the White House, Trump leaned on Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to push Republican senators to resist, while chief of staff Mark Meadows called some of his former colleagues on Capitol Hill.

The president’s sturdy popularity with the GOP lawmakers’ constituents still had some sway, and most House Republicans voted not to impeach.

Security was exceptionally tight at the Capitol, with tall fences around the complex. Metal-detector screenings were required for lawmakers entering the House chamber, where a week earlier lawmakers huddled inside as police, guns drawn, barricaded the door from rioters.

“We are debating this historic measure at a crime scene,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

During the debate, some Republicans repeated the falsehoods spread by Trump about the election and argued that the president has been treated unfairly by Democrats from the day he took office.

Other Republicans argued the impeachment was a rushed sham and complained about a double standard applied to his supporters but not to the liberal left. Some simply appealed for the nation to move on.

Rep. Tom McClintock of California said, “Every movement has a lunatic fringe.”

Yet Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo. and others recounted the harrowing day as rioters pounded on the chamber door trying to break in. Some called it a “coup” attempt.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., contended that Trump was “capable of starting a civil war.”

Conviction and removal of Trump would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate, which will be evenly divided. Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania joined Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska over the weekend in calling for Trump to “go away as soon as possible.”

Fending off concerns that an impeachment trial would bog down his first days in office, Biden is encouraging senators to divide their time between taking taking up his priorities of confirming his nominees and approving COVID-19 relief while also conducting the trial.

The impeachment bill draws from Trump’s own false statements about his election defeat to Biden. Judges across the country, including some nominated by Trump, have repeatedly dismissed cases challenging the election results, and former Attorney General William Barr, a Trump ally, has said there was no sign of widespread fraud.

The House had first tried to persuade Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet to invoke their authority under the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Pence declined to do so, but the House passed the resolution anyway.

The impeachment bill also details Trump’s pressure on state officials in Georgia to “find” him more votes.

While some have questioned impeaching the president so close to the end of his term, there is precedent. In 1876, during the Ulysses Grant administration, War Secretary William Belknap was impeached by the House the day he resigned, and the Senate convened a trial months later. He was acquitted.

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