Witness to a prosecution

US impeachment process holds salutary lessons

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives will vote to impeach Donald Trump, marking only the third time in the nation’s 243-year history that a president will be impeached. The Democrats’ commanding majority (233-197) in the 435-member House ensures that its vote will prevail even if a couple of its members choose to vote against impeachment. Equally predictably, the Senate, in which the Republicans hold 53 of the 100 seats, will vote not to remove him from office. This foregone conclusion, a symptom of the extreme polarisation of American politics, suggests that the process has been a monumental exercise in