The United States House of Representatives, as scheduled, presented Donald Trump's indictment in the Senate at the end of the day on Monday.
The former president is accused of having incited the insurrection in a speech given to his supporters on January 6 before the deadly attack on the Capitol.
Nine Democratic personalities from the House of Representatives, accompanied by the Clerk of the House and the Acting Sergeant-at-Arms, brought the charge to the Senate in a solemn procession through the Capitol.
As they arrived in the upper chamber, Jamie Raskin read the indictment.
"Donald John Trump has committed serious crimes and misdemeanors by inciting violence against the government of the United States," he declared, officially opening this historic impeachment trial for "incitement to insurgency".
First US president to stand trial after leaving office
Donald Trump is the only US president to have been impeached by the House twice;
he is about to become the first to be tried after leaving office.
His term ended last Wednesday, but Democrats and some Republicans want to remove him from the political future of the United States.
The violence was such on January 6 that ten Republicans in the House joined Democrats in voting to impeach Trump on January 13.
In the Senate, it will take the votes of 17 Republican senators in addition to all the Democratic senators, who could be divided on the subject.
Joe Biden reportedly said in an interview with CNN on Monday that he didn't think there would be enough votes to condemn Trump.
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Senate leaders agreed on Friday to postpone the trial for two weeks to give Trump more time to prepare his defense and allow the chamber to focus on Biden's top priorities, including his cabinet appointment and plan to saving the economy.
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The trial will open on February 9.
The nine Democrats who laid the indictment will be prosecutors.
The 100 senators must be jurors.
Democrat Patrick Leahy, 80,
pro tempore
president
of the Senate, that is to say the most formerly elected, will preside over the trial.
Trump's first impeachment trial, following his request for an investigation of Biden and his son from the Ukrainian president, was chaired by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Although the Constitution calls for the president of the Supreme Court of the United States to preside over presidential impeachments, a senator presides when the impeached person is not the current president, a Senate source said.
In anticipation of February 9, some of the thousands of National Guard soldiers who secured Joe Biden's inauguration ceremony remain for the moment.
Authorities, including the mayor of Washington DC, fear further incidents when the hearing takes place.
"You must show your strength", had launched Trump
The indictment focuses on the speech Donald Trump gave to his supporters near the White House on January 6.
He had repeated his claims - never proven in court - that the election had been rigged.
He had urged the crowd to march on the Capitol where the official certification of Joe Biden's victory was taking place.
We must "stop electoral theft", he had proclaimed, "fight much harder", "you must show your strength", he had launched, to use "different rules".
A crowd of rioters had managed to enter the holy of holies, the Capitol, symbol, along with the Supreme Court, of American democracy.
The lawmakers had been evacuated and hidden.
Five people, including a police officer, had died.
However, the indictment was transmitted to the Senate, Donald Trump, from Mar-a-Lago where he settled on Wednesday, opened an "office of the former president".
This office will, according to its first official statement, "be responsible for handling President Trump's correspondence, public statements, appearances and official activities in order to advance the interests of the United States and to pursue the agenda of the Trump administration through defense, organization and public activism ”.
