Sen. Patrick Leahy To Preside Over Trump's Senate Impeachment Trial
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will preside over former President Donald Trump's trial in the Senate, a Senate source tells NPR. Leahy, 80, is the president pro tempore of the Senate, a constitutional role given to the longest-serving lawmaker in the majority party. The president pro tempore is third in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president and House speaker.
Chief Justice John Roberts presided over President Trump's first impeachment trial, but now that Trump is a former president, Roberts is not constitutionally obligated to preside.
House impeachment managers will deliver the article of impeachment to the Senate Monday evening, and the trial is scheduled to begin the week of Feb. 8.
On Jan. 13, Trump became the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice by the U.S. House of Representatives. House Democrats brought one article of impeachment — "incitement of insurrection" — related to remarks he made to a crowd loyal to him Jan. 6 that resulted in a fatal riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump, the first one-term president since George H.W. Bush in the 1990s, lost the November election to Biden, but has repeatedly and baselessly challenged the results citing little or false evidence. [Copyright 2021 NPR]
