Tag: Senate impeachment trial

Impeachment articles’ path to Senate governed by rules and precedent

Before trial starts, expect pomp, circumstance and ceremony

The expected House vote this week to name impeachment managers for the Senate trial and authorize them to spend House funds will set in motion a set of established steps that will guide the articles of impeachment from the House to the Senate.

The resolution, which won’t be released until Speaker Nancy Pelosi meets with her caucus Tuesday morning, will appoint managers who will act as prosecutors during the Senate trial that will determine whether the impeached President Donald Trump is removed from office. They will present the case for the House impeachment articles, approved in December, which charge the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The transfer of the articles of impeachment between the chambers has been delayed by a weekslong standoff between Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell regarding the parameters of the Senate trial. While Pelosi has agreed to relinquish her grip on the articles, there will not be a tense photo op of a handoff between the two congressional leaders. Continue reading.

Republicans face reckoning on impeachment witnesses

Some GOP senators are at odds over how to handle a key part of Trump’s trial.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul offered a warning to his colleagues as they began debating whether to hear from witnesses like John Bolton in President Donald Trump’s imminent impeachment trial.

“Don’t think you can just vote for Bolton and not the witnesses Trump wants,” Paul told senators at a party lunch last week, according to two attendees and two people briefed on the meeting. He advised that incumbent senators’ conservative base would be enraged if vulnerable lawmakers were seen as undercutting Trump.

The blunt advice from Paul laid bare the GOP’s perilous task in handling Trump’s impeachment trial in an election year, all while the president delivers stage directions on his Twitter account. Trump over the weekend first requested that House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and even Speaker Nancy Pelosi appear as witnesses, then argued a few hours later that the trial should be dismissed summarily before it begins. Continue reading.

McConnell: Senate impeachment trial to start next Tuesday

The Hill logoSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says the Senate will begin debating an organizing resolution to start the Senate trial on Tuesday of next week.

The GOP leader said Chief Justice John Roberts will swear in senators as jurors this week, before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

McConnell said the House is expected to send over articles of impeachment on Wednesday and that the Senate will then have to go through a series of preliminary steps and housekeeping measures. Continue reading.

Pelosi says Trump ‘impeached for life’ despite McConnell’s ‘gamesmanship,’ ‘coverup’

Washington Post logoHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Sunday that President Trump is“impeached for life” regardless of “any gamesmanship” by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whom she accused of orchestrating a “coverup” of Trump’s actions as the Senate waits for the House to transmit the articles of impeachment.

Challenging McConnell to hold a serious trial that includes testimony from witnesses, Pelosi did not rule out the possibility that the House would subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton if the Senate chooses not to. She repeatedly chastised McConnell for signaling that he is not interested in fully weighing the House’s charges.

“Dismissing is a coverup. Dismissing is a coverup. If they want to go that route again, the senators who are thinking now about voting for witnesses or not — they will have to be accountable for not having a fair trial,” Pelosi said on ABC News’s “This Week.” Continue reading.

Roberts would hold the gavel, but not the power, at Trump impeachment trial

The chief justice is likely to punt contentious and political questions to lawmakers

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will preside over any impeachment trial of President Donald Trump as the Constitution requires, but don’t expect him to make decisions that substantively reshape the action.

Although there is speculation about how active a role Roberts will take in an impeachment trial and whether key witnesses testify, the Senate under past rules has given relatively little authority to the nation’s top judicial figure. And in the areas Roberts might have authority to make rulings, such as questions about whether evidence is relevant, the rules also allow the Senate to call for a vote to overrule him anyway.

Also, past impeachment trial rules, such as those for President Bill Clinton in 1999, give the chief justice the ability to defer making a ruling on his own and instead put a question to a Senate vote. Continue reading.

Five lingering questions as impeachment heads to Senate

The Hill logoSpeaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday ended weeks of speculation surrounding the Democrats’ impeachment effort, announcing the House would vote as early as next week to send a pair of articles to the Senate. 

The move is indication that the Speaker, who’d delayed the transmission of the articles in an effort to win procedural concessions from Senate GOP leaders, is ready to launch the trial in the upper chamber despite Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s (R-Ky.) refusal to accept her demands.

Yet there are plenty of lingering questions about how the esoteric process will unfold over the next several weeks, as both sides vie for an upper hand in the high-stakes debate over the propriety of President Trump’s handling of foreign policy in Ukraine. Continue reading.

Even after the Senate trial begins, the House could still add more impeachment articles

The 1936 impeachment of a Florida federal judge outlines the process for adding new charges

House Democrats are preparing to send two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate, but they still could add more — even after the Senate trial begins.

If the House managers appointed next week found evidence to support additional articles of impeachment against the president, whether from potential witness testimony on the Senate floor or through other means, they could march back across the Capitol and seek an amended impeachment article resolution on the House floor.

While there is no reason to suspect House Democrats would add new charges, a precedent referenced in Jefferson’s Manual from the 1936 judicial impeachment of Halsted L. Ritter, who had been a federal judge based in Palm Beach County, Florida, appears to give them that power. Continue reading.

Democrats brace for round two of impeachment witness fight

The Hill logoSenate Democrats are preparing for round two in the fight over impeachment trial witnesses.

Now that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has won round one, saying he has the 51 votes needed to start President Trump’s impeachment trial without an agreement on potential testimony, Democrats are vowing they will force votes at multiple points during the trial.

The strategy sets up key junctures to watch during the likely weeks-long trial that, Democrats hope, keeps pressure on a handful of GOP senators they will need to win any of the looming procedural battles. Continue reading.

‘They’re not needed’: Trump allies fear ‘clown show’ if Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz join impeachment defense team

AlterNet logoPresident Donald Trump’s fiercest allies aren’t expected to join his defense team in the Senate impeachment trial, but don’t expect them to quietly sit on the sidelines.

Trump allies have considered adding Reps. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe to the president’s official legal team, but advisers fear they’ll “grandstand” and turn the Senate trial into a “clown show,” reported Politico.

Three sources familiar with the situation say there seems to be no prohibition against House members serving on the president’s official defense team, but there’s not much appetite for that among Trump’s current lawyers. Continue reading.

Impeachment trial complicates efforts to rein in Trump on Iran

The Hill logoThe looming impeachment trial in the Senate is threatening to cut short a debate over President Trump’s war powers.

The airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad last week has sparked fierce criticism on Capitol Hill about Trump’s authority to carry out military actions against Iran without congressional approval, reigniting a long-stalled debate about a new authorization for the use of military force.

The House is set to vote this week on a war powers resolution. Sen. Tim Kaine(D-Va.) has introduced a similar measure, but it cannot be brought up for a vote in the Senate until mid-January at the earliest. Continue reading.