Trump’s second impeachment trial begins in Senate
Former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial got underway Tuesday afternoon with what’s expected to be a day of debate and then a vote on its constitutionality.
The proceedings began after 11 Republican senators voted against adopting the rules of the trial, at which Trump is charged with a single count of “incitement of insurrection” over the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by his supporters.
Those voting “no” included outspoken impeachment opponents Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas.
Although a deal hammered out Monday by Senate leaders called for four hours of arguments on the constitutionality question, lead House manager Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) began his presentation with a lengthy video montage mashing together clips from Trump’s speech to his supporters and the deadly riot.
“If that’s not an impeachable offense, there’s no such thing,” Raskin said.
Raskin didn’t immediately address the issue of whether a president already out of office could be tried for impeachment but went on to insist that the “vast majority of constitutional scholars” agree with the Democrats’ position.
He cited by name former federal appeals Judge Michael McConnell and Northwestern University law professor Steven Calabresi, a co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society, and also quoted from the writings of Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers.
Trump’s legal team is set to argue that the proceeding is unconstitutional because he is no longer in office, and that the former president never deviated from standard political speech in his remarks preceding the incident.
Last month, the Senate voted 55-45 against a measure introduced by Paul based on the notion that Trump’s trial is unconstitutional because he no longer occupies the Oval Office.
Forty-five Republicans voted to declare the proceeding unconstitutional — with only five GOP senators siding with the Senate’s 50 Democrats.
That lopsided division makes it an extreme longshot that at least 17 Republicans will switch sides to help make up the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction.
Assuming the trial goes forward, the House managers and Trump’s lawyers will each get 16 hours over two days to make their cases to the senators, who serve as jurors in the trial.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is presiding over the Senate trial — rather than Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who presided over Trump’s first trial last year.
Leahy said the chief justice won’t preside because Trump is no longer president.
“The [Senate] president pro tempore has historically presided over Senate impeachment trials of non-presidents,” Leahy, 80, said in a statement.
Leahy said in his statement that he would be impartial, though he’s believed to still be able to vote on whether to convict Trump. “When presiding over an impeachment trial, the president pro tempore takes an additional special oath to do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws. It is an oath that I take extraordinarily seriously,” he said.
Leahy added: “When I preside over the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, I will not waver from my constitutional and sworn obligations to administer the trial with fairness, in accordance with the Constitution and the laws.”
The rules were hammered out by Monday by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The House managers have not yet decided if they will call witnesses, but they’re expected to show extensive videos of the riot at the Capitol that prompted lawmakers to flee the chamber for safe locations as the mob busted down doors and ran wild through the halls of Congress.
Five people, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, died as a result of the rampage.
The mayhem unfolded as a joint session of Congress presided over the certification of the Electoral College vote that gave President Biden the win.
House managers will assert that Trump’s comments in the weeks leading up to the riot and at his speech at a rally near the National Mall earlier Jan. 6 served to fire up his supporters to march on the Capitol to dispute those results.
“It is impossible to imagine the events of January 6 occurring without President Trump creating a powder keg, striking a match, and then seeking personal advantage from the ensuing havoc,” the House managers wrote in their brief last week.
But Trump’s legal team of David Schoen and Bruce Castor will counter that his encouraging the crowd to “fight” was meant figuratively.
“Of the over 10,000 words spoken, Mr. Trump used the word ’fight’ a little more than a handful of times and each time in the figurative sense that has long been accepted in public discourse when urging people to stand and use their voices to be heard on matters important to them; it was not and could not be construed to encourage acts of violence,” they say in their brief.
“Notably absent from his speech was any reference to or encouragement of an insurrection, a riot, criminal action, or any acts of physical violence whatsoever.”
Castor and Schoen will also build on the argument that Trump is now a private citizen and should not be subjected to an impeachment trial that is intended to remove him from office.
Trump’s lawyers, according to their filings, will claim that the Senate trial is part of a never-ending quest by Democrats to impeach the former president, who has been out of office for three weeks.
“One might have been excused for thinking that the Democrats’ fevered hatred for Citizen Trump and their ’Trump Derangement Syndrome’ would have broken by now, seeing as he is no longer the President, and yet for the second time in just over a year the United States Senate is preparing to sit as a Court of Impeachment, but this time over a private citizen who is a former President,” they said.
The Democrats will contend that there is no “January exception” in the Constitution, meaning that Trump cannot run out the clock on his time in the White House to avoid accountability.
The House voted 232-197 on Jan. 13 to impeach Trump for the second time, with 10 Republicans voting with the Democrats.
Trump’s first impeachment by the House, in December 2019, involved the legality of a phone call during which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
But Trump was acquitted on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in a largely party-line vote in the then-Republican-controlled Senate, with Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah casting the only GOP vote to convict, on just the abuse of power charge.
