WASHINGTON (AP) – The process of ousting President Donald Trump could begin on the day of the inauguration, in the same way that Democrat Joe Biden takes the oath of office at an increasingly extraordinary end to the term of the defeated president in the House White.
The timetable is not set and depends largely on when the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, decides to forward the dismissal article to the Senate. Democrats hoping to avoid interrupting Biden’s inauguration have suggested he hold back until the new president has a chance to start his administration.
What is clear is that the upcoming trial will be unlike any other in the country’s history, the first by a president who no longer holds office. And, politically, it will force a recount among some Republicans who have sided with Trump throughout his presidency and have largely allowed him to spread false attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell is open to considering the impeachment, after telling associates he has ended Trump, but has not indicated how he would vote.
The Republican leader has great power in his party, although convening the trial will be one of his last acts as the majority leader. Two new senators from Georgia, both Democrats, are to be sworn into office leaving the chamber divided between 50 and 50. This gives the majority to Democrats once Kamala Harris takes office, as the vice president is broken.
In a note to his colleagues on Wednesday, McConnell said he “had not made a final decision on how I will vote” in a Senate impeachment trial.
Trump was ousted by the House on Wednesday for the deadly siege of the Capitol, the only president in U.S. history in two cases, after a pro-Trump crowd stormed the building. The attack has left the nation’s capital and other cities cited under high security amid threats of more violence around the inauguration.
Pelosi has not said when he will take the next step to convey the article of dismissal, a single charge of inciting insurrection.
Under the Senate procedure, the trial will begin shortly after the House delivers the dismissal article. This could mean starting the trial at 1pm on the day of the inauguration. The ceremony at the Capitol begins at noon.
After Trump’s first ouster, in 2019, he withheld the articles for some time to prepare the stage for Senate action.
Biden has said the Senate should be able to split its time and do both things: hold the trial and start working on its priorities.
With the Capitol secured by armed troops of the National Guard inside and out, the House voted Wednesday 232-197 to accuse Trump. Proceedings moved at lightning speed, with lawmakers voting just a week after violent pro-Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol, motivated by the president’s calls to “fight like hell.” against election results.
Ten Republicans fled Trump, joining Democrats who said accountability was needed and blatantly warned of a “clear and current danger” if Congress left him out of control before Democrat Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20. It was the most bipartisan presidential ouster of modern times, even more so than against Bill Clinton in 1998.
The Capitol uprising shocked and angered lawmakers, who were sent seeking security as the crowd descended, and revealed the fragility of the nation’s history of peaceful transfers of power.
Pelosi invoked Abraham Lincoln and the Bible, imploring lawmakers to keep the oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies, “foreigners and nationals.”
He said of Trump, “It has to go, it’s a clear and present danger to the nation we all love.”
Known in the White House, watching the proceedings on television, Trump later released a video statement in which he made no mention of the dismissal, but appealed to his supporters to refrain from any further violence or interruption of Biden’s inauguration.
“Like all of you, the calamity of the Capitol last week shocked and deeply saddened me,” he said, his first condemnation of the attack. He appealed to the unit “to move forward” and said, “Mafia violence goes against everything I believe and everything our movement represents …. No true supporter of mine could ever respect the forces of the order “.
Trump was first indicted by the House in 2019 for his dealings with Ukraine, but the Senate voted acquittal in 2020.
The Senate has not condemned any president, but Republicans have said this could change in a rapidly changing political environment as incumbents, donors, big business and others move away from the defeated president.
Trump’s conviction and removal would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate.
Biden said in a statement after the vote that he hoped the Senate leadership would “find a way to address its constitutional responsibilities in matters of dismissal while also working on other urgent matters in this nation.”
Unlike his first time, Trump faces this removal as a weakened leader, as he had lost his own re-election and Republican majority in the Senate.
In filing a case for the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required by the Constitution, the four-page dismissal resolution it is based on Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric and the falsehoods he spread about Biden’s election victory, included in a rally near the White House on the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The impeachment resolution also seeks to prevent Trump from running again.
A Capitol police officer died from his injuries during the riot, and police shot dead a woman during the siege. Three more people died in what authorities said were medical emergencies. The riot delayed the counting of votes by the Electoral College which was the last step in ending Biden’s victory.
Ten Republican lawmakers, including the third GOP leader in the House, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, voted to oust Trump, breaking the Republican leadership and the party itself.
Cheney, whose father is a former Republican vice president, said of Trump’s actions calling on the crowd that “there has never been a greater betrayal by a president” in office.
The president’s strong popularity among Republican Party lawmakers still had some influence, and most House Republicans voted not to contest.
Trump was said to be lawful with McConnell and Cheney’s perception of disloyalty.
Security was exceptionally tight on the Capitol, with high fences around the complex. Detections of metal detectors were needed for lawmakers to enter the House of Commons, where a week earlier lawmakers crowded inside as police, with guns drawn, barricaded the door of riot police.
The indictment bill is drawn from Trump’s false statements about his electoral defeat against Biden. Judges across the country, including some named by Trump, have repeatedly dismissed cases challenging election results, and former Attorney General William Barr, Trump’s ally, has said there is no evidence of widespread fraud.
While some have questioned the removal of the president so near the end of his term, there are precedents. In 1876, during the administration of Ulysses Grant, the Secretary of War, William Belknap, was charged by the House the day he resigned and the Senate summoned a trial months later. He was acquitted.
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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Andrew Taylor Alan Fram, Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.