As the historic second impeachment trial of Donald Trump got underway on Tuesday afternoon, the former President decided to spend the entire week watching events unfold on TV.

“A notable difference from Trump’s first impeachment trial will be the expected silence from the accused. During his first impeachment trial, Trump kept up a running commentary on Twitter, at one point posting 142 tweets in a single day as prosecutors laid out their case against him. Americans will be deprived of Trump’s analysis this time round, after he was banned from Twitter, Facebook and YouTube following the Capitol assault,” The Guardian reports.

A 56-44 vote at the end of the arguments determined the trial to be constitutional — so further proceedings can now go ahead. 6 Republicans broke rank with their party to vote in favour of the constitutionality of the trial. Forty-five Republican senators had already signed on to a motion before the trial started arguing that the proceeding is unconstitutional. Eventually, one more Republican senator defected at the end of Day One of the trials.

Who presides over the trial?

Trump’s first impeachment was presided over by Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, according to US Constitution. However, as this trial is of former president, the longest-serving Democratic senator, Patrick Leahy, who holds the title of president pro tempore – will preside. It will be prosecuted by a team of nine impeachment managers from the House, and the whole Senate was sworn in as the jury on 26 January.

What could happen after the trial?

Since Mr. Trump is no longer in office, he can’t be removed from it which is what a conviction would normally lead to. Instead, in this unusual case, there could be another separate vote to bar him from running for office again. That would require a simple majority vote and would prevent him from running for President in 2024 which he has indicated he might want to do.

But even in the unlikely event that he is convicted and barred from running for federal office again, Mr. Trump could still continue to remain a force in American politics by endorsing candidates, holding rallies or becoming a conservative media personality.

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The tools that came into questions were Tasks and Centra. They are used to coordinate censorship wit Twitter and Google and monitor Facebook user activity across the internet, respectively.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley on Twitter wrote, “”Zuckerberg admits @Facebook DOES have ‘tools’ to track its users across the internet, across platforms, across accounts – all without user knowledge. I ask how many times this tool has been used domestically against Americans. Zuck won’t say.” He then attached a screenshot of the internal tool.

Rush gets it: Zuckerberg admitted under oath today that Facebook DOES have the ability to coordinate censorship with @Twitter and @Google, and a FB whistleblower has explained how they do it https://t.co/p3qSK2NtKB

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) November 17, 2020

Zuckerberg, however, did not confirm “whether Facebook ever uses Centra to track and monitor American citizens.” Hawley further noted, “Mark Zuckerberg under oath to me today: I don’t know, I can’t recall, I don’t remember, I’ll follow up later, let me get back to you.”

According to the whistleblower that Hawley mentioned, the tool Centra is used to track user behaviour across the internet without their knowledge. It tracks different profiles that a user visits, their message recipients, their linked accounts, the pages they visit around the web that have Facebook buttons.

Senator Hawley also spoke about internal platform tasks that Facebook uses for co-ordinated content moderation with other companies. However Zuckerberg denied the claim.

Zuckerberg said that there were coordination and sharing signals on security-related topics about terrorism, images of child exploitation and foreign election inference.

Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey were testified about their platforms, misinformation and the 2020 election before the members of the Senate Judiciary committee on November 17.

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