On the day of his first expected impeachment, United States president Donald Trump fired off a tweet.
"Can you believe that I will be impeached today by the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats, AND I DID NOTHING WRONG!" he wrote.
"...This should never happen to another President again.
"Say a prayer!"
The call for divine intervention on what pundits described as judgement day followed a dramatic three years in the White House.
Some Democrats had floated the idea of impeaching Trump since before he had even taken office due to their concerns that some of his assets could potentially pose a conflict of interest once he was sitting behind the Resolute desk.
"The American people deserve to know that the president of the United States is working to do what's best for the country — not using his office to do what's best for himself and his businesses," Elizabeth Warren said in a statement at the time.
But when the president was impeached on December 18, 2019, it was on an entirely different matter.
Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after Democrats charged him with pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations into White House rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
The momentous day reflected the deep polarisation gripping US politics in Trump's first term and was one for the history books.
Only two other presidents had been impeached: Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998.
But many Americans barely registered the extraordinary turn of events in Washington DC as they went about their usual Wednesday activities.
It all started with a phone call
In July 2019, the US president called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to congratulate him on his election victory before the conversation turned to Ukraine's imminent purchase of American anti-tank missiles.
"I would like you to do us a favour," Trump said to Zelenskyy, according to a reconstructed transcript of the call.
A member of the intelligence community, who later became a whistleblower, was listening to the call and became so alarmed by what the president said next that he reported the conversation to his superiors.
He accused Trump of proposing a quid pro quo arrangement with Zelenskyy in which the US would provide $US391 million ($591 million) in military aid to Ukraine in exchange for information on Hunter Biden.
The White House denied this.
Two months later, the Democrats announced they would hold a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump over the matter, which culminated in a recommendation of two articles of impeachment.
Impeachment is seen as an important check on presidential power.
But it is the most rarely used of the multiple tools Congress has to supervise the executive branch.
Throughout the three-month impeachment probe, Trump remained indignant, regularly taking aim at Democrats in angry, capital-letter-heavy tirades on Twitter.
In a rambling six-page letter delivered to House speaker Nancy Pelosi, he wrote that the effort to impeach him amounted to a declaration of "open war on American Democracy", where he had less due process than "those accused in the Salem Witch Trials".
Despite his protests, the inquiry went ahead and judgement day arrived.
Impeached
The House of Representatives can impeach a president by a simple majority vote.
If successful, it goes to a trial in the Senate, and afterwards two-thirds of the upper chamber have to vote to convict to remove the president.
One of the charges against Trump was abuse of power over the withholding of military aid to prod Zelenskyy to do as he asked.
A second charge was related to obstruction of Congress after the White House blocked testimony and documents sought by the House impeachment investigators.
On the day of Trump's impeachment, a marathon debate took place in the House before two back-to-back votes were held.
Democrat Adam B Schiff, who was the Intelligence Committee chairman leading the impeachment inquiry into Trump, told the room they had found "incontrovertible evidence that president Trump abused his power by pressuring the newly elected president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into president Trump's political rival".
"The president and his men plot on. The danger persists. The risk is real. Our democracy is at peril," he said.
Both articles passed in the House, formally impeaching the US president.
As the vote proceeded, Trump was speaking at a rally in Michigan and insisted he had done nothing wrong.
"I don't know about you but I'm having a good time, it's crazy," Trump told supporters.
His verbal shrug made sense a month later.
With a little help from Mitch McConnell, the Republican-controlled Senate cleared Trump on both charges, but largely agreed that Trump's actions were improper.
The third impeachment trial of a president in American history turned out to be the shortest.
Trump's acquittal and the implications
The 45th president staged a press conference the day after the Senate vote and held aloft a copy of the Washington Post with the headline "Trump Acquitted".
Democrats expressed concern the acquittal would only further embolden a man they depicted as a demagogue and set an alarming precedent for future presidents.
Trump lost the 2020 election, but he returned to the White House four years later.
During that time, the president's opponents assumed that a series of investigations and scandals that would have ended the political aspirations of conventional politicians would also doom him.
But the former businessman's many controversies only roused Trump and his base.
So what did impeaching Trump mean in the long run?
Impeachment votes are only a quasi-legal process, as opposed to a definitive ruling of whether a president broke the law.
The proceedings are inherently political, with the votes usually taking place along party lines, and are designed to "maintain constitutional government".
Scholars believe the process can deliver a definitive statement on what no future president ought to do.
Now, almost a year into his second presidency, it does not appear as if Trump's first impeachment trial affected his approach to the country's highest office.
