Updated at 4:34 p.m.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., expects to preside over the U.S. Senate’s impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump early next month, he said in a statement Monday afternoon.
Leahy, who took office last week as president pro tempore of the Senate, would replace U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts as the presiding officer during Trump’s second impeachment trial.
Leahy said in the statement he would be impartial in the role, despite already signaling that he believes the former president is guilty.
“When I preside over the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, I will not waver from my constitutional and sworn obligations to administer the trial with fairness, in accordance with the Constitution and the laws,” said Leahy, the longest-serving member of the Senate.
While the U.S. Constitution calls for the chief justice to preside over trials of sitting presidents, there is no precedent for an ex-president to face such a proceeding. In the past, senators have presided over impeachment trials of other federal officers.
CNN first reported Monday that Senate leadership had decided Leahy would take on the role. Axios and NPR quickly confirmed the story. The day before, Leahy told MSNBC there was a “real possibility” that he would be the one to preside over the trial.
“I can’t tell you how many hundreds of hours my staff and I have gone over the Constitution procedure, because it appears I may well be the one presiding over the trial,” Leahy said.
Tom Sullivan, a political science professor at the University of Vermont who specializes in constitutional law, said Leahy is a logical choice for the position in Roberts’ absence.
“He is kind of a natural for this,” said Sullivan, a former president of UVM. “He is highly regarded in the Senate by both parties and, given his experience as longtime chair of the Judiciary Committee, I think he knows his role very well.”
Leahy also brings experience from the role he played in former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999. In that proceeding, Leahy took the lead as one of the lawmakers tasked with deposing key witnesses, including Monica Lewinsky.
During Trump’s first impeachment trial last January, Leahy and other Democrats were relegated to secondary roles in a Senate then controlled by Republicans.
This time around, Trump has been charged with one article of impeachment: that on Jan. 6, he allegedly incited a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory.
“He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power and imperiled a coordinate branch of government,” the article of impeachment reads. “He thereby betrayed his trust as president to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.”
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 232-197 in favor of the impeachment article on Jan. 13. Ten Republicans broke with the president and joined Democrats in voting to impeach Trump. Among those who supported it was Vermont’s sole delegate to the House, Rep. Peter Welch.
In interviews, Leahy has called Trump’s conduct far worse than anything former President Richard Nixon did prior to his resignation in 1974.
The senior senator from Vermont has also expressed interest in finding Trump guilty of the article of impeachment in order to prevent the former president from being able to seek high office in the future.
Frank Bowman, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law and an expert on impeachment, said that neither Leahy nor his colleagues could reasonably be held to the standard of neutrality expected of judges and jurors in an ordinary court proceeding.
“In this instance, none of them could sit because they are all either potentially complicit in the president’s offenses or, alternatively, potentially victims of the president’s offenses,” Bowman said.
In Bowman’s view, Leahy’s role as presiding officer could be beneficial to those who favor conviction because the senior senator would make the final ruling on questions of evidence and procedure.
“Having him in the chair, in one sense at least, gives a little bit of an advantage to the Democrats in terms of controlling how things go,” Bowman said.
