Trump impeachment trial could begin on Inauguration Day

WASHINGTON (AP):

President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial could begin on Inauguration Day, just as Democrat Joe Biden takes the oath of office in an ever-more-extraordinary end to the defeated president’s tenure in the White House.

The timing is not set and depends heavily on when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decides to transmit the article of impeachment to the Senate. Democrats hoping to avoid interrupting Biden’s inauguration have suggested holding back until the new president has a chance to get his administration going.

What is clear is that the trial will be unlike any other in the nation’s history, the first for a president no longer in office. And, politically, it will force a reckoning among some Republicans who have stood by Trump throughout his presidency and largely allowed him to spread false attacks against the integrity of the 2020 election.

“The only path to any reunification of this broken and divided country is by shining a light on the truth,” said Representative Madeleine Dean, who will serve as an impeachment manager.

“That’s what the impeachment vote was. That’s what the trial in the Senate will be about.”

Trump was impeached on Wednesday by the House over the deadly Capitol siege, the only president in US history twice impeached, after a pro-Trump mob stormed the building. The attack has left the nation’s capital, and other major cites, under high security amid threats of more violence around the inauguration.