WASHINGTON (CN) — Heading into this week’s impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, a picture has begun to emerge of speedy but ultimately anticlimactic proceedings in the Senate.
While the exact timing is still in flux, unnamed sources familiar with trial rules have told The New York Times there will be four hours of debate on the constitutionality of the trial starting in the Senate on Tuesday, followed by a vote.
Lawmakers could allot up to 16 hours of debate per side with consideration for witnesses Wednesday, but it appears unlikely that witnesses will be called.
The House impeachment team has a wealth of video evidence to present from Jan. 6 — the day a mob of pro-Trump insurrectionists laid siege to the seat of the U.S. government — and many senators themselves were in the room when the attack occurred, so they could be called on to testify. Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and Senate pro tempore, will preside over the trial and shape what evidence is admitted. It is a surreal dynamic for Leahy who, along with hundreds of other lawmakers, was a target of the Jan. 6 mayhem.
The trial is expected to stretch through to early next week but no further. Trump’s attorney David Schoen has requested that proceedings halt on Saturday in order to observe the Sabbath. An Alabama-based civil rights and criminal defense lawyer, Schoen recently represented Trump ally Roger Stone on obstruction-of-Congress charges for which Stone was convicted in November 2019. Trump is also represented by Bruce Castor, a former district attorney Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, who famously dropped a 2005 prosecution of Bill Cosby that would lead to the comedian’s conviction over a decade later. Castor later brought an unsuccessful suit against Cosby accuser Andrea Constand for defamation.
Schoen and Castor filed a brief for Trump at around 11 a.m. on Monday, chalking up the latest impeachment saga to “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and calling the process defective, rushed and unconstitutional.
“The intellectual dishonesty and factual vacuity put forth by the House Managers in their trial memorandum only serve to further punctuate the point that this impeachment proceeding was never about seeking justice,” Castor and Schoen wrote. "Instead, this was only ever a selfish attempt by Democratic leadership in the House to prey upon the feelings of horror and confusion that fell upon all Americans across the entire political spectrum upon seeing the destruction at the Capitol on January 6 by a few hundred people.
“Instead of acting to heal the nation, or at the very least focusing on prosecuting the lawbreakers who stormed the Capitol, the speaker of the House and her allies have tried to callously harness the chaos of the moment for their own political gain.”
Schoen and Castor also dipped into the constitutional challenge that Senator Rand Paul unsuccessfully raised last month over whether the Senate has the authority to carry out the trial now that Trump is out of office.
Saying that Article II of the U.S. Constitution limits impeachment to current officials only, Trump’s defense team claims that trying him would be “nothing more than the trial of a private citizen by a legislative body.”
“Conviction at an impeachment trial requires the possibility of removal from office,” Castor and Schoen wrote. “Without that possibility, there cannot be a trial.”
In addition to labeling the impeachment “late,” the 78-page defense brief accuses Democrats of a “misplaced” pursuit to disqualify Trump from holding future office. They say that disqualification is not the purpose of impeachment, and it is “not available simply to disqualify a former public officer from future officeholding.”
