Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has announced the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump will begin the week of Feb. 8, according to reporter Abby D. Phillip.
Schumer confirms on the Senate floor: House managers will deliver the articles of impeachment on Monday.
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) January 22, 2021
Senate will deal with cabinet nominations and the COVID relief bill.
Senate hearings will begin the week of Feb. 8.
Schumer said Friday morning the article of impeachment against Trump will be delivered to the Senate on Monday from the U.S. House, but the trial won’t start until February.
The Senate will focus on Cabinet nominations and the COVID relief bill before the trial, Phillip reported.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed she will send the article of impeachment against Trump to the Senate on Monday, triggering the start of the proceedings on a single charge of “incitement of insurrection” of the deadly Capitol Jan. 6 riot.
Pelosi said her nine impeachment managers, or House prosecutors, are “ready to begin to make their case” against Trump. Trump’s team will have had the same amount of time to prepare, she said.
Schumer said there will be “a full trial,” and “it will be a fair trial.”
Schumer said GOP leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to delay the start of Trump’s trial to February to give the former president time to prepare and review his case.
But McConnell in a statement Thursday evening suggested a more expansive timeline that would see the House transmit the article of impeachment next week, on Jan. 28, launching the trial’s first phase.
“Senate Republicans are strongly united behind the principle that the institution of the Senate, the office of the presidency, and former President Trump himself all deserve a full and fair process that respects his rights and the serious factual, legal, and constitutional questions at stake,” especially given the unprecedented speed of the House process, McConnell said.
Schumer and McConnell are still negotiating how the new 50-50 Senate will work and how they will balance other priorities.
A trial delay could appeal to some Democrats, as it would give the Senate more time to confirm Biden's Cabinet nominees and debate a new round of coronavirus relief. Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a key ally of the president's, told CNN that Democrats would consider a delay “if we are making progress on confirming the very talented, seasoned and diverse team that President Joe Biden has nominated.”
“It will be soon. I don’t think it will be long, but we must do it,” Pelosi said Thursday. She said Trump doesn’t deserve a “get-out-of-jail card” just because he has left office and Biden and others are calling for national unity.
Facing his second impeachment trial in two years, Trump began to assemble his defense team by hiring attorney Butch Bowers to represent him, according to an adviser. Bowers previously served as counsel to former South Carolina Govs. Nikki Haley and Mark Sanford.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina helped Trump find Bowers after members of his past legal teams indicated they did not plan to join the new effort. Trump is at a disadvantage compared to his first trial, in which he had the full resources of the White House counsel's office to defend him.
Pelosi's nine impeachment managers, who will be prosecuting the House case, have been regularly meeting to discuss strategy. Pelosi said she would talk to them “in the next few days” about when the Senate might be ready for a trial.
Shortly before the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump told thousands of his supporters at a rally near the White House to “fight like hell” against the election results that Congress was certifying. A mob marched down to the Capitol and rushed in, interrupting the count. Five people, including a Capitol Police officer, died in the mayhem, and the House impeached Trump a week later, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats in support.
Pelosi said it would be “harmful to unity” to forget that “people died here on Jan. 6, the attempt to undermine our election, to undermine our democracy, to dishonor our Constitution.”
Trump was acquitted by the Republican-led Senate at his first impeachment trial. The White House legal team, aided by Trump's personal lawyers, aggressively fought the House charges that he had encouraged the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden in exchange for military aid. This time around, Pelosi noted, the House is not seeking to convict the president over private conversations but for a very public insurrection that they themselves experienced and that played out on live television.
“This year, the whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement,” Pelosi said.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said it was still too early to know how long a trial would take or if Democrats would want to call witnesses. But he said, “You don’t need to tell us what was going on with the mob scene we were rushing down the staircase to escape.”
McConnell, who said this week that Trump “provoked” his supporters before the riot, has not said how he will vote. He told his GOP colleagues that it will be a vote of conscience.
Democrats would need the support of at least 17 Republicans to convict Trump, a high bar. While a handful of Senate Republicans have indicated they are open to conviction, most have said they believe a trial will be divisive and questioned the legality of trying a president after he has left office.
Graham said that if he were Trump’s lawyer, he would focus on that argument and on the merits of the case — and whether it was “incitement” under the law.
“I guess the public record is your television screen,” Graham said. “So, I don’t see why this would take a long time.”
The Associated Press and Rich Barak of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this report.
