The Senate will start President Trump‘s second impeachment trial during the week of Feb. 8, Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) announced on Friday.
“Both the House managers and the defense will have a period of time to draft their legal briefs just as they did in previous trials. … Once the briefs are drafted, the presentation by the parties will commence the week of Feb. 8,” Schumer said from the Senate floor.
Schumer’s announcement comes after he disclosed earlier Friday that the House article of impeachment will be delivered to the Senate on Monday. Continue reading.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that the House will deliver the article of impeachment against former President Trump for “incitement of insurrection” on Monday.
Why it matters: The Senate is required to begin the impeachment trial at 1 p.m. the day after the article is transmitted.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had been pushing for the trial to begin in mid-February to allow senators more time to gather evidence and to give Trump proper due process.
Schumer had countered that it would force the Senate to delay other important business, such as passing COVID relief.
What they’re saying: “I’ve heard some of my Republican colleagues argue that this trial would be unconstitutional because Donald Trump is no longer in office. An argument that has been roundly repudiated, debunked by hundreds of constitutional scholars — left, right, and center — and defies basic common sense,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. Continue reading.
About 20 percent of Republicans said they “strongly” or “somewhat” approved of a Senate conviction in the latest poll, conducted between Jan. 15-17.
Republican support for convicting President Donald Trump in his Senate impeachment trial has grown in his final days in office, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Tuesday.
About 20 percent of Republicans said they “strongly” or “somewhat” approved of convicting in the latest poll, conducted Jan. 15-17. That’s an increase from the previous poll, conducted Jan. 8-11, in which 14 percent of Republicans said the same.
Approval of a conviction remained heavily partisan, with about 86 percent of Democrats saying they “strongly” or “somewhat” approved of a Senate conviction, a slight decrease from the previous poll. About 50 percent of independent respondents “strongly” or “somewhat” approved of a Senate conviction, up slightly from 47 percent in the Jan. 8-11 poll. Continue reading.
Legal and political experts are responding to U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s Sunday letter to incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer with disgust and anger. Graham, an unwavering and unyielding devotee of President Donald Trump, slammed Democrats and those who support convicting Trump in a Senate trial after the House’s historic second impeachment of the outgoing president.
In his letter Graham argues against convicting Trump for incitement of insurrection in part because Vice President Mike Pence “stood in the breach of unconstitutional calls for him to overturn the 2020 election.” Those unconstitutional calls came from President Trump. His insurrectionist supporters then went to the Capitol hunting for the vice president, chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!”
He also says convicting Trump would delay “the healing of this great nation.” Experts call that argument false, and say that holding Trump to account is the only way for the nation to heal. Continue reading.
The call for unity came from one of President Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, nearly a week after a pro-Trump mob rampaged the U.S. Capitol in a riot that left five people dead.
“What happened at the Capitol on January 6 was as wrong as wrong can be,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told colleagues during a virtual committee meeting about Democrats’ demands that Trump be removed from office. Now was the time for “healing,” and in Jordan’s opinion, that meant allowing the president to finish out his term.
The committee chairman, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), pressed him on one point. Hadn’t Jordan and more than 140 other Republicans given oxygen to the false conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that motivated the Capitol rioters — that the election had somehow been stolen — when they had voted to object to certifying the electoral college results? Continue reading.
President Trump’s relationship with Senate Republicans is facing its biggest test at its lowest point.
Many Republicans blame Trump for their loss of the Senate majority, and are furious that he put their lives in danger after an angry mob filled with people who believed his conspiracy theories about the election stormed the Capitol last week.
Now those Republicans have a chance to vote to convict Trump in an impeachment trial — if they choose to do it. They could also vote to permanently ban him from holding public office. Continue reading.
On the morning of January 6th, news networks confirmed that the Democrats had captured Georgia’s Senate seats, insuring that the Party will hold a majority in both houses of Congress once Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are inaugurated, next week, and giving the new Administration greater ability to carry out its agenda. That afternoon, a mob incited by President Trump ransacked the Capitol; in response, House leaders prepared to impeach the President for a second time, adopting a single article of incitement of insurrection. Ten Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for impeachment, among them Liz Cheney, the third-ranking House Republican and the daughter of former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Some Republican senators, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have indicated that they would consider voting for removal. However, McConnell, who will remain Majority Leader until the Georgia Democrats are seated, likely next week, has said that he will not begin the Senate impeachment trial until January 19th, the day before the Inauguration. Meanwhile, law-enforcement agencies have warned about the threat of further terrorist violence in Washington, D.C. before and on Inauguration Day.
The chaos and criminality of January 6th thus threaten to cast a shadow over Biden’s agenda, as well as to take up precious time on the congressional calendar. The last President to confront such problems concerning the culpability of a predecessor was Gerald Ford, who, shortly after taking office, in 1974, pardoned Richard Nixon for any and all crimes committed during Nixon’s Presidency. To talk about the wide-ranging effects of the pardon, I spoke by phone with the historian Rick Perlstein, who is the author of a series of books that chart the rise of modern conservatism. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed Ford’s motives for pardoning Nixon, whether liberals should care about the health of the G.O.P., and why the Trump siege may have been the culmination of the Goldwater revolution.
Your work presents Ford taking office as this incredible unifying moment, or what people believed to be a unifying moment, which was then quickly shattered by the pardon. What lessons does it hold for today?Continue reading.
As President Trump’s historic second impeachment trial looms, the Senate Democratic leader’s office is emphasizing cooperation with Republicans rather than conflict — suggesting that Democrats want their latest effort to convict Trump to be more bipartisan than the last one, which saw a lone GOP senator break ranks with his party.
Despite the unprecedented speed with which the House acted Wednesday — impeaching the president one week after the deadly storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has rebuffed Democratic calls for the chamber to reconvene before Tuesday, its scheduled date and one day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Nonetheless, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) signaled Thursday that Democrats are far from taking a go-it-alone approach. Continue reading.
She called out lawmakers who enabled Trump’s election lies, then complained after an insurrection that impeachment would sow division.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Thursday looked back at the divisive rhetoric of Republicans who voted against the second impeachment of Donald Trump because they claimed it would be too divisive.
“The very people who have been saying for months that Trump won an election that he did not ― who are knowingly telling supporters this lie, who have enabled a president who wants to break the system as he tries to harness the rage of extremists and racists for his own self preservation ― are telling people who want accountability to let it go. It’s ‘too divisive.’”
Trump on Tuesday spoke out about the impeachment proceedings, claiming that it was causing “tremendous anger,” after he spent months spreading disinformation about the presidential election and fomenting political unrest that culminated in a violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol from his supporters, who sought to overturn the election results. Continue reading.
There is an open constitutional question about whether a president can be impeached after he has left office. A more basic question asks about the point of impeaching Trump. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, writing in The Washington Post, described the entire exercise as “pointless revenge.”
“It isn’t principled, it isn’t concerned with justice and it isn’t concerned with the future,” he stated. Continue reading.
