Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she planned to transmit the House’s impeachment charge against former President Donald Trump to the Senate “soon,” but she again refused to pinpoint a precise date for doing so, leaving uncertain the timing of a trial that promises to consume Washington.
On their first full day of control in the capital, Democrats were trying to acclimate to their newfound power in the White House and on Capitol Hill, including figuring out how to approach the fraught trial, during the opening days of a new administration, of a former president accused of “incitement of insurrection.” Pelosi offered praise for President Joe Biden, insisting the trial would not detract from his call for unity and implying the prosecution’s case could be speedy.
“I don’t think it’s very unifying to say ‘Let’s just forget it and move on,’” the speaker told reporters in the Capitol. “Just because he is now gone — thank God — you don’t say to a president, ‘Do whatever you want in the last months of your administration, you are going to get a get-out-of-jail-free card because people think we should make nice-nice,’ and forget that people died here on Jan. 6, that he attempted to undermine our election, to undermine our democracy, to dishonour our Constitution.”
As Pelosi spoke, Senate leaders were struggling to finalize a set of rules to govern the trial. They were tied up in broader talks over a power-sharing agreement to govern a chamber split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. Because the vice president can cast tiebreaking votes, Democrats have operational control, but they will need some cooperation from Republicans, and the GOP was reluctant to provide any. There was also pressure to try to confirm several of Biden’s Cabinet nominees before the trial began in earnest.
“It will be soon — I don’t think it will be long,” Pelosi said when pressed on when she would send the charge to the Senate, prompting the start of the trial.
The House impeachment managers were prepared to begin as soon as Friday, but people involved in the planning said it could take until early next week to get underway.
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Once it does, lawmakers in both chambers agree the trial should move quickly. Still bitter over the length and repetition of last year’s trial of Trump, senators were closing in on rules that would compress the meat of the trial into three days of oral presentations, with the prosecution and defense each getting up to 12 hours to make their case, people involved in planning said. When the Senate tried Trump a year ago, each side had up to 24 hours.
Ceremonial requirements, deliberations and votes would add several additional days, but the trial could be the speediest presidential impeachment trial in history.
Still, the timeline could balloon if either the House managers or Trump’s defense team asked to call witnesses. Lawmakers were largely in the dark about Trump’s defense strategy; the former president, now ensconced in Florida, had yet to hire a lawyer with the trial looming.
Pelosi said she would leave it to House managers to determine whether to call witnesses, but she suggested they may not be necessary. Unlike in the last trial, when Democrats called on witnesses to expound on Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine, Pelosi indicated there was little need for them this time around since “the whole world bore witness” to Trump’s actions and the riot in the Capitol that followed.
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