House Democrats have introduced an article of impeachment against president Trump for “incitement of insurrection”.
If successful it would make Trump the only president in US history to be impeached twice.
Trump is accused of inciting insurrection after a violent mob of his supporters overpowered police, broke through security lines and rampaged through the Capitol last week in protest of the formalisation of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Five people, including a police officer, died as a result of the siege.
The violence came directly after Trump encouraged a crowd of supporters in DC to take action and repeated baseless claims of election fraud.
Despite later releasing a video condemning the violence, Trump was said to initially have been “delighted” at the chaos.
If successful, Trump would be removed from office and succeeded by the vice president, but only for a few days at most.
This is all happening against the quickly-approaching deadline of January 20, the day Joe Biden will be officially sworn in as the new US president.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats are keen to have a Senate trial straight away, as it would likely hamstring Biden’s first weeks in office and overshadow his agenda.
Democrats want to condemn the president’s actions swiftly but delay an impeachment trial for 100 days.