
“President Trump may not know a lot about the framers, but they certainly knew a lot about him. Given the framers’ intense focus on danger to elections and the peaceful transfer of power, it is inconceivable that they designed impeachment to be a dead letter in the President’s final days in office, when opportunities to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power would be most tempting and most dangerous as we just saw. Thus, as a matter of history and original understanding, there is no merit to President Trump’s claim that he can incite an insurrection and then insist weeks later that the Senate lacks the power to even hear evidence at a trial, to even hold a trial.”
Rep. Jaime Raskin, in his opening statement during Donald Trump’s impeachment trial