FRONT AND CENTER
Montco rep looks ahead to manager role in Senate
WASHINGTON » With President Donald Trump now the only U.S. President in history to be impeached twice, local Congresswoman Madeleine Dean will be part of the effort to make him the only one ever convicted in the Senate.
Dean, D-4th Dist., has seen her national profile rise after appearing several times on national television, as well as in local newspapers, to talk about her experience during the violence on Jan. 6.
She will remain in the spotlight when the Senate takes up the impeachment approved Wednesday in the House.
Dean is among nine members named by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Tuesday to be an “impeachment
manager.” That means she will be part of the team that prosecutes the House’s case against Trump in the Senate.
An attorney and former civil litigator, the Abington resident explained that the House vote for impeachment Wednesday was similar to an indictment in a criminal case. The procedure in the Senate is more like the actual trial.
No president who has been impeached in the house — Andrew Johnson in 1868; Bill Clinton in 1998; or Trump in 2019 — has ever been convicted in the Senate and removed from office.
“I’m confident in the case we have,” Dean told MediaNews Group Wednesday night after the impeachment vote. “The facts of any case tell the story and the facts here are so compelling, our
job will be to tell that well and match it against the law.”
Dean said she is not sure how much time she and her fellow managers will have to arrange their evidence for presentation.
“There won’t be a lot of rest,” she said.
The Senate is unlikely to finish hearing the case before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in as the nation’s next president and vice president on Jan. 20.
The lone charge of “inciting of insurrection” is scheduled to begin trial in the Senate on Jan. 19, the day before Trump leaves office.
But Dean disagreed with the Republican argument that impeaching Trump is pointless because he’ll be out of office before he can be removed.
“The urgency of the moment, the urgency of these high crimes and misdemeanors are what I’m focused on,” Dean said. “This can’t just be something that we let be. It’s important that he be held accountable.”
Any federal official can be impeached and since 1789, about half of Senate impeachment trials have resulted in conviction and removal from office, according to the Senate website.
“The Senate sits as a High Court of Impeachment in which senators consider evidence, hear witnesses, and vote to acquit or convict the impeached official. In the case of presidential impeachment trials, the chief justice of the United States presides. The Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate to convict, and the penalty for an impeached official upon conviction is removal from office,” according to the Senate website.
There is some speculation
that there may be enough Republican votes in the Senate to convict Trump this time. Ten Republican house members joined all the Democrats in the House in voting to impeach Trump, which is 10 more than did so in the first proceeding.
Powerful Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who will move from majority leader to minority leader in the new term as a result of Democratic victories in Georgia, has said he believes Trump committed “impeachable offenses.”
While Trump may already be out of office by the time the Senate votes, a conviction can also mean a ban from holding any future elected office and loss of Presidential pension and other benefits awarded previous ex-presidents.
Dean said the Republican argument made in the House Wednesday that the proper process was not followed for impeachment
— for example, there was no hearing before the Judiciary Committee of which Dean is a member and which played a role in Trump’s first impeachment — “is a hollow argument.”
“The due process the president has a right to takes place in the Senate,” she said. “What we did in the House followed proper process.”
For the next several days, Dean and the other eight managers will be sifting evidence “and writing. It helps to organize our thoughts and presentation. I really have such confidence in the team we have,” she said.
In addition to Dean, that “team” consists of:
• Lead manager: Jamie Raskin, (Maryland), a former professor of constitutional law at American University’s Washington College of Law for more than 25 years;
• Diana DeGette (Colorado) a former civil rights lawyer;
• David Cicilline (Rhode
Island) a former public defender;
• Joaquin Castro (Texas), a former litigator;
• Eric Swalwell (California) a former prosecutor;
• Ted Lieu (California) a former prosecutor;
• Stacey Plaskett (NY) former Bronx assistant district attorney and senior counsel Dept. of Justice;
• Joe Neguse (Colorado) a former litigator and former Regent of the University of Colorado.
It remains unclear what Trump’s legal strategy will be, or who will provide his defense in the Senate.
It’s been just over a week since Dean and the other members of Congress donned gas masks and were hustled out of their respective chambers and taken to a safe location where they huddled for four hours while a violent mob overran Capitol police, killing two, and ransacked the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the
Electoral College victory of Biden and Harris being confirmed.
Since then, things have moved quickly and Dean said she has been “very thoughtful” in trying to mentally and emotionally process the monumental things that have happened in such a short period of time.
“What happened was horrible, it was an attack on our democracy and Donald Trump incited that crowd, which he has fed a steady diet of lies about this election. He has to be held accountable,” she said.
“I remain confident we absolutely did the right thing,” she said of the impeachment.
Having been chosen to make that case in the Senate is a distinct honor, Dean said. “It is for the sake of our country, not hate of one man or anyone, but for the love of our country and Constitution.”