President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is set to collide directly with President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. And there may be little anyone can do about it.
Absent the consent of all 100 senators, Trump’s trial for “incitement of insurrection” will start at 1 p.m. on Jan. 20 — just an hour after Biden is sworn into office and Trump becomes a former president, provided the articles arrive by Jan. 19. And only the same consent from the entire Senate will allow the chamber to create two tracks: One to confirm Biden’s Cabinet and pass his legislative agenda, and another for Trump’s impeachment trial.
“I’m all for accountability. But I want to make sure that we prioritize our business in a way that gets the Cabinet set and Covid relief legislation moving fast,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in an interview, adding: “Especially after the events of the last week, it’s so critical that we get a Cabinet into place and we show the peaceful and efficient transition from one Cabinet to the next.”
Given that many Republicans oppose impeachment or think it’s not even constitutional once Trump has left office, it could be tough to get the cooperation Biden needs to handle a trial alongside Cabinet confirmations and begin work on a new coronavirus stimulus bill. Biden and Democrats say it’s critical to cut a deal that does both, but one single senator can disrupt any effort to multitask.
All that makes for an even higher degree of difficulty for Biden’s Cabinet and early legislative priorities to pass the Senate in his critical first few days in office.
“We are working with Republicans to try to find a path forward,” said a spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Schumer, who will become majority leader later this month once two new Democratic senators from Georgia are sworn in and Kamala Harris becomes vice president to break ties. Until then, however, Sen. Mitch McConnell is the majority leader.
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on MSNBC on Thursday that he spoke to Schumer that morning and that “there has been no exchange or conversation with Senator McConnell about setting a specific time to begin the trial.”
And there’s already concern that Biden will be hamstrung in his early days. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a centrist who supports convicting Trump, said a trial “impedes that first week or two that basically should be dedicated to putting our government back in place.” He had hoped that the House might give the Senate at least a month “until we had our government up and running again.”
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is unlikely to wait until after Biden’s inauguration to trigger the trial’s start by formally transmitting the impeachment article over to the Senate. Pelosi has been tight-lipped about precise timing, but her top lieutenants spent recent days emphasizing the urgency of moving the process to the Senate as quickly as possible. Democrats had wanted McConnell to bring the Senate back this week to begin the trial in earnest, but McConnell rejected their request.
“To choose between holding accountable those who are responsible for attacking our democracy in the U.S. Capitol on the one hand and getting the work done for the people around Covid relief? That is a false choice,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.). “We need to do all of those things.”
Schumer and McConnell could also be faced with a procedural mess even after the trial begins. Control of the Senate is set to flip in the middle of the trial, once Biden and Harris are inaugurated and Georgia’s two newly elected Democratic senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, are sworn in. Simultaneous to setting up the trial, Schumer will have to work out the rules of the road for a 50-50 Senate with McConnell.
With the Senate split and Chief Justice John Roberts presiding over the trial, partisan votes in the Senate could also lead to deadlock. Last year both parties sought to avoid putting Roberts in the position of having to break a tie.
