Impeachment trial – live: Trump poured ‘kerosene on the flames’ as Pence family fled for lives, Democrats say

Donald Trump's former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has said there is "no chance" his old boss will be convicted in his Senate impeachment trial.

"There is absolutely no chance that Donald Trump will be convicted in the Senate trial," Mr Mulvaney told Sky News Australia. "No chance that he will be disqualified from further office."

Mr Mulvaney said Mr Trump's rhetoric did not rise to incitement of the insurrection, but he added he was "extraordinary disappointed and saddened by the president's behaviour during the riot itself. He did not come out strong enough against the rioters while the events were taking place".

The stage appears mostly set for Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial scheduled to commence in earnest on 9 February.

The nine Democratic House impeachment managers have laid out their case against the former president in a pre-trial brief, and Mr Trump’s legal team has filed a memorandum of its own in defence of his actions surrounding the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol.

While the senators who will hear the case appear to be crystallising mostly along party lines on their positions to convict or acquit Mr Trump, there is half-a-degree less certainty about the outcome of the second Trump impeachment trial than the first one.

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Donald Trump's last year as president saw the US post its largest annual trade deficit since the 2008 financial crash.

The US trade deficit, which is the amount by which imports exceed the value of exports, hit $678.7 billion in 2020, a more-than $100bn increase on the previous year.

Here is a graph illustrating the plunge, shared by Liz Ann Sonders, Charles Schwab's chief investment strategist.

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, was impeached for an unprecedented second time on 13 January 2021, with the House of Representatives voting 232-197 in favour of an article charging him with “incitement of insurrection”.

This historic gesture happened one week on from the storming of the US Capitol Building by a mob of enraged Trump supporters, whipped up by the president’s words at a “Save America” rally staged nearby to coincide with the certification of the previous November’s election results in a Joint Session of Congress.

The incumbent had comprehensively lost the presidential race to Democrat Joe Biden, the Electoral College slipping out of his clutches by a landslide final score of 306-232 and the popular vote by a margin of 7m ballots.

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The likelihood of Donald Trump's impeachment acquittal worries some senators, who fear the consequences for the country. Some have floated the possibility of censuring Mr Trump after the trial to ensure that he is punished in some way for the riot.

But there also may be another way for Congress to bar Mr Trump from holding future office.

In an opinion piece published last month in The Washington Post, Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman and Indiana University law professor Gerard Magliocca suggested Congress could turn to a provision of the 14th Amendment that is aimed at preventing people from holding federal office if they are deemed to have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the Constitution.

The professors wrote that if a majority vote of both Houses agree that Mr Trump engaged in an act of "insurrection or rebellion", then he would be barred from running for the White House again. Only a two-thirds vote of each chamber of Congress in the future could undo that result.

Donald Trump's historic second Senate impeachment trial is imminent but the opening arguments could still be about a month away, according to a newly-released impeachment schedule.

The House voted to impeach Mr Trump for an unprecedented second time on 13 January, accusing him of "incitement to insurrection" over the US Capitol riot that left five people dead, the ballot passing 232-197 with 10 Republicans crossing the aisle to side with their opposition.

Democrats then urged then-majority leader Mitch McConnell to call an emergency session of the upper chamber of Congress to begin the trial early in an attempt to convict and remove the 45th president from office, only for Mr McConnell to decline, arguing that a fair hearing would be impossible to arrange in that time frame and insisting it should start after the inauguration of Joe Biden on 20 January.

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Alexander Vindman and his twin brother Yevgeny have posted on Twitter a year after they were removed from the National Security Council by the Trump administration over their stance ahead of and during Donald Trump's first impeachment trial.

Alexander Vindman testified during the trial, and both had together raised concerns beforehand about the July 2019 call between Mr Trump and the Ukrainian president that became the subject of impeachment.

"One year ago today @YVindman and I were escorted off the White House grounds because we believe #HereRightMatters. Much has change for my family and me. I wouldn’t change a thing and have no regrets," Alexander Vindman tweeted on Sunday.

Donald Trump’s lawyer, Bruce Castor, who is going to lead his defence during the impeachment trial on Monday, has said that he is planning to show videos of Democrats allegedly cheering on protestors during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) rallies in 2020, to bolster his defence.

Mr Castor, who is the former acting attorney general of Pennsylvania, said: “there’s a lot of tape of cities burning and courthouses being attacked and federal agents being assaulted by rioters in the streets, cheered on by Democrats throughout the country.”

He emphasised that many of these (videos) shot in Washington are using really the most inflammatory rhetoric possible to use but there would be no suggestion that they did “anything to incite any of the actions,” reported Fox News.

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Liz Cheney has refused to apologise for impeaching Donald Trump - one of the few Republicans to do so - despite pressure from House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, according to Axios.

"I cannot do that. It was a vote of conscience. It was a vote of principle - a principle on which I stand and still believe," the GOP congresswoman reportedly told colleagues at a conference meeting last week.

Following a vote among GOP House members as to whether Ms Cheney should be ousted as conference chair, she ultimately won by a comfortable 145-61.

Theresa May wanted to call her husband to warn him that she had been photographed holding hands with Donald Trump before it “hit the media”, a new documentary has revealed.

A former aide of Ms May explained that the awkward encounter unfolded while the then prime minister had visited the White House to persuade Mr Trump to make a supportive statement about Nato.

According to the aide, who appears in the new BBC Documentary, Trump Takes on the World by documentary maker Norma Percy, Ms May was “surprised” when he took her hand as they walked through the White House.

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