Meanwhile today the impeachment trial has started.

Democrats are aware that the trial outcome is a foregone conclusion – another Trump acquittal, barring sensational new evidence – and that the stakes are lower because he has already left office. But sometimes symbolism is the point. The impeachment trial is a test of accountability, stability and rule of law before a global audience.

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Like a criminal lawyer, Democrats are seeking to appeal to not only the head but also the heart. They are not only prosecutors but also survivors of the rampage, a point brought home with visceral force by Jamie Raskin in a closing argument that had the chamber silent and spellbound on Wednesday.

“And then there was a sound I will never forget,” he recalled. “The sound of pounding on the door like a battering ram. The most haunting sound I ever heard and I will never forget it.”

Raskin’s 25-year-old son, Tommy, a Harvard law student who struggled with depression, took his own life on New Year’s Eve. A day after Tommy was buried on 5 January, the congressman had brought his daughter and a son-in-law to the Capitol for the ratification of Biden’s victory.

He had assured them it would be safe but, after the mob stormed the building, they were hiding under a desk in a barricaded congressional office sending what they thought were final text messages to loved ones. More than an hour later, they were rescued by Capitol police.

Raskin, fighting back tears, said of his 24-year-old daughter: “I told her how sorry I was and I promised her that it would not be like this again the next time she came back to the Capitol with me. And you know what she said? She said, ‘Dad, I don’t want to come back to the Capitol.’”

At that Raskin broke down for a moment, putting fingers to his eyes before regaining his composure. “Of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day and since then, that one hit me the hardest. That and watching someone use an American flag pole, the flag still on it, to spear and pummel one of our police officers – ruthlessly, mercilessly tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life.”

It sounds maudlin, but it’s the truth.