Former President Trump has the dubious honor of being the only president who has been indicted twice and is also the first to face trial after leaving office, so the Senate will enter uncharted constitutional waters when it begins. the impeachment trial next month.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Friday night that the impeachment trial for Trump would begin Feb. 8. release the only indictment in the Senate on Monday, January 25th. Senators will be sworn in as members of the removal court the next day, Tuesday, January 26th.
Both the dismissal managers and Trump’s attorneys will have time to file legal briefs indicating their cases, before the trial formally begins two weeks after the article was first handed over to the Senate. The extra time allows both parties to prepare their submissions and allows senators to continue to confirm nominees in President Biden’s cabinet before all regular Senate business is stopped while a trial is held.
Although the senators participated in a trial for the removal of Mr. Trump just a year ago (the president was acquitted on February 5, 2020), the next trial is shaping up to be very different from the first.
The House first indicted Trump on December 18, 2019, after several weeks of hearings. The two dismissal articles accused him of “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress.” The vote to step down was divided almost entirely into partisan lines, with only one independent vote to dismiss Mr. Trump and three Democrats voting against the dismissal in at least one article.
Dismissal proceedings in this year’s House were a much faster and bipartisan affair. Trump was indicted for the second time a week after urging supporters to “fight like hell” to annul elections ahead of Congress’s scheduled counting of Electoral College results on Jan. 6. After his speech at the rally, a crowd of pro- Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol and killed five people. Congress did not recount the votes of the Electoral College for six hours and several Republican lawmakers still voted to annul the election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona.
Mr. Trump’s indictment was filed in the House of Commons on Jan. 11, as the House abandoned the traditional process of holding hearings and conducting an investigation into any wrongdoing. This time there was only one prosecution article, which accused Trump of “Incitement to Insurrection.” Ten Republicans joined all 222 Democrats in the vote to prosecute Mr. Trump, bringing the vote from 232 to 197.
After President Trump was ousted in 2019, President Nancy Pelosi did not announce the dismissal managers until January 15, 2020, almost a month later. This year, Pelosi announced the dismissal managers on the same day of the vote to remove Mr. Trump, January 13, 2021.
In 2020, Chief Justice John Roberts invested senators as members of the removal court on Jan. 16 and the trial began on Tuesday, Jan. 21. Trump was acquitted almost exactly two weeks later, on February 5th. Sen. Mitt Romney, voted to convict the president of an indictment, “Abuse of Power,” the only Republican to vote to accuse Mr. Trump of any charge.
This year’s trial is expected to be very different. Some Republicans have argued that it is unconstitutional to accuse a president who is no longer in office, but the Constitution does not specify whether a president needs to be in office to be charged.
It is also unclear how long the second trial will last or what evidence either party would choose to provide. Pelosi argued Thursday that this impeachment trial would differ from Trump’s first impeachment trial, which was triggered by a call he made to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019, urging Ukraine to investigate then-candidate Joe Biden. Trump defended his call for Zelensky as “perfect.”
“This year, everyone witnessed the president’s incitement, the execution of his call to action, and the violence that was used,” Pelosi said. “I see a big difference between something we all witnessed and what information you might need to justify a dismissal article based, in large part, on a call the president made and described as ‘perfect.’
Trump’s legal team has not yet been officially announced, but one of his attorneys will be South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers, who has experience representing scandals-wrapped politicians.
Although the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court traditionally presides over an indictment trial under the constitution, Roberts may not want to participate in a second indictment trial against Mr. Trump. In that case, Vice President Kamala Harris would preside over the trial as president of the Senate or, if he chooses against doing so, preside over Patrick Leahy, temporary president of the Senate.
A two-thirds majority of the Senate, 67 votes, is required to condemn the president. Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate and are unlikely to be able to get the support of 17 Republicans to condemn Trump, mostly because he is no longer in office. However, it is possible that more Republicans will vote to condemn Mr. Trump than in 2020, as some GOP senators have harshly criticized him for fomenting violence among his supporters on January 6th.
If Mr. Trump were convicted by the Senate, Congress would vote on whether to ban him from seeking re-elected office. Only a simple majority is needed to prevent him from holding office.
Many Republicans argue that holding a trial after Mr. Trump has left office is divisive, but Democrats reject that a removal trial is necessary for Trump to show that a president must be held accountable for his actions even in its last moment. month of his term in office.