As Democrats delve into a post-term indictment trial of President Donald Trump, a key question remains: will Chief Justice Roberts take over the case?
Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul says he will not do so, making the exercise “a false, partisan dismissal,” lawmaker Sean Hannity told Fox News Friday.
Paul stated that Roberts “said in private that he should not come unless it is a dismissal the president “.
Under the U.S. Constitution, “when the president of the United States is tried, he will preside over the judge in chief,” a requirement that is not made for any other case of dismissal.
While lawmakers debated the legitimacy of the dismissal, the Biden administration continued to keep its distance from the issue.
“Congress will do what Congress does,” Ashley Etienne, communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, told MSNBC on Saturday.
One thing Trump’s enemies seem to be doing in Congress is grabbing straws, even reaching for a post-Civil War amendment.
Several Democrats have come up with the idea of punishing Trump with the 14th Amendment rule that closes those who “participated in insurrection or rebellion” out of office.
“I certainly think there’s a separate 14th Amendment avenue and part of the removal,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told The Hill.
But the strict, which was written to prevent former Confederate loyalists from regaining power while the United States fought for Reconstruction, has not been used since, and would provoke a lengthy legal battle if Congress tried to invoke it. lo, say legal experts.
Meanwhile, with Trump already in the White House, Republicans like Paul continued to ridicule the dismissal as “an illegitimate procedure.”
Roberts, who has not said publicly whether he will preside over the trial, has two more weeks to decide.
After House removal officials on Monday read their indictment articles accusing Trump of inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot, the Senate will delay the trial until the week of Feb. 8 because the president Biden may put his administration into operation, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced on Friday.
If Trump is convicted by a two-thirds majority in the Senate, Schumer could call a second ballot, which would only require a simple majority, preventing him from running for office again.
But the conviction will require the votes of at least 17 Republicans in the Senate, an increasingly remote possibility, as more party members rise to Paul’s argument that only an incumbent president can be indicted.
“It will be hard to get even a handful” of GOP defectors, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) Told CNN, because “everyone has opinions that are a kind of constitutional concern.”