WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump’s indictment could begin on Inauguration Day, just as Democrat Joe Biden takes the oath of office in an increasingly extraordinary end to the defeated president’s term in the White House.
The timing has not been set and depends heavily on when House President Nancy Pelosi decides to pass the article of the accusation to the Senate. Democrats hoping not to interrupt Biden’s inauguration have suggested they hold back until the new president gets a chance to get his government up and running.
What is clear is that the trial ahead will be unlike any other in the country’s history, the first for a president who is no longer in office. And politically, it will force a reckoning among some Republicans who stood by Trump during his presidency and largely allowed him to spread false attacks against the integrity of the 2020 election.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is open to considering charges after telling associates he was done with Trump, but he did not indicate how he would vote.
The Republican leader holds a large position in his party, although the trial of the trial will count among his last actions as majority leader. Two new Georgia senators, both Democrats, are to be sworn in, and the chamber will be split 50-50. It gives the Democrats a majority if Kamala Harris takes office, as the vice president is a tiebreaker.
In a statement to colleagues Wednesday, McConnell said he “did not make a final decision on how I will vote” in a Senate indictment.
Trump was indicted by the House on Wednesday over the deadly siege of the Capitol, the only president in U.S. history to be charged twice after a pro-Trump mob stormed the building. The attack left the country’s capital and other capitals under high security amid threats of more violence surrounding the inauguration.
Pelosi did not say when she will take the next step to convey the indictment, only a charge of inciting rebellion.
Under the Senate procedure, the trial will begin soon after the House has filed the indictment. This could mean that the trial starts at 13:00 on the inauguration day. The ceremony at the Capitol begins at noon.
After Trump’s first indictment, in 2019, she withheld the articles for some time to draft the Senate.
Biden said the Senate should be able to divide its time and do both – hold the trial and start working on its priorities.
With the Capitol secured by armed National Guard troops inside and outside, the House voted Wednesday 232-197 to accuse Trump. The proceedings moved swiftly, with lawmakers voting just one week after violent pro-Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol, tossed around by the president’s calls to “fight like hell” against the election results.
Ten Republicans flee Trumpand joined the Democrats who said he should be held accountable and ominously warned of a ‘clear and present danger’ if Congress left him unnoticed before the inauguration of Democrat Joe January 20th. It was the most dual presidential indictment in modern times, even more so than against Bill Clinton in 1998.
The uprising in the Capitol stunned and angered lawmakers as they scrambled to safety when the mob descended, revealing the fragility of the country’s history of peaceful transfers of power.
Pelosi appealed to Abraham Lincoln and the Bible and begged legislators to uphold their oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
She said of Trump: “He must go, he is a clear and present danger to the nation we all love.”
Set up in the White House and watch the proceedings on TV, Trump later released a video statement in which he did not mention the accusation at all, but called on his supporters to refrain from any further violence or disruption of Biden’s inauguration.
“Like you all, I was shocked and deeply saddened by the disaster at the Capitol last week,” he said, his first condemnation of the attack. He called for unity “to move forward” and said: “Mob violence is contrary to everything I believe in and everything our movement stands for. … No true supporter of me can disregard law enforcement.”
Trump was first charged by the House in 2019 over his dealings with Ukraine, but the Senate voted in 2020 acquittal.
No president has been convicted by the Senate, but Republicans said it could change in the rapidly changing political environment as officials, donors, big business and others peel away from the defeated president.
The conviction and removal of Trump requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate.
Biden said in a statement after the vote that it was his hope that the Senate leadership would find a way to deal with their constitutional responsibilities on indictment while also working on the other urgent matters of this country. ‘
Unlike his first time, Trump is confronted by this accusation as a weakened leader, after losing his own re-election as well as the Republican majority in the Senate.
The four-page indictment, which sets out a case for the ‘high crimes and offenses’ required by the Constitution relying on Trump’s own offensive rhetoric and the lies he spread about Biden’s election victory, including during a rally near the White House on the day of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
The indictment is also intended to prevent Trump from ever running again..
A Capitol police officer died from injuries sustained during the riot, and police shot dead a woman during the siege. Three other people were killed in what, according to authorities, were medical emergencies. The riot delayed the votes of the Electoral College, which was the last step to Biden’s victory.
Ten Republican lawmakers, including Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the third position of GOP leader of the House, voted to accuse Trump and cut the Republican leadership and the party itself.
Cheney, whose father is the former Republican vice president, said of Trump’s actions to call the mob that “there has never been a greater betrayal by a president” of his office.
The president’s solid popularity among the voters of the GOP legislators still had some influence, and most Republicans of the House voted not to accuse.
Trump has been said to be uncompromising with alleged infidelity of McConnell and Cheney.
Security was extremely strict at the Capitol, with high fences surrounding the complex. Metal detector displays were needed for lawmakers entering the living room, where they waited a week earlier when police officers pulled out guns and blocked the door of rioters.
The indictment bill draws from Trump’s own false statements about his defeat against Biden in the election. Judges across the country, including some nominated by Trump, have repeatedly rejected cases that dispute the election results, and former Attorney General William Barr, an ally of Trump, said there was no sign of widespread fraud. .
While some have questioned the president’s accusation at the end of his term, there is a precedent. In 1876, during the reign of Ulysses Grant, War Secretary William Belknap was indicted by the House on the day he resigned, and the Senate convened a trial months later. He was acquitted.
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Associated Press authors Kevin Freking, Andrew Taylor Alan Fram, Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.