Start of Trump’s impeachment trial remains unsettled as Pelosi refuses to say when she’ll send over article
The timing of former President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial is still unsettled while Senate leaders haggle over how a power-sharing agreement will govern a 50-50 Senate.
The question of who will represent Trump remains unanswered.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a news conference Thursday that the House was “ready” to begin the trial but would wait until the Senate was prepared before formally transmitting the impeachment article, the step that would begin the trial the following day.
“They have now informed us they are ready to receive, the question is other questions about how a trial will proceed, but we are ready,” Pelosi said of the Senate.
House Democrats are in discussions to send over the article of impeachment to the Senate as early as Friday, two sources say, but a complicating factor remains the fact that Trump still does not have a lawyer to represent him in a Senate trial.
“The articles could be walked over Friday,” one source told CNN.
There are also discussions about how to ensure a trial can move quickly and not overwhelm President Joe Biden’s agenda, but ultimately no timing has been finalized. Trump’s lack of lawyers underscores the chaos that the former President is still injecting on Capitol Hill even after he left Washington on Wednesday before Biden’s inauguration.
This story is breaking and will be updated.