Sen. Leahy ready to run impeachment trial
WASHINGTON — He’s known for prowling the Capitol with his camera or friends like the rock icon Bono. He’s played leading roles in fights over Supreme Court nominations, government surveillance of Americans and protecting his state’s dairy farms.
Now, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont is stepping into one of his most visible and physically grueling roles: presiding over former President Donald Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial. Leahy, the Senate’s longestserving current member, will be doing it after a brief health scare that saw him taken by ambulance to a hospital Tuesday evening, only to gavel the Senate into order Wednesday morning.
“I had some muscle spasms,” Leahy, 80, told reporters the morning after feeling ill in his Capitol office. He was taken to nearby George Washington University Hospital and went home shortly afterward.
He, aides and colleagues have revealed little about what happened. Leahy said doctors gave him a clean bill of health, and his spokesperson, David Carle, said Leahy “will still preside” when Trump’s latest impeachment proceedings begin next month.
The Leahy that America will see when the trial begins walks Congress’ hallways amiably but more slowly than when he was first elected at age 34. A longtime skier, target shooter and photographer despite being almost blind in one eye — he won’t say which — he is the product of a long Senate run.
He’s among a handful of senators who has voted on the nomination of every current Supreme Court justice, backing the three Democratic appointees and opposing the Republican picks except for Chief Justice John Roberts. He’s tried banning landmines, hence his friendship with fellow landmine opponent Bono, and helped shape legislation on gun control, privacy rights, government surveillance and patents.
He’s a Batman fanatic who’s appeared in some of the genre’s films and a Grateful Dead aficionado who wears ties designed by its lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia.
Entering his 47th year in the chamber, the man who will oversee Trump’s trial on a charge of inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection is the last of the socalled “Watergate Babies,” the congressional Democrats carried into office in 1974 after President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace to avoid impeachment.
Leahy has chaired committees that run the political gamut, from the intensely partisan Judiciary Committee to the largely bipartisan Agriculture and Appropriations panels. Long the top Democrat on Appropriations, Leahy this year became chair of the committee, which controls well over $1 trillion in annual spending.
“Is he a Democrat? Absolutely. Is he a liberal Democrat? Yes. But I think he’s honest and fair,” said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, an 86-year-old Republican who’s worked closely for decades with Leahy on the Appropriations panel.
Leahy “takes the issue of the law and justice very, very seriously,” said his Vermont colleague, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who as mayor of Burlington, the state’s largest city, got to know Leahy four decades ago. Citing Leahy’s early years as a Vermont prosecutor, Sanders said, “Everybody regardless of your opinion on impeachment will end up thinking he did a good job.”