WASHINGTON — House Democrats will send the article of impeachment against former President Donald Trump to the Senate on Monday and the trial will start the week of Feb. 8 to allow time for the House and the former president to prepare, under a framework announced Friday.
The timeline, announced by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, calls for the House to formally walk over the article to the Senate on Monday and for senators to be sworn in on Tuesday for their impeachment duties.
From there, the House and Trump’s legal team will have two weeks to write briefs while the Senate does other business, including Cabinet confirmations for the new Biden administration. The trial will begin week of Feb. 8, one week earlier than a proposal floated Thursday by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Trump was impeached by the House for inciting the Jan. 6 mob that attacked the Capitol, making him the only president to be impeached twice and the first to stand trial after leaving office. Republicans are already laying the groundwork to try to delegitimize the process.
“The Senate will conduct a trial of the impeachment of Donald Trump,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said earlier in the day. “It will be a full trial. It will be a fair trial.”
Under strict Senate rules, if the articles move on Monday as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says they will, the Senate would have to move to the trial the following day. The agreement reached Friday avoids that rushed process.
Pelosi said earlier Friday that she would move the articles by Monday, an announcement that could have put pressure on Republicans to negotiate in order to give Trump time to mount a defense. Though they say they are ready to present evidence, such a fast pace may fuel GOP claims that the Democrats are putting on a sham trial against a president who is already out of office.
Several questions remain about how the trial would proceed. It is not yet known whether Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would preside over the trial as he did during the last impeachment trial of Trump. The Constitution appoints the chief justice to oversee presidential impeachments, but refers to a “sitting” president.
There is no determination yet of how long the trial would last, although it is widely believed it would not be nearly as long as last year’s trial, which ended with Trump’s acquittal. This time it could be as brief as 24 hours of argument spread over three days. Nor have decisions been made about whether witnesses would be called.
Some Republicans — led by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — say the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is already out of office. They have taken to calling him “citizen Trump” instead of “President Trump” to drive home their point that presidential impeachments were designed by the founders to remove sitting presidents, not punish former ones.
Democrats dispute that charge, noting that the Senate has a precedent for conducting an impeachment trial after the official has left office, albeit not for president.
They also note that if Trump is convicted, a second vote could be held to bar him from holding future office.
Given the high bar of two-thirds of senators needed for conviction, Democrats are already considering their next steps. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., is considering how to use the 14th Amendment — which specifically prohibits someone from office if they have “engaged in insurrection” against the United States” — to bar Trump from ever holding office again. The idea is in its infancy.
“I want to focus as much attention right now on the Biden agenda as possible, and minimize the attention on anything other than the Biden agenda,” Kaine said. “One of the things I like about the 14th Amendment is it’s a resolution debated on the floor, it’s not a trial, it’s not a protracted proceeding.”
Schumer and McConnell are expected to continue communication over the weekend on the timing of the trial. Senators on Friday speculated that they could still settle on an agreement. Democrats also say Trump deserves a chance to establish a legal team and put together a defense. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Thursday that Trump had hired South Carolina lawyer Butch Bowers to represent him.
“I can’t imagine that both McConnell and Schumer don’t want to have a little more structure here, and particularly Schumer — leave a little more time to move forward with the early Biden [nominations] before we get locked into the trial,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.
Democrats also incentive to delay the trial. Once it begins, it will be difficult for the Senate to do any other business, such as confirming President Joe Biden’s Cabinet appointees. The Senate’s rules require the trial to begin every day at 1 p.m. and continue until there is a vote on conviction. The only way around that is a deal between all senators. Republicans rejected Biden’s request that the Senate bifurcate its work into using the morning for confirmations and afternoons for trial.
“We’re not going to split the day. At least I wouldn’t,” Graham said. “That’s the business of the Senate, once we go into it. They’re choosing to do this. We’re going to do it the way we’ve always done it. We’ve never split the day.”
Pelosi said in a statement that the House is “attentive” to the fairness of the process. She pointed out the House managers responsible for presenting the case to the Senate will have as much time to prepare as the president does.
“Our managers are ready to begin to make their case to 100 Senate jurors through the trial process,” she said.
