When the U.S. Senate opened its second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sat in the front of the chamber, gavel in hand.
As president pro tempore of the Senate, Leahy is overseeing a momentous proceeding: the first trial of an ex-president in the nation’s history. At issue is whether Trump violated his oath of office by inciting the violent riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, as the House concluded last month.
Also at issue, at least on Tuesday, was whether it was appropriate for the senior senator from Vermont to serve as presiding officer — and whether the trial itself was constitutional.
Senators ultimately voted 56-44, largely along party lines, to move forward with the impeachment trial. Leahy and his junior colleague, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., joined their Democratic colleagues in voting to proceed.
Before they did, senators heard four hours of arguments from both sides. Democratic impeachment managers contended that the Senate had clear authority to proceed with the trial, while Trump’s legal team said the chamber could not convict a president who had already left office.
In remarks to the Senate on Tuesday, one of the former president’s lawyers, David Schoen, said that Leahy’s role in the trial illustrated its impropriety. Trump had the constitutional right to have the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts, preside over his trial, Schoen argued. Instead, Leahy will not only oversee the trial but vote on conviction.
“Mr. Trump now faces a situation in which the presiding officer will serve as both judge, with all the powers that the rules endow them with, and juror with a vote,” Schoen said.
Schoen added that Leahy has been an outspoken critic of his client — and “already has publicly announced his fixed view, before hearing any argument or evidence, that Mr. Trump must be convicted on the article of impeachment for the Senate.”
“Nowhere in this great country would any American, and certainly not this honorable presiding officer, consider this scenario to be consistent with any stretch of the American concept of due process, and a fair trial,” Schoen said.
Before the trial began on Tuesday, Leahy pledged to hold a fair impeachment trial. In a letter to his Senate colleagues, Leahy said he did not “ask or seek to preside” over the proceedings.
“Yet, while I occupy the constitutional office of the President pro tempore, it is incumbent upon me to do so,” he wrote.
“My intention and solemn obligation is to conduct this trial with fairness to all. I will adhere, as have my predecessors in the Senate who have presided over impeachment trials, to the Constitution, and to applicable Senate rules, precedent and governing resolutions,” Leahy wrote.
The senator agreed to preside over the trial after both Roberts and Vice President Kamala Harris declined to do so, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. In a statement last week, Leahy said his predecessors as Senate president pro tempore had historically presided over the impeachment trials of officials who were not sitting presidents.
Before Trump’s legal team spoke, Democratic House members argued that the Senate has the constitutional authority to hold the trial.
In a brief, the House impeachment managers said Trump’s argument that the trial was unconstitutional had been “rejected by scholars across the political spectrum, including many of the Nation’s leading conservative constitutional lawyers.”
If that assertion were true, they said the Senate would be “powerless to hold Presidents accountable for misconduct committed near the end of their terms.”
“It would also create an obvious loophole in the Senate’s disqualification power by allowing officials to resign immediately before their Senate trial. And it would encourage Presidents to commit abuses precisely when those abuses pose the greatest threat to our democracy — at election time,” the brief stated.
The Democrats told the Senate that Trump was directly responsible for the riots on Jan. 6.
“It is hard to imagine a clearer example of how a president could abuse his office, inciting violence against a co-equal branch of government while seeking to remain in power after losing an election, sitting back and watching it unfold,” said Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo.
“What we experienced that day, what our country experienced that day is the framers’ worst nightmare come to life. Presidents can’t inflame insurrection in their final weeks and then walk away like nothing happened,” Neguse said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the brief filed by House impeachment managers.
