Impeachment trial over riots moving ahead
WASHINGTON, D.C. — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, vowed Thursday to push ahead quickly with the impeachment trial of former President Donald J. Trump, after charging him with incitement in a riot that led to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.
A day after President Joe Biden took office, Pelosi left little doubt that she plans to quickly transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate, a move that will trigger a trial of Trump.
“It will be soon and I don’t think it will be long,” Pelosi said. “And it must be done.”
Pelosi repeatedly refused to give a timetable for the impeachment trial, which is a delicate subject given Biden’s hopes to move quickly on fighting the coronavirus pandemic and turn around the anemic economy.
“There’s no use asking. I’m not going to be telling you when it is going,” she said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is expected to pitch Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on starting the trial in February.
McConnell’s proposal calls for pretrial proceedings, such as the swearing in of senators and issuance of a summons to Trump, to take place Jan. 28. From there, briefs would be due on Feb. 4 and Feb. 11, giving Trump’s team a total of 14 days to prepare briefs. The House impeachment managers would reply on Feb. 13.
“He has a right to defend himself,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, RW.Va., after Senate Republicans discussed timing on a conference call Thursday. “I don’t think this is something that we should rush into when you’re talking about the gravity of it.”
Both Republicans and Democrats have expressed support for giving Trump time to find legal representation. The Office of White House Counsel, along with other private attorneys, represented Trump in his first impeachment trial last year. But now as a former president, he would need to find new lawyers.
Pelosi pushed back emphatically against the idea that Americans should let Trump off the hook for his role in inciting the riot because he has left office.
She described that as being akin to handing a president a “get out of jail free card” for misdeeds done in the final weeks in the White House.
“The fact is POTUS committed an act of incitement of insurrection,” Pelosi said. “I don’t think it’s very unifying to say: ‘Let’s just forget it and move on.’”
The top House Democrat said she believes there is a huge difference between this impeachment trial and the first one, which focused on Trump’s effort to bully the president of Ukraine into digging up dirt on Biden.
“The whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement,” she said.