Trump has expressed interest in potentially running for president again in 2024 (Archive)
Washington:
With the U.S. House of Representatives poised to impeach President Donald Trump a second time, just days before he leaves office, questions arise about what will happen next.
These are some of the possible scenarios if the House, as expected, indicts Trump on Wednesday for inciting last week’s attack by his supporters on the United States Capitol when Congress certified the victory of Democrat Joe Biden in the election. presidential:
Senate trial
The usual process is for the Senate to hold a trial for a President who has been impeached by the House.
That’s what happened last year after Trump was indicted by the Democratic-controlled House of pressuring Ukraine’s leader to dig up political dirt on Biden.
Trump was acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate.
This time, however, Trump has only one week left in the White House and Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States on January 20.
That time crisis has sparked debate and speculation about whether the Senate can hold a trial before Trump leaves office.
Call the Senate early?
The Senate is in recess and is not due to return until January 19.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the trial could not begin until January 20, the day Trump is scheduled to leave office.
According to McConnell’s office, bringing the Senate back early would require the unanimous consent of all 100 senators, an unlikely scenario.
Democrats disagree.
According to the office of Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a 2004 resolution allows the Senate to return to an emergency session with the consent of minority and majority leaders.
“There is nothing to stop the Senate from taking it immediately if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decides he wants to continue,” Democratic Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Rules Committee, said Wednesday. .
Pelosi and McConnell
If Trump is impeached by the House, it is up to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, to decide when to send the impeachment article to the Senate.
It could send it out immediately once it’s approved Wednesday, or it could wait, as some Democrats have suggested, until Trump leaves office and Biden is comfortably in place.
Once he reaches the Senate, McConnell’s intentions are unclear.
The powerful Republican senator from Kentucky thwarted the latest attempt to convict Trump in the Senate, managing to rally all Republican senators with the exception of Mitt Romney of Utah to vote for acquittal.
But The New York Times reported Wednesday that McConnell believes Trump committed actionable crimes and sees an opportunity to rid the Republican Party of the real estate mogul once and for all.
It takes a two-thirds majority of the senators present to convict the president, which means that if everyone is in the chamber, at least 17 Republicans would have to join the Democrats to vote for conviction.
Post-presidency trial?
If the Senate cannot hold a trial before Trump leaves the White House on January 20, the question arises as to whether he can be tried after he leaves office.
This has never happened before and some constitutional scholars argue that a former president cannot be tried by the Senate.
The three previous presidential trials, those of Trump and Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, occurred while the leaders were still in the White House.
Like Trump, both Johnson, in 1868, and Clinton, in 1998-99, were indicted by the House but acquitted by the Senate.
But the House has impeached, and the Senate has tried former senators and judges after they were no longer in office or on the bench.
One of the arguments made to bring Trump to trial even after he leaves office is that a conviction could prevent him from returning to federal office.
Trump has expressed interest in potentially running for president again in 2024 and a simple majority of Senate votes could bar him from another run for the White House.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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