Senate Trial of Donald Trump

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If they make the trial last as long as possible, then the Senate won't be busy passing Biden's agenda and so Biden can't sign it into law.

Make the trial last four years.

Ridicule and disrespect noted.

There was no "attempted" coup, and ultimately, there was no coup in America, as I predicted.

"This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike," Pelosi wrote in a letter. "The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy."

"Any 'safeguards' Milley may have erected to effectively prevent Trump from exercising sole authority of nuclear launch would actually be a 'coup' by the standard definition," according to Vipin Narang, a nuclear policy expert and professor at MIT.

Federal investigators have begun piecing together evidence that some of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were executing well-laid plans, deploying communications systems and issuing marching orders to rioters as they battled police.

I have heard people making the point that the impeachment is a waste of time, increases divisiveness and prevents the government from moving forward.

Now that Donald Trump is a private citizen, the Senate should dismiss the article of impeachment against him for lack of jurisdiction. The Constitution is clear: “The president . . . shall be removed from office on impeachment . . . and conviction”—not by the expiration of his term before the impeachment process is complete. It also mandates that “judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further than to removal and disqualification“—not or disqualification.

When the Constitution was written, several states allowed impeachment of former officials. The Framers could easily have included that provision, but they didn’t. They also explicitly chose to prohibit the British practice of trial by legislature—excepting only impeachment—and “bill of attainder,” any punitive legislative act against a specific person. The courts have held that the punishments prohibited by the Bill of Attainder Clause include disqualification from holding office. Moreover, the Constitution requires the chief justice to preside “when the president of the United States is tried.”

Trump likely to be acquitted after majority of Republicans vote that Senate trial is unconstitutional

Yeah, I'm not actually expecting most Republicans to do their job. At least Donald made history for being the first President to be impeached twice. Also, once this trial is over he will most certainly fall out of the spotlight as he's not relevant anymore. He can try and run in four years in the likely scenario that he's acquitted, but we won't have to hear from him until then.

All five of the impeachment lawyers who were expected to represent former President Donald Trump have called it quits, sources told ABC News.

The team, led by South Carolina lawyer Butch Bowers, resigned in part because of disagreements over how to mount Trump’s defense, the sources said. The lawyers had planned to argue the constitutionality of holding a trial given Trump is now a former president.

The disagreements over strategy varied, sources told ABC News, but Trump wanted his team to argue there was election fraud, while the lawyers and some top advisers to the former president wanted the focus to remain on the constitutionality of a trial with the president no longer in office.

A source close to the former president described the change as a "mutual decision" between the parties.

Senate leadership announced on Monday that they have reached a deal on the framework for former President Trump's impeachment trial, which will start on Tuesday.

The timeline would allow the trial to wrap up as early as next week, if both sides agree not to call witnesses.

Under the deal, the Senate will debate and vote on Tuesday on whether the trial is constitutional. The effort to declare the trial unconstitutional will fall short after Rand Paul (R-Ky.) forced a vote on the issue late last month. Forty-four GOP senators supported his effort.

Opening arguments will start on Wednesday. Under the deal, the House impeachment managers and Trump’s team will have 16 hours over two days each to present their case to the Senate.

That’s a faster pace than both the Clinton trial and the first Trump trial where both sides got 24 hours.

The deal also leaves the door open to calling witnesses. The House impeachment managers previously invited Trump to testify under oath, an offer his attorneys rejected. They haven't yet said if they will try to get the Senate to call other witnesses.

The trial will also be paused on Saturday to accommodate a request from one of Trump's attorneys to observe the Jewish Sabbath.

If both sides use all of their time, that would set up opening arguments to wrap on Sunday.

After that the Senate is expected to have time to ask questions of both sides, as well as potential deliberations. In previous trials, senators have had two days for the question-and-answer session. According to the resolution of the trial’s rules, senators will get four hours to ask questions.

Both sides will get two hours for closing arguments.

As in previous trials, there will be equal time for senator questions and for closing arguments and an opportunity for the Senate to hold deliberations if it so chooses and then we will vote on the article of impeachment,” Schumer said.

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, like the first, has a preordained outcome. He will be acquitted, with perhaps a few more Republican defections than on February 5, 2020, when Mitt Romney voted “guilty” on one of two articles of impeachment and the rest of the GOP Senate conference rejected the case for removing Trump from office.

According to the latest intel from the New York Times on the likely Schumer-McConnell deal, Schumer is agreeing to the shortest impeachment trial ever.

There may, however, be some wiggle room if Schumer and his conference decide to let impeachment managers call witnesses, as Politico reports:

Senate Democrats … will largely defer to the House impeachment managers on the question of witnesses. The managers have yet to publicly say whether they want to bring in outside witnesses to make their case against Trump, or whether they will simply rely on video and public comments from the former president as evidence.

The argument for witnesses mostly revolves around the possibility of insider testimony regarding Trump’s intentions on and immediately before the January 6 Capitol riot. Other witnesses could be called to talk about the horrific details of the riot itself, though video evidence of the attack on the Capitol and of Trump’s inflammatory speech to the mob could well suffice.

Other than redundancy, the main reason many Democrats agree with Republicans on a brief trial is that it will serve as a live-televised sideshow to the herculean effort underway to assemble and pass much of Joe Biden’s COVID-relief plan via a budget-reconciliation process that requires near-total congressional Democratic support. As the Senate tries Trump, the House will be conducting a laborious committee-by-committee reporting of legislation germane to Biden’s plan, which will be lashed together by the House Budget Committee for an up-or-down floor vote on the week of February 22. If congressional Democrats and/or the White House decide more of a public push is needed to give this bill momentum in the Senate, every minute spent on the process leading up to another Trump acquittal may seem wasted.

But there remains an underlying feeling among some Democrats that Trump should not be allowed to avoid a full accounting of his misconduct a second time. (Republicans blocked the calling of witnesses in the first trial.) A trial that largely ends before it has fully begun will be deeply unsatisfying to those in both parties (though in the case of Republicans, the sentiment is rarely public) who want to give Trump as hard a kick as possible on the road to retirement or irrelevance.

Have they announced how soon they will be removing the troops from the streets of the capital, following the trial of the leader of the opposition party after the recent election?

Members of the National Guard still patrol the exterior of the Capitol complex -- in some cases along 8-foot, non-scalable fences topped by razor wire.

The likelihood of planned gatherings or protests in the District throughout the week is minimal.
Michael Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service, told CNN in an email that the agency was reviewing only two applications for permitted events in DC this week: one a free speech demonstration calling for Trump to be convicted and another to protest the political situation in Myanmar.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department said the agency hasn't issued any permits for events.
But law enforcement officials are acutely aware that extremists could be inspired by rhetoric from lawmakers or online narratives that emerge during the trial and in the weeks that follow.

Federal and state officials have previously made clear that the increased security posture in the nation's capital will extend into March due to several concerns, including possible threats around the impeachment trial.
Capitol security officials are also looking at what the security posture should look like months after the trial, as Republicans and Democrats are already raising concerns about some of the precautions becoming permanent.
The final assessment made by retired Lt Gen. Russel Honore, a former Army commander who has been tasked with conducting an independent review of security measures around the Capitol, will be factored into that decision, according to Pelosi, who has largely deflected when asked about changes to the Capitol security posture after the trial.

Asked about security around the impeachment trial, including additional protection for members and their families, a congressional aide echoed what Pelosi and her staff have said in recent weeks, telling CNN: "Honore is looking into member security and will make recommendations about this that the House will review."