Trump:: second impeachment trial to begin 8 February

By Abankula with Agency Report

All 100 U.S. senators will be sworn in as jurors today in the second impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump.

A summons will also be formally issued to Trump for his response, which will be due on Feb. 2.

The stage for the unprecedented trial, beginning 8 February, was set Monday after U.S. House of Representatives delivered to the Senate the impeachment article.

The article charges Trump with inciting an insurrection at the Capitol, leading to the death of five persons.

Nine House Democrats, appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as impeachment managers, made the ceremonial walk through the Capitol building to the upper chamber to deliver the article.

“President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government.

“He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperilled a coequal branch of Government.

“He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States,” Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, read aloud the single article of impeachment against Trump on the Senate floor.

The nine Representatives will serve as prosecutors in the trial that will begin 8 February.

“Everyone wants to put this awful chapter in American history behind us. But sweeping it under the rug will not bring healing,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Sunday.

“I believe it will be a fair trial. But it will move relatively quickly and not take up too much time because we have so much else to do.”

The Democrats-controlled House voted to impeach Trump over “incitement of insurrection” in a 232-197 vote on Jan. 13, making him the first president to be impeached twice.

At least 17 Republicans would need to join all 50 Democrats in the Senate to convict Trump by a two-thirds majority.

In Trump’s first impeachment trial held last year, which lasted three weeks, only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney, voted to convict Trump on abuse of power charge.

Senator Patrick Leahy, the president pro tempore of the Senate is expected to preside at the trial.

“I have presided over hundreds of hours in my time in the Senate,” Leahy told reporters, “I don’t think anybody has ever suggested I was anything but impartial in those hundreds of hours.”

Leahy, 80, is a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.