Impeachment proves imperfect amid US polarization

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Three Republican senators spent an hour talking strategy with lawyers for the accused. The entire Senate served as jurors even though they were also targets of the crime. No witnesses were called. And the outcome was never in doubt.

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump laid bare the deep imperfections in the Constitution’s only process for holding a president accountable for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The proceedings packed an emotional punch and served as history’s first accounting of the January 6 riots on the US Capitol, but the inherently political process never amounted to a real and unbiased effort to determine how the insurrection unfolded and whether Trump was responsible.