LEAHY’S ROLES: JUROR, WITNESS AND JUDGE

Vermont Democrat is longest-serving member of Senate

As senators barreled down a basement tunnel fleeing the pro-Trump mob storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, Patrick Leahy, the chamber’s longest-serving senator, glanced at the Vermont flag hanging overhead and offered a promise.

“Don’t worry, Vermont’s going to be represented,” Leahy vowed. Shortly after, a law enforcement officer offered another reassurance, invoking an old call sign from his previous turn as president pro tempore: “Don’t worry, Shamrock. We’re going to keep you all safe.”

Leahy, 80, survived the assault and has now been thrust into an unprecedented trifecta of roles in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, who is charged with inciting it. Leahy is simultaneously a witness to the alleged high crime, a juror weighing the former president’s fate and the judge presiding over the proceeding.

The senator was inside the Senate chamber last month when it was locked down as rioters breached the Capitol. He is one of 100 senators now tasked with deciding whether to convict Trump on the charge of “incitement of insurrection” for his role in stirring up the rampage. And, barely a month into reclaiming his role as president pro tempore of the Senate — a post reserved for the senior-most member of the majority party that places him third in line to the presidency — it has fallen to him to oversee the trial.

For Leahy, the role is the latest challenging chapter in a senatorial career that began in 1975.

“This is not something I requested,” Leahy said in an interview. “I want to make sure I do the best job possible, when people look back at it.”

Leahy said he hoped his many decades of sitting on the Senate dais and wielding the ivory gavel had prepared him for the task.

“I’ve never had anyone, Republican or Democrat, say my rulings were not fair. That is what the presiding officer is supposed to do,” he said.

The role of presiding officer in an impeachment trial has been a murky and limited one. The Constitution provides little guidance, other than to specify that the chief justice should preside over the impeachment trial of a president.

But Trump is a former president, and Chief Justice John Roberts, who took great pains to curtail his opinion in Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020, signaled that he was not interested in reprising the role.

As president of the Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris was the next logical choice, but she had little appetite for inserting herself into what promised to be a highly politicized trial, in which Trump’s claims that she and President Joe Biden had stolen the election were likely to be a topic of debate.

So the job landed in Leahy’s lap.