Trump impeachment trial timeline unclear
While the timeline for President Trump’s second U.S. Senate impeachment trial remained murky, one thing was clear — Alan Dershowitz won’t be representing him.
The Harvard Law professor told the Herald on Thursday that he is “not going to be involved” with Trump’s official legal team, just days after saying he “would” rush to the president’s defense.
Instead, Dershowitz said, “I’m going to be defending him in the court of public opinion.”
The celebrity lawyer called the U.S. House vote to impeach Trump a week after the deadly U.S. Capitol riot “political theater” and said “there really is no room for a
lawyer” in what he anticipates could be as little as a “one-day trial.”
Dershowitz has said he believes the speech Trump gave at the Ellipse last Wednesday — which led the House to charge him for “incitement of insurrection” — was protected by the First Amendment.
But House impeachment managers said Thursday they’ll make the case that Trump’s speech was part of a larger campaign to overturn the November election results.
It’s unclear when the Senate, which isn’t expected to reconvene until the day before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration Wednesday, will hold a trial.
Some Republicans already appear to be leaving the door open for convicting Trump after acquitting him in his first impeachment trial last year.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the House acted “appropriately” in impeaching Trump, though she said she’ll “consider the arguments of both sides” before announcing her vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is also reportedly open to considering a conviction.
Trump was out of sight Thursday, though he still issued executive orders and sent a letter to Congress requesting $27.4 billion in budget cuts.
Vice President Mike Pence, however, greeted National Guard members outside the Capitol and received a Federal Emergency Management Agency briefing on inauguration security.
At the briefing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “We are seeing an extensive amount of concerning online chatter about a number of events surrounding the inauguration.”
Roughly 20,000 National Guard troops are being deployed to secure Washington around the inauguration — and they’ll be armed and authorized to use lethal force.
Massachusetts will send up to 500 National Guard troops to D.C. to assist, the state announced Thursday, and will activate another 500 here at home “out of an abundance of caution.”