S Senate.

The former president is charged with inciting insurrection in a speech to supporters ahead of the deadly right of the U.

S Capitol on the sixth of January.

Impeachment is the process where a public official can be charged with high crimes or misdemeanors.

They then tried in the U.

S.

Senate.

Although it's not a criminal trial, a two thirds majority is required to reach a verdict, and it could lead to a ban on holding public office.

Our North America editor, John Circle, is in Washington for us.

So John, what's been said so far?

Well, the Trump legal team have tried to have the whole case dismissed on constitutional grounds that you can't impeach somebody who's left office while we've been on air in the last few moments, uh, senators have rejected that appeal from the Trump legal team, but the real significance is how many Republicans voted toe.

Have the case dismissed on that would suggest that there is an unlikely chance that Donald Trump will be convicted by that two thirds majority.

Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye in the building where a policeman of four protesters lost their lives where the Trump supporting mob run amok last month.

Donald Trump today went on trial on the question of whether Donald John Trump is subject to the jurisdiction of a quart of impeachment charged with inciting an insurrection of the capital.

The most serious accusation ever leveled at an American president.

The Democratic Party prosecutors setting out a vivid and searing video timeline.

Theo, leading the Democratic team, is a congressman who buried his son the day before the riots on he persuaded his wife and daughter to come to the capital to witness American democracy on the peaceful transfer of power.

She said, Dad, I don't want to come back to the capital of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day and since then that one hit me the hardest.

That, and watching someone use an American flag pole the flag still on it to spear and pummel one of our police officers ruthlessly, mercilessly.

If Donald Trump is to avoid conviction, it won't be because senators will forgive or condone his behavior.

Instead, it will rely on a constitutional argument that you can't impeach a former president.

The Trump legal team, though, seemed to be struggling to make their case that I don't know about off the top of my head, but each one of them.

Once there was the vacuum created that the greatest deliberative bodies the Senate of Greece sitting in Athens, the Senate of Rome, the beating heart of US democracy is now padlocked and chained.

There are miles of fencing and razor wire on literally thousands of deployed National Guardsmen.

This is Fortress Congress beyond the heavily guarded perimeter.

Ah, few protesters air making their point a far cry from what the trump supporting insurgents found a month ago.

When they've taken the former president at his word, we fight like hell.

And if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore.

The trump defenses that his speech was figurative are not literal.

But the new president is trying to put maximum distance between himself on what's unfolding at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Senate has their job.

They're about to begin it.

I'm sure they're gonna conduct themselves well on uh, that's all I'm gonna have to say about impeachment.

Thank you.

Since leaving office Donald Trump has spent more or less every day playing golf, but you can be sure that today he'll be watching and closely.