The impeachment spotlight is currently on the House — where the Intelligence Committee just wrapped a series of blockbuster hearings laying out evidence against President Donald Trump — but the action is very quickly set to move to the Senate.
If the House ultimately approves articles of impeachment, a Senate trial — where lawmakers will decide whether or not to convict Trump of the charges he faces — is up next.
At this point, a Senate conviction is incredibly unlikely: 67 senators would need to vote in favor of it, a move that would require 20 Republicans to join with the 47-member Democratic caucus and break with the president.
Senate Republicans, however, still intend to hold a trial and do not plan to dismiss the articles outright, partly because they don’t have the votes to do so. In order to table the articles, lawmakers would need 51 votes, a majority that counts on nearly every Republican voting in favor of this action. Trump himself has also said that he’d like the opportunity to present arguments in his own defense: “Frankly, I’d like a trial,” he noted recently during a Fox & Friends appearance.
We don’t yet know exactly how long the trial is going to be, but it’s intended to provide the opportunity for both House lawmakers and Trump to make their cases. Former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial offers some clues about potential length: In 1999, the Senate weighed arguments for over a month, from January 7 to February 12. Some Republicans have suggested that a trial could be wrapped up in as quickly as two weeks this time around, the Washington Post reports.
Were the House to approve articles of impeachment before the end of this year, a Senate trial could well kick off 2020. Trump’s trial would mark just the third time in history the upper chamber has undertaken this process: Both Presidents Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were acquitted in the past.
The Senate’s role in an impeachment proceeding is to serve as the “court” where the charges are reviewed and evaluated. Following House approval of articles of impeachment, it will be the Senate’s job to analyze these charges in a trial and decide whether to convict or acquit.
As part of this arrangement, the 100 lawmakers of the Senate will be sworn in as “jurors” who will hear the evidence presented by both sides; some lawmakers have used this role as a reason for declining to comment on the ongoing inquiry, arguing that they do not want to offer judgments before participating in the trial. Chief Justice John Roberts will preside over the trial, and both sides will have the opportunity to call witnesses, request documents, and present arguments.
On behalf of House lawmakers bringing the impeachment charges, House representatives and their associated counsel are poised to serve as prosecutors, also known as “managers.” Trump’s counsel, meanwhile, will defend him.
According to the Congressional Research Service, there is no set method for presenting evidence. Much like the House approved a resolution outlining the procedures of its impeachment inquiry, the Senate will have to vote on the approach they’d like to take before the trial begins. The final protocol is expected to be negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, NPR reports. During Clinton’s impeachment, these procedures were approved unanimously by the Senate.
This resolution, in addition to other Senate motions, could address how witnesses are called and who will testify. According to BuzzFeed, if lawmakers aren’t able to coalesce around a rules package, Chief Justice Roberts has the ability to make procedural decisions:
If a majority of senators cannot agree on a manager’s resolution, the proceedings will be in the hands of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who acts as judge of the impeachment trial. Roberts would lay out the schedule, though his decisions could still be overruled by a majority of senators.
The ultimate structure of the trial could take a couple different forms. During Clinton’s trial, for example, witnesses did not testify in front of the full Senate. Instead, following a Senate motion on the matter, witnesses participated in depositions, excerpts of which were later shared with lawmakers. Senators will have to decide whether they’re interested in taking a similar approach this time around.
Once the evidence has been presented, senators will deliberate and then hold public votes on each article of impeachment.
For now, the expectation is that the House could approve articles of impeachment before the new year, with the Judiciary Committee on deck to consider the testimony and evidence that has been introduced. After weighing the information that’s provided in a report by the House Intelligence Committee, Judiciary members will determine possible charges to bring against the president.
If the House impeaches Trump prior to the holiday recess, the Senate will likely kick off the trial in January 2020, timing that would keep several Democratic presidential contenders trapped in Washington with the Iowa caucus just weeks away.
The trial itself is expected to run for six days a week when it’s in session. In a shift from other hearings the Senate holds, lawmakers will be barred from speaking at it, though they will be able to submit written questions to the House managers and defense counsel.
While a trial is still months away, Senate Republicans have already offered a glimpse of how they’ll likely try to defend Trump. Rather than confronting the substance of the allegations against him, senators seem set on redirecting the focus of the trial to former Vice President Joe Biden, who Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate, and other figures like the whistleblower whose complaint helped launch the impeachment inquiry.
These counternarratives don’t rebut the allegations Trump faces so much as they seek to distract from them, as outlined by the New York Times:
That narrative will include claims that Ukrainians meddled in the 2016 election instead of the Russians — an unfounded allegation refuted by the administration’s own intelligence agencies as recently as this week — and that Hunter Biden, the younger son of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., used his father’s connections to make money in Ukraine.
Just last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham signaled lawmakers’ commitment to this strategy by requesting documents from the State Department tied to former Vice President Joe Biden’s efforts to fire Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Republicans have argued that Biden’s decision to do so was aimed at shielding his son Hunter Biden, a board member of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, though there’s no evidence that suggests this was the case.
“If there’s nothing there I’ll be the first one to say there’s nothing there. But we’re not going to live in a country where only one party gets investigated,” Graham told Politico of his decision to more forward with this push.
Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley, too, are requesting more information about a former Democratic National Committee consultant’s interactions with Ukrainian officials during the 2016 election, a move aimed at legitimizing the disproved conspiracy theory that Democrats colluded with Ukraine in an effort to fix the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton.
In doing so, the senators hope to suggest Trump was focused on investigations in Ukraine in order to protect the sanctity of US elections (and to obscure the fact that the impeachment proceedings largely hinge on allegations Trump tried to pressure Ukraine into meddling in an election). Various lawmakers, including Trump, have also said that the whistleblower who filed the original complaint about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine should be among the witnesses called during the impeachment trial.
Each of these efforts is aimed at shifting the attention from Trump’s request for investigations of Hunter Biden to put the pressure on Democrats. They don’t, however, grapple with the core questions of wrongdoing that have been levied against him, and seek to make an impeachment trial as much about Democrats and the Bidens as it is about Trump.
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November 26, 2019 at 07:50PM
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Senate impeachment trial: Lawmakers would vote on potential charges Trump faces - Vox.com
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