Warren Hastings, the 18th-century British governor-general of Bengal, figured intriguingly in the US Senate trial when the prosecutors cited his impeachment by the British House of Commons after he had left his Indian position as a precedent for trying Donald Trump who is no longer the president.

During the arguments on Tuesday on the constitutionality of holding the impeachment trial of Trump when he has already left office, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives, the lead prosecutor, gave the precedent of the impeachment trial of Hastings, which began 233 years ago this month, nearly four years after his governor-generalship ended and he returned to England.

Raskin suggested that the Hastings impeachment in 1787 was a model for framers of the US Constitution who drafted it the same year.

He said there were several impeachments of people who had left office during the lifetime of the drafters of the US Constitution and “indeed, the most famous of these impeachments occurred while the framers gathered in Philadelphia to write the Constitution. It was the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the former governor-general of the British colony of Bengal.”

Another prosecutor, Democratic Joe Neguse, also mentioned the impeachment of Hastings.

Trump's lead lawyer Bruce Castor countered that it had no relevance to the US: “We left the British system.”

If the history of Britain is to be used, he said, “then the question is, (should) we have a parliament and we have a king?"

He asked, "Is that what we are headed for?”

The framers of the Constitution rejected the British model that allowed for the impeachment of anyone except the king and narrowed it to only those holding office, another defence lawyer, David Schoen said.

Hastings was ultimately acquitted by the House of Lords in 1795, eight years after he was impeached. He had been charged with corruption, misuse of authority and mistreatment and improper execution of Indians.

At the start of the trial, the Senate had to resolve the question of whether Trump can be impeached after he has left office.

Ultimately, the Senate voted 56-44 that under the Constitution it had the power to try Trump even after he left office.