Trump’s Senate trial could start soon
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused again Thursday to say when she would send the Senate an article of impeachment charging former President Donald Trump with inciting an insurrection, but said it would be soon, as lawmakers grapple with how to hold a trial.
“I’m not going to be telling you when it is going,” said Pelosi, D-Calif. “The other questions are about how a trial would proceed. We are ready.”
A source familiar with the plan, but not authorized to speak on the record, said the article could be sent Friday, setting the stage for a trial Monday. The plan may be subject to change, the source said.
Pelosi declined a chance to be more precise about timing, saying she would meet with House members who will serve as prosecutors, called managers.
“It will be soon,” Pelosi said. “I don’t think it will be long. But we must do it.”
The timing of the trial has been uncertain because the Senate trial may distract the chamber from confirming President Joe Biden’s nominees and debating his legislative agenda. But Democrats are also eager to put the trial behind them.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he has been meeting with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to reach a bipartisan agreement about how to conduct the trial.
“But make no mistake about it,” Schumer said. “There will be a trial, there will be votes up or down on
“The bottom line is you’d better make sure that the president’s able to have a robust defense for himself.” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
whether to convict the president.”
Trump is charged with encouraging rioters who laid siege to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then stormed through the halls, smashing doors, windows and antiques along the way.
Trump has said his speech that morning encouraged peaceful protest as Congress counted the Electoral College votes confirming Biden’s victory. But lawmakers experienced the result firsthand, evacuating their chambers and then picking through the wreckage afterward. Members of both parties have blamed Trump for the riot.
Pelosi said the alleged crimes in the latest impeachment were more obvious than in Trump’s first impeachment, which dealt partially on the interpretation of a phone call he had with the Ukrainian president.
“He roused the troops, he urged them on to fight like hell, he sent them on their way to the Capitol, he called upon lawlessness, he showed a path to the Capitol, and the lawlessness took place,” Pelosi said. “This year, the whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement to the execution of his call to action and the violence that was used.”
Once the article arrives, the trial becomes the Senate’s first order of business. But the Senate must decide how to hold the trial.
One option is to hold an expedited trial without witnesses. But even that could take weeks. Rushing a trial raises qualms even among Democrats about giving Trump enough opportunity to defend himself.
“That final decision isn’t even close,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Thursday.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Trump’s lawyers and House prosecutors could agree to most of the facts of the case and debate the legal questions entirely. “We’re free to set our own standards of proof,” Coons said of the Senate. “The rules of evidence are not the standard court rules of evidence. It’s a sort of neither fish nor fowl.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said “it would be great” if there were witnesses and more evidence. Manchin also said Trump must be allowed to defend himself properly.
“The bottom line is you’d better make sure that the president’s able to have a robust defense for himself,” Manchin said. “If they try to rush it through I think it’d be a big mistake.”
Republicans also contend that no trial is needed because Trump has left office and already suffers the shame of being impeached twice.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., told reporters Tuesday that Democrats have already made an emphatic statement by impeaching Trump twice. “I do not at this point see an impeachable offense that would rise to the constitutional level that we’ve looked at,” Wicker said.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said a trial would only further divide the nation. “We need to start healing,” she said. But Pelosi said abandoning a trial would offer any future president a getout-of-jail-free card to do whatever they want during the final months of a term.
“Just because he’s gone – thank God – you don’t say to a president do whatever you want in the last months of an administration,” Pelosi said. “I think that would be harmful to unity.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said another important prospect from the trial – if Trump is convicted – is to block him from holding future office.
“Whether somebody resigns, or runs out the clock it makes no difference,” Blumenthal said. “They can still be held accountable, and there’s nothing in the spirit, or the letter of the impeachment provisions in the Constitution, that argues against it.”
Another question is whether the Senate could hold the trial for part of each day and then review nominees and legislation during other parts of each day.
“My clear preference is to leave room for nominations and legislation,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Tuesday.
But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has said the trial will be the only Senate business because it would require unanimous consent – which is unlikely – to conduct other business.
“That’s not going to be possible,” Cornyn said.