Trump is accused of inciting his supporters ahead of a deadly riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 after failing to accept an electoral loss to Joe Biden.

Trump’s defence lawyers argued it was unconstitutional to put a private citizen through an impeachment process, saying Democrats are acting out of spite because they wanna remove a political rival.

Seventeen Republicans will need to turn against their former president to convict him, a rarity at the moment. The Republican senators who voted in favour of starting the trial of Trump include Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mitt Romney of Utah

Bill Cassidyl had previously voted to dismiss the trial but says the House prosecutors made “very good arguments”, noting he’d always planned to approach the trial “with an open mind” and as an “impartial juror”.

Once the trial starts, there will be four days of arguments followed by Senate questions and witnesses(if allowed)

Since just six Republicans sided with all 50 Democrats to proceed, it means there are 44 Republican senators who think there should be no trial at all.

17 Republicans will be needed to convict Trump and stop him from contesting for a public post in the future.

So if there aren’t 17 Republicans who think there should be a trial at all, it means the trial will not result in the conviction of Trump.

This is the first since a US drone strike on Iraqi soil killed a top Iranian general, straining Washington-Baghdad ties.

Iraq’s President Barham Saleh met with Trump on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland amid threats from Iran-backed militia groups promising to exact revenge should he sit down with the American president.

It was the first high-level meeting since the January 3 US drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis near Baghdad’s airport. The attack provoked the ire of Iraqi officials across the political spectrum and lead to the passing of a non-binding resolution to oust US troops from Iraq.

In response, Trump threatened sanctions in Iraq, which would have profound and devastating effects on the country’s economy if realized.

Trump said Washington and Baghdad have had “a very good relationship” and that the two countries had a “host of very difficult things to discuss,” in remarks to reporters.

Asked whether the administration was still considering slapping sanctions on Iraq, Trump said: “We’ll see what happens because we have to do things on our terms.”

Saleh interjected here, saying the two countries shared common interests including the fight against extremism, regional stability and an independent Iraq.

“And we’re also involved with them in their oil business, and that’s always been very important from their standpoint and from our standpoint. So we have a lot of very positive things to talk about,” said Trump.

Asked whether there was a plan for US troops to remain in Iraq, Trump said: “We’re down to 5,000. So we’re down to a very low number – historically low. And we’ll see what happens.”

There are approximately 5,200 US troops in Iraq advising and assisting Iraqi security forces in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The meeting between the two presidents took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday.

It came amid rising regional tensions that spilled over in Iraq after the killing of the leader of Iran’s Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani, and the simultaneous assassination of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces or PMF) in an airstrike ordered by Trump near Baghdad airport earlier this month.

Al-Muhandis was also the founder of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed armed group that the United States targeted in Iraq and Syria on December 30, killing at least 25 fighters and injuring more than 50. The attack was in response to the killing of a US civilian contractor two days earlier.

But as Biden seeks to leverage his freedom with a final campaign blitz in the critical early voting state, he and his advisers know that the proceedings in Washington could overshadow any closing case they try to present.

Although he will be far from Capitol Hill, Biden is intertwined with the root cause of Trump’s impeachment case: The president pressured the Ukraine president to declare a public investigation of Biden and his son Hunter Biden based on discredited theories about the younger Biden’s foreign business dealings.

Biden himself sought to sidestep the issue during public appearances on Monday. But aides to the former vice president worked furiously to get ahead of any effort by Senate Republicans to use the trial to malign him.

Kate Bedingfield and Tony Blinken, top campaign aides to Biden, distributed a memo to the media saying Trump “is the only American president to have weaponized foreign and national security policy in an attempt to coerce a foreign country into lying about a rival presidential candidate.”

The document reflects that Trump’s claims have no basis and underscores the Biden campaign’s long-established strategy of aggressively countering Trump’s broadsides, a lesson his aides say they learned from Hillary Clinton’s handling of Trump in 2016. But it is also an acknowledgment that Biden cannot necessarily control this story line, especially as some Republicans and conservative media push the idea, however unlikely, that the Bidens should testify before the Senate.

With that in mind, the memo urged media not to repeat a “malicious and conclusively debunked conspiracy theory” from the White House and GOP claiming that the Bidens engaged in wrongdoing when Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm while his father handled U.S. foreign affairs in the same country.

Indeed, Trump’s unsupported assertions have always depended on the discredited accusation that the elder Biden pressed for the firing of top Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to spare his son’s company, Burisma, from scrutiny. Ousting Shokin was, in fact, the official position of the U.S. government and its Western allies, including European Union nations and the International Monetary Fund leadership, because Shokin was believed to be incompetent or corrupt himself.

Then-President Barack Obama lauded the deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – as a “chapter in this pursuit of a safer and more helpful and more hopeful world,” and later called it “the strongest non-proliferation agreement ever negotiated.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, at the same time, called the landmark agreement a “historic deal and Iranians will be proud of it for generations to come.” People in Tehran danced in the streets to celebrate.

Four-and-a-half years later, this cooperation between the US and Iran has relapsed into enmity, and the optimism has faded into tensions so high they risk all-out war.

President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the deal in May 2018, citing a lack of trust in Iran and calling Obama’s work a bad deal. He then imposed punitive sanctions to cripple Iran’s economy in an unsuccessful effort to force the regime’s leaders to comply with US demands on its behavior.

Trump’s actions have been widely viewed as the catalyst of a series of escalating tensions between the US and Iran, which bubbled to a historic height in recent days.

On January 3, the US killed revered Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike ordered by Trump.

Two days later, Iran announced it was fully withdrawing from the JCPOA, having since last summer openly taken incremental steps from its commitments that could allow it to develop a potential nuclear weapon.

On Thursday, Rouhani said the country was enriching more uranium than it did before completing the JCPOA in 2015.

“How much of this shit do we have to listen to?” Trump said he asked. “How much are we going to listen to?”

The speech was not open to reporters but CNN obtained a recording of Trump’s remarks at Mar-a-Lago, which it said undermined official explanations for the decision to kill Suleimani at Baghdad airport on 3 January.

The White House has claimed Iran posed an “imminent” threat to US interests and lives. Trump’s own statements, including the claim that four embassies were threatened, have muddied the water considerably.

He has also claimed “it doesn’t really matter” whether the attack was imminent or not or whether his advisers were in agreement, because of “the terrorist” Suleimani’s “horrible past”.

Congress was not informed of the strike in advance, its eventual notification was heavily classified and a congressional briefing prompted bipartisan protest. Democrats have proposed legislation to rein the president in.

The death of Suleimani prompted Tehran to launch retaliatory rocket strikes on US targets in Iraq. Having said no one was hurt, the Trump administration said on Friday 11 US service members in fact suffered blast-related concussions.

“The so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ of Iran, who has not been so Supreme lately, had some nasty things to say about the United States and Europe,” Trump tweeted of Khamenei’s comments earlier Friday in Tehran.

According to Trump, Khamenei’s blistering speech, in which he attacked the “vicious” United States and described Britain, France and Germany as “America’s lackey’s,” was a mistake.

“Their economy is crashing, and their people are suffering. He should be very careful with his words!” Trump tweeted.

Defense One reported on Thursday night that 11 US troops sustained injuries in the strikes, which followed report after report after report that some Americans were blown out of towers and received concussions when the missiles hit.

That prompted the Pentagon, following a week of administration assurances that the US had suffered no casualties, to admit there were indeed victims of the Islamic Republic’s assault.

Those service members from al-Asad airbase in Iraq were “treated for concussion symptoms from the blast and are still being assessed” in Germany and Kuwait, Capt. Bill Uriarte, a spokesperson for US Central Command, said in a Thursday night statement sent to reporters.

“When deemed fit for duty, the service members are expected to return to Iraq following screening. The health and welfare of our personnel is a top priority and we will not discuss any individual’s medical status,” he added.

President Donald Trump’s clear red line with Iran was that its military or regional proxies couldn’t kill an American. If they did, the US would respond forcefully. He followed through on that red line in late December after a Tehran-backed proxy militia killed a US contractor in Iraq, prompting the president to strike five of the group’s sites, leaving 25 members dead and another 50 injured.

And after members of that same militia — Kata’ib Hezbollah — surrounded and breached the US Embassy in Baghdad on New Year’s Eve, setting the front reception room ablaze, Trump opted to kill top Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani on January 2.

Six days later, Iran responded with its own counterstrike, launching 16 missiles at the al-Asad airbase and another site in Iraq’s north.

Thankfully, no one died in the attack — leading many to speculate that Iran had purposely tried to avoid killing anyone to try to limit the potential US response.

The State Department called off two briefings that had been scheduled for Wednesday, Senate and House aides confirm to CNN.

Congressional lawmakers had been slated to receive a briefing on embassy security while the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had expected to hear from top State Department officials about the administration’s Iran policy and authorities for the use of force before the last-minute schedule changes.

FBI officials had been expected to brief a group of House lawmakers on counterintelligence issues related to Iran on Wednesday in a separate closed-door session but those plans also changed at the last moment, according to two sources familiar with the planning. The reason for the cancellation remains unclear but the briefing was added to the calendar late last week, one of the sources said.

The FBI did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Additionally, the Pentagon scrapped Thursday’s classified briefing on Iran for the House Armed Services Committee due to scheduling issues, according to a US defense official and House side.

“This threat exists,” said the German defence minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, at a press conference in London.

She was asked about an article in the Washington Post that claimed Trump had secretly warned France, Germany and the UK that the US would impose a “25% tariffs on European cars” if they did not activate the mechanism for the settlement of disputes (MRD) of the Iranian international nuclear agreement reached in Vienna in 2015.

Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters on Thursday: “This expression or threat, as you will, does exist.” She is in the UK to meet her counterpart, Ben Wallace, to discuss Anglo-European defence cooperation post-Brexit.

Her remarks came as ministers from the five countries with nationals killed in the Ukrainian plane downed by the Iranian military met in London to coordinate their response to the Iran’s handling of the crash inquiry, as well as treatment of victim’s families.

Following the meeting the ministers called for an independent and transparent investigation governed by international civil aviation conventions. With emotions running high over the US assassination of Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani, as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ belated admission of responsibility for downing the jet, Iran is likely to bridle at being told how to carry out its own inquiry.

A Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 plane was shot down outside Tehran killing all 176 crew and passengers. Iran’s handling of the crash led to four days of street protests mainly in Tehran.

Iran initially denied responsibility for the crash, but three days later admitted that it had downed the plane believing it was an incoming US missile. An Iranian national security commission is investigating the episode.

There is concern that some in Iran are refusing to cooperate with the international investigation and refusing to hand over the black box flight recorder. There are claims within the country that the US may have jammed Iranian radar, making it impossible for the anti-aircraft battery operator to have checked the status of the plane.

Trump made his tariffs threat to Europe relatively recently and European diplomats insist they had already made the decision in principle to trigger the dispute mechanism because of previous Iranian steps away from the deal, but had not announced the move in deference to a request from China.

As a result they claim the Trump threat did not push Europe into abandoning its policy of trying to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive.

But the threat is a further insight into Trump’s modus operandi, with Europe – in effect using threats of economic sanctions and the power of the dollar to try to force Europe to follow US foreign policy.

The news will only confirm the view of Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, that Europe is failing to stand up to a high school bully. Zarif met the EU external affairs chief, Josep Borrell, to discuss the European decision to trigger the dispute mechanism, describing it as “a strategic mistake”.

Meanwhile, the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, revealed that Iran is now enriching more uranium than it did before it agreed to a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015.

Speaking on live TV on Thursday, Rouhani said: “We are enriching more uranium than before the deal was reached … Pressure has increased on Iran but we continue to progress.”

Iran has gradually scaled back its commitments under the nuclear deal in retaliation to Washington’s withdrawal from the pact in 2018 and its reimposition of sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.

Trump withdrew from the nuclear agreement in part because it did not address Iran’s support for armed groups across the region and its ballistic missile programme.

Iran continued to abide by the agreement until last summer, when it began openly breaching some of its limits, saying it would not be bound by the deal if it saw none of its promised economic benefits.

After the airstrike on 3 January that killed Gen Qassem Suleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional military operations, Iran said it would abandon all restrictions in the nuclear deal.