Impeachments of Donald Trump

Donald Trump holds a distinction no other president shares: he was impeached twice by the House of Representatives, in December 2019 and again in January 2021. Both times the Senate acquitted him, but together the proceedings marked an extraordinary escalation in the use of Congress's ultimate check on a president — twice in fourteen months, against the same man.

The first impeachment centered on a July 2019 phone call in which Trump pressed Ukraine's president to investigate his political rival Joe Biden while military aid to Ukraine was being withheld. The House charged him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate trial in February 2020 ended in acquittal along party lines, with Republican Mitt Romney crossing over to become the first senator ever to vote to convict a president of his own party.

The second impeachment came with stunning speed after the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters seeking to overturn his election defeat. The House charged him with "incitement of insurrection" a week later, making him the only president impeached after leaving the normal bounds of office contestation. The Senate vote of 57–43 to convict fell short of the required two-thirds, though seven Republicans joined in voting against him — the most bipartisan impeachment verdict in history.

The two impeachments crystallized the polarization of the Trump era. To his opponents they documented serious abuses; to his supporters they were partisan weapons that failed to remove him and did nothing to slow his hold on the Republican Party. Both acquittals reaffirmed how high the Constitution sets the bar for removing a president.