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Their case was so simple as it was extraordinary, and in a weird constitutional twist, they have been wrestling with easy methods to current it when each the prosecutors and the jury have been witnesses and victims of the offense.
How a trial may work was proving to be simply as sophisticated.
When the Senate final met as a courtroom of impeachment in February 2020, it was presided over by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. of the Supreme Court. But the Constitution stipulates solely that the chief justice should oversee the continuing when a present president is on trial, throwing into doubt who would lead the chamber this time round.
The process might conceivably be left to the president of the Senate, which after Wednesday might be Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Or, if Ms. Harris doesn’t wish to grow to be embroiled within the continuing throughout her first days in workplace, she might presumably cede the duty to the Senate president professional tempore, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont.
But different constitutional students argued that as a result of the cost was lodged whereas Mr. Trump was nonetheless president, Chief Justice Roberts ought to preside once more.
The query was wrapped up in broader uncertainty concerning the Senate’s jurisdiction over Mr. Trump as soon as he leaves workplace. While former authorities officers have been tried for impeachable offenses, no former president has. Some conservatives have been pointing to the dearth of precedent, and the Constitution’s silence on the matter, to argue that the Senate had no proper to sit down in judgment of Mr. Trump after Wednesday.
That seems to be the minority view. The Senate did attempt President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of struggle within the 1870s, after he had already resigned. Many authorized students imagine that’s sufficient precedent to take action with Mr. Trump, and in any case, they argue it’s extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court would problem the Senate’s choice if a majority of the physique have been in favor of listening to the case.
The chief justice declined to touch upon Friday by means of a Supreme Court spokeswoman.
Senators and their aides have been additionally attempting to find out how they might alter the bodily structure of the Senate chamber and attendance necessities to function the trial safely throughout the pandemic. In the previous, impeachment guidelines have required that every one 100 senators sit at their desks contained in the chamber every time the trial is in session, and members of the prosecution and protection groups crammed round curved tables arrange within the effectively of the Senate. But doing so now with an airborne virus ravaging the nation — and the halls of Congress — can be unsafe.
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