Trump awaits trial in Senate for second time
PRESIDENT Donald Trump’s impeachment trial could begin on Inauguration Day, just as Democrat Joe Biden takes the oath of office in an extraordinary end to the defeated president’s tenure in the White House.
The trial timeline and schedule are largely set by Senate procedures and will start as soon as the House of Representatives delivers the article of impeachment. That could mean starting the trial at 1pm next Wednesday, Inauguration Day.
Mr Trump was impeached on Wednesday by the House of Representatives over the deadly Capitol siege, the only president in US history twice impeached, after a proTrump mob stormed the building.
The attack in Washington DC has left the nation’s capital, and many state capital cities, under high security amid threats of more violence around the inauguration.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not said when she will take the next step to transmit the impeachment article, a sole charge of incitement of insurrection.
Some senior Democrats have proposed holding back the article to give Mr Biden and Congress time to focus on his new administration’s priorities. Mr Biden has said the Senate should be able to split its time and do both.
The impeachment trial will be the first for a president no longer in office and, politically, it will force a reckoning among some Republicans who have stood by Mr Trump throughout his presidency and largely allowed him to spread false attacks against the integrity of the 2020 election.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is open to considering impeachment, having told associates he is done with Mr Trump, but has not signalled how he would vote. Convening the trial will be among his last acts as majority leader, as two new senators from Georgia, both Democrats, are to be sworn into office, leaving the chamber divided 50-50. That tips the majority to the Democrats once Kamala Harris takes office, as the vice-president is a tiebreaker.
In a note to colleagues on Wednesday, Mr McConnell said he had “not made a final decision on how I will vote” in a Senate impeachment trial.
With the Capitol secured by armed National Guard troops inside and out, the House voted 232-197 on
Wednesday to impeach Mr Trump. The proceedings moved at speed, with representatives voting just one week after violent pro-Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol, egged on by the president’s calls for them to “fight like hell” against the election results.
Holed up at the White House, watching the proceedings on television, Mr Trump later released a video statement in which he made no mention of the impeachment but appealed to his supporters to refrain from any further violence or disruption of Mr Biden’s inauguration. He said: “Like all of you, I was shocked and deeply saddened by the calamity at the Capitol last week.”
Mr Trump was first impeached by the House in 2019 over his dealings with Ukraine, but the Senate voted in 2020 to acquit.