Donald Trump’s personal lawyer said he would “love to try” the president’s Senate impeachment trial.
“I would testify, I would do demonstrations. I’d give lectures, I’d give summations,” Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday night at Trump’s black-tie New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago club.
"Or, I'd do what I do best, I'd try the case," Giuliani said, according to Voice of America. "I'd love to try the case. Well, I don't know if anybody would have the courage to give me the case, but, uh, if you give me the case, I will prosecute it as a racketeering case, which I kind of invented anyway."
White House counsel Pat Cipollone is expected to serve as Trump’s lead attorney.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still hasn't sent Trump's articles of impeachment over to the Senate, the next step in an impeachment trial.
Despite Democrats' professed sense of urgency in passing House impeachment articles against the president, Pelosi has delayed sending the charges over to the Senate and refused to name the House managers who would handle the trial until Senate GOP leaders meet her demands.
Pelosi is demanding information from the Senate on how it plans to conduct Trump’s trial and hopes to give Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York more leverage in talks with Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who is Senate majority leader.
»MORE: Who are the major players in a Trump impeachment trial?
McConnell has not ruled out calling witnesses but also indicated he was in no hurry to seek new testimony, either. Schumer responded any trial without witnesses would be a “sham.”
Signs of independence among key U.S. senators are continuing to percolate out of Washington, as Trump’s presumably pending impeachment trial will again dominate the nation’s political headlines in coming weeks.
»MORE: Anti-Trump GOP groups upping pressure on Senate Republicans
On Monday, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, slammed fellow Sens. Elizabeth Warren and McConnell for making comments ahead of the impeachment trial before it's even been officially scheduled.
Collins joined Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, in criticizing McConnell's comments in December that the Senate will work in "total coordination" with the White House in developing Trump's defense.
»MORE: More senators breaking ranks from their parties on Trump impeachment
Trump is only the third sitting president in American history to be impeached, joining Andrew Johnson and Clinton.
The two articles of impeachment by House Democrats — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — point to Trump pressuring Ukraine to investigate 2020 political rival Joe Biden while withholding as leverage military aid the country relies to counter Russia as well as his efforts to block the House investigation.
The Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate to convict in an impeachment trial, thus making Trump’s actual removal from office highly unlikely in the GOP-controlled Senate.
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