What were the specific charges in Donald Trump's January 6 impeachment?
Executive summary
The House of Representatives adopted a single article of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump in January 2021 charging him with "incitement of insurrection" for his role in the events surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol; the article alleged he encouraged and foreseeably resulted in lawless action, sought his removal and disqualification from future office, and was transmitted to the Senate for trial, which ended in acquittal [1] [2] [3].
1. The formal charge: “incitement of insurrection” and where it came from
The impeachment resolution introduced by House Democrats and adopted by the House contained one article accusing President Trump of "incitement to insurrection" — a narrowly framed constitutional charge asserting that his words and conduct on and before January 6 willfully encouraged violence and an attempt to obstruct the constitutional duty of Congress to certify the electoral vote [2] [4]. The resolution’s text linked Trump’s January 6 remarks and prior efforts to subvert the 2020 election to a pattern of conduct that, the House argued, made him a continuing threat to the republic and thus subject to impeachment, removal, and disqualification under the Constitution and section 3 of the 14th Amendment [2].
2. The House process and vote that produced the single article
The House moved quickly: the article was introduced and approved by the Judiciary Committee staff’s compilation of evidence and then adopted by the full House on January 13, 2021; contemporary reports and reference works record the House passage and the delivery of the single article to the Senate by the House impeachment managers to initiate the trial phase [5] [1] [3]. Official legislative text and contemporary reporting make clear the managers presented an 80‑page pretrial brief to the Senate asserting Trump’s central responsibility for the violent breach of the Capitol [6] [1].
3. What the article sought as relief: removal and disqualification
Beyond alleging incitement, the House article explicitly stated that Trump’s conduct warranted impeachment and trial, removal from office, and "disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States," citing the risk he posed to national security, democracy and the rule of law — language drawn from the article’s text on Congress.gov [2]. The inclusion of disqualification signals that the House was not only seeking retrospective judgment but also a preventive constitutional remedy rooted in impeachment’s historical purpose [2].
4. The Senate trial, defenses advanced, and the outcome
The Senate trial began after Trump left office; his defense invoked First Amendment protections and argued that political speech and presidential communication were not impeachable under those constraints, and some Senate Republicans questioned the constitutionality of trying a former president — arguments recorded in constitutional annotations and contemporaneous accounts [4] [6]. The Senate voted to acquit on February 13, 2021, with 57 senators voting to convict and 43 to acquit — short of the two‑thirds threshold required for conviction — leaving Trump acquitted of the single article [3] [7].
5. Competing narratives, legal claims, and limits of the record
Supporters of the impeachment point to the text of the article and the House managers’ brief documenting statements they say foreseeably led to violence; defenders relied on free‑speech and procedural arguments, and some senators emphasized constitutional doubts about post‑term trials — positions recorded in the Library of Congress annotation and trial materials [5] [4] [6]. Reporting and official texts in this record describe the charge and the process, but do not resolve contested factual or legal questions about causation, criminality, or the precise constitutional limits of impeachment speech protections; those debates informed, but did not change, the single‑article charge the House adopted [2] [4].