WASHINGTON – Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to postpone the start of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial for a week or more to give Trump time to review the case.
House Democrats who voted for Trump’s impeachment last week after he was accused of inciting the January 6 Capitol riots signaled that they want a quick trial when President Joe Biden begins his term, saying that a reckoning is necessary before the country and Congress can proceed.
But McConnell told his fellow Republican senators by phone on Thursday that a short delay would give Trump time to prepare and raise his legal team, ensuring due process.
Indiana Sen. Mike Braun said after the call that the trial could not begin “until mid-February”. He said this was “due to the fact that the process as it took place in the House has evolved very quickly and is not in line with the time needed to prepare for a defense in a Senate trial”.
The timing will be set by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who could trigger the start of the trial when she sends the House accusations of “incitement to insurrection” to the Senate, and also by McConnell and the new Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who are in negotiations on how to establish a 50-50 party division in the Senate and the short-term agenda.
Some GOP entry
Schumer is in charge of the Senate, taking over as the majority leader after Democrats won two new Senate seats in Georgia and Vice President Kamala Harris was sworn in on Wednesday. But with such a narrow division, Republicans will have something to say about the trial procedure.
Democrats hope to conduct the process while also passing legislation that is a priority for Biden, including coronavirus relief, but they would need some cooperation from Senate Republicans to do so.
Schumer told reporters on Thursday that he was still negotiating with McConnell about how to conduct the trial. “But make no mistake – there will be a trial. There will be a vote, up or down, about the president’s sentencing.”
Pelosi can send the article to the Senate as early as Friday. Democrats say the process must move forward quickly because everyone has witnessed the siege, many of them fleeing in search of security as protesters arrived on Capitol Hill.
“It will be soon. I don’t think it will take long, but we have to do it,” said Pelosi on Thursday. She said Trump did not deserve a “prison card” in his second historic impeachment just because he stepped down and Biden and others are calling for national unity.
Without the White House attorney’s office to defend him – as he did at his first trial last year – Trump’s allies have been looking for lawyers to defend his case. Members of his previous legal teams have indicated that they do not plan to join the effort, but South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told Republican Party colleagues on Thursday that Trump was hiring South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers, according to a person familiar with the call and who has obtained anonymity to discuss this. Bowers did not immediately respond to a message on Thursday.
Legal team expected ‘soon’
Members of Trump’s defense team are expected to be announced soon, said a person familiar with Graham’s comments.
Graham did not answer questions about Trump’s representation on Capitol Hill on Thursday. But he told reporters that “I think he will put a legal team here soon”.
Judging the case from the Chamber will be Pelosi’s nine impeachment managers, who have been meeting regularly to discuss the strategy. Pelosi said he would talk to them “in the next few days” about when the Senate would be ready for a trial, indicating that the decision could extend until next week.
Trump told thousands of supporters to “fight like hell” against the election results that Congress was certifying on January 6, just before an angry mob stormed the Capitol and stopped counting. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in chaos, and the House accused the president of leaving 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 January 6, in an attempt to undermine our election, undermine our democracy, dishonor our Constitution”.