The Second Trump Impeachment Trial

This chapter traces the influence of Warren Hastings' 1788–95 impeachment trial on the development and practice of American impeachment, from its constitutional origins through Donald Trump's second impeachment following the January 6 Capitol riot. It argues that the Hastings case, unfolding as the American Framers debated the Constitution, shaped their adoption of a two-stage House–Senate process and the deliberately vague ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ standard. The chapter then examines how these tensions between impeachment as constitutional safeguard and as partisan weapon recur across the Johnson, Clinton, and Trump cases, with particular attention to the events of January 6, the constitutional debate over trying a former president, and the eventual Senate acquittal. It concludes by comparing the decades-long rehabilitation of Hastings' reputation with the far more compressed post-impeachment trajectory of Trump and reflects on what this comparison reveals about the durability of impeachment as a mechanism of political accountability.