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      Schumer promises quick but fair trial as Trump impeachment heads to Senate

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      Ex-president forms legal team before February hearingsBiden focuses on nominations and legislative prioritiesTrump plots revenge on Republicans who betrayed himThe single article of impeachment against Donald Trump will on Monday evening be delivered to the Senate, where Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer is promising a quick but fair trial. Related: Trump’s second impeachment trial: the key players Continue reading… More

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      Impeachment guide: how will Donald Trump's second Senate trial unfold?

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterSpeaker Nancy Pelosi has said that on Monday the House of Representatives will send an article of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate – the first time in history an American president will face a second impeachment trial.Though Trump is no longer in office, the trial is set to go ahead in February. If convicted, Trump could be barred from ever again holding public office, dealing a terminal blow to any hopes he may have of running again in 2024.The charge originates from the former president’s incendiary speech to an angry mob before it assaulted the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January, and will thus unfold in the one of the chambers ransacked by his supporters.Here is what we know so far about the historic proceeding:What happens on Monday?Pelosi will send the article of impeachment – the charge of incitement laid out and approved by the House – to the Senate at 7pm EST. The charge will be carried by Democratic impeachment managers in a small, formal procession through National Statuary Hall, where just weeks ago rioters paraded, waving Trump flags. In the Senate, Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, will read the article of impeachment on the floor of the chamber.What happens next?Traditionally the trial would begin almost immediately upon receipt of the impeachment article. But Senate leaders have agreed a two-week delay, allowing time for Joe Biden to install his cabinet and begin pursuing a legislative agenda.Under the deal struck by Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, the president’s team and the House managers will have until the week of 8 February to to draft and exchange written legal briefs.Trump’s legal team must submit an answer to the article by 2 February, the same day House managers must provide their pre-trial brief. Trump’s pre-trial brief will be due on 8 February and the House will have until 9 February for a rebuttal, allowing for the trial to begin.What is the charge?Trump is accused of “inciting violence against the government of the United States”, for his statements at a rally prior to his supporters launching the attack on the Capitol in which five people died. The House impeached Trump for “high crimes and misdemeanors” on 13 January, exactly one week after the siege. The final vote was 232 to 197, with 10 Republicans joining Democrats.Will witnesses be called?That is not yet known. In Trump’s first impeachment trial, over approaches to Ukraine for dirt on political rivals, the Republican-held Senate refused to call witnesses. Now the Senate is in Democratic hands but many in the party are hoping for a speedy trial so as not to distract from Biden’s first weeks in the White House. Some Democrats have said they do not expect to call witnesses, given that lawmakers bore witness to –and were the victims of – the attack on the Capitol.Who runs the trial?The chief justice of the supreme court, John Roberts, oversaw Trump’s first trial in February 2020. However, the constitution only stipulates that the chief justice must preside over the trial of a current president, leaving scholars divided over who should lead the chamber during the proceedings this time. If Roberts declined to preside, the task would likely fall to the president of the Senate: Vice-President Kamala Harris. In the event she preferred not to become involved with the proceedings, which overlaps with her first weeks in her new job, the job could fall to Patrick Leahy, a Democratic senator from Vermont and the Senate president pro tempore, a position decided by seniority.How long will the trial last?That is also still not known, but it is expected to be much quicker than the last impeachment trial – perhaps a matter of days, not weeks.What are the chances Republicans vote to convict?A two-thirds majority of the Senate is needed to convict Trump. As with his first impeachment trial, many Republicans see that as unlikely. Only Mitt Romney dared break ranks last time and, while more are expected to do so this time, it would take 17 Republicans joining all 50 Democrats to convict. However, McConnell’s public ambivalence over his own vote has led to some speculation that if he were to signal support for conviction, he could provide cover for more defections.If Trump is convicted what happens next?If Trump is convicted, there will be no immediate consequences as he has already left office. However, lawmakers could hold another vote to block him from running again. A simple majority would be needed to block him from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States”, blocking a White House run in 2024. More

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      Trump plots revenge on Republicans who betrayed him as Senate trial looms

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      Republican divisions over Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial came into clearer focus on Sunday, as the former president spent his first weekend out of office plotting revenge against those he says betrayed him.Stewing over election defeat by Joe Biden, four days after leaving the White House, Trump continued to drop hints of creating a new party, a threat some see as a gambit to keep wavering senators in line ahead of the opening of his trial, in the week after 8 February.Democrats will send the single article of impeachment to the Senate for a reading on Monday evening. It alleges incitement of insurrection, regarding the 6 January riot at the US Capitol that left five dead, including a police officer.Trump spent the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, splitting rounds of golf with discussions about maintaining relevance and influence and how to unseat Republicans deemed to have crossed him, the Washington Post reported.Trump, the Post said, has said the threat of starting a Maga (Make America Great Again) or Patriot party, gives him leverage to prevent senators voting to convict, which could lead to him being prevented from seeking office again.We already have a flaming fire in this country and it’s like taking gasoline and pouring it on top of the fireThose in his crosshairs include Liz Cheney, the No3 House Republican, Georgia governor Brian Kemp and others who declined to embrace false claims of election fraud or accused him of inciting the Capitol riot.Other senior Republicans clashed on Sunday over Trump’s trial and the party’s future. Mitt Romney, the Utah senator, former presidential candidate and fierce Trump critic who was the only Republican to vote for impeachment at his first trial last year, said the former president had exhibited a “continuous pattern” of trying to corrupt elections.“He fired up a crowd, encouraging them to march on the Capitol at the time that the Congress was carrying out its constitutional responsibility to certify the election,” Romney told CNN’s State of the Union. “These allegations are very serious. They haven’t been defended yet by the president. He deserves a chance to have that heard but it’s important for us to go through the normal justice process and for there to be resolution.”Romney said it was constitutional to hold a trial for a president who has left office.“I believe that what is being alleged and what we saw, which is incitement to insurrection, is an impeachable offence. If not, what is?”Romney, however, said he did not support action against Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, senators who supported Trump’s claims of a rigged election and objected to results.“I think history will provide a measure of judgment with regard to those that continue to spread the lie that the [former] president began with, as well as the voters in our respective communities,” he said. “I don’t think the Senate needs to take action.”Other Republicans, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Ben Sasse of Nebraska, are expected to vote to convict. But the party is deeply fractured. For a conviction, 17 Republicans would need to vote with the 50 Democrats. It is unclear if that number can be reached, despite assertions from minority leader Mitch McConnell that the mob “was fed lies” by Trump.Marco Rubio of Florida said he thought the trial was “stupid and counterproductive”.“We already have a flaming fire in this country and it’s like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire,” he told Fox News Sunday.“I look back in time, for example Richard Nixon, who had clearly committed crimes and wrongdoing. In hindsight I think we would all agree that President Ford’s pardon was important for the country to be able to move forward. I think this is going to be really bad for the country, it’s just going to stir it up even more and make it even harder to get things done.”John Cornyn of Texas, meanwhile, threatened retaliation.“If it is a good idea to impeach and try former presidents, what about former Democratic presidents when Republicans get the majority in 2022?” he tweeted. “Think about it and let’s do what is best for the country.”Mike Rounds, of South Dakota, said he believed the impeachment was unconstitutional, telling NBC’s Meet the Press: “[The US constitution] specifically pointed out that you can impeach the president and it does not indicate that you can impeach someone who is not in office. So I think it’s a moot point.“But for right now there are other things we’d rather be working on. The Biden administration would love more of their cabinet in place and there’s a number of Republicans that feel the same way. We should allow this president the opportunity to form his cabinet and get that in place as quickly as possible.”Republican unity appears increasingly rare. On Saturday, the Arizona Republican party voted to censure Cindy McCain, the widow of the former senator and presidential candidate John McCain, and two other prominent party members who have crossed Trump.The actions drew swift praise from the former president, who backed Kelli Ward, the firebrand state party chair who was the architect of the censure, and who recently won a narrow re-election.Trump, the Post reported, called Ward to offer his “complete and total endorsement”. More

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      Don't believe the anti-Trump hype – corporate sedition still endangers America | Robert Reich

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      The sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – chief executives and their army of lobbyists.Notwithstanding Biden’s ambitious agenda, dozens of giant corporations have said they will no longer donate to the 147 members of Congress who objected to the certification of Biden electors on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud, which rules out most Republicans on the Hill.After locking down Trump’s account, social media giants like Twitter and Facebook are policing instigators of violence and hate, which hobbles Republican lawmakers trying to appeal to Trump voters.As a result of moves like these, chief executives are being hailed – and hailing themselves – as guardians of democracy. The New York Times praises business leaders for seeking “stability and national unity”. Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Airlines, says: “Our voice is seen as more important than ever.” A recent study by Edelman finds the public now trusts business more than nonprofits, the government or the media.For years, big corporations have assaulted democracy with big money, drowning out the voices of ordinary AmericansGive me a break. For years, big corporations have been assaulting democracy with big money, drowning out the voices and needs of ordinary Americans and fueling much of the anger and cynicism that opened the door to Trump in the first place.Their assault hasn’t been as dramatic as the Trump thugs who stormed the Capitol, and it’s entirely legal – although more damaging over the long term.A study published a few years ago by two of America’s most respected political scientists, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page of Northwestern, concluded that the preferences of the average American “have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy”. Instead, lawmakers respond almost exclusively to the moneyed interests – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns.The capture of government by big business has infuriated average Americans whose paychecks have gone nowhere even as the stock market has soared.The populist movements that fueled both Bernie Sanders and Trump began in the 2008 financial crisis when Wall Street got bailed out and no major bank executive went to jail, although millions of ordinary people lost their jobs, savings and homes.So now, in wake of Trump’s calamitous exit and Biden’s ascension, we’re to believe chief executives care about democracy?“No one thought they were giving money to people who supported sedition,” explained Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase and chairman of the Business Roundtable, referring to the disgraced Republicans.Yet Dimon has been a leader of the more insidious form of sedition. He piloted the corporate lobbying campaign for the Trump tax cut, deploying a vast war chest of corporate donations.For more than a decade Dimon has driven Wall Street’s charge against stricter bank regulation, opening bipartisan doors in the Capitol with generous gifts from the Street. (Dimon calls himself a Democrat.)When Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg shut Trump’s Facebook account, he declared: “You just can’t have a functioning democracy without a peaceful transition of power.”Where was Zuckerberg’s concern for a “functioning democracy” when he amplified Trump’s lies for four years?After taking down Trump’s Twitter account, Jack Dorsey expressed discomfort about “the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation”.Spare me. Dorsey has fought off all attempts to limit Twitter’s power over the “global conversation”. He shuttered Trump only after Democrats secured the presidency and control of the Senate.If they were committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidatesLook, I’m glad CEOs are penalizing the 147 Republican seditionists and that big tech is starting to police social media content.But don’t confuse the avowed concerns of these CEOs about democracy with democracy itself. They aren’t answerable to democracy. At most, they’re accountable to big shareholders and institutional investors who don’t give a fig as long as profits keep rolling in. These CEOs could do a U-turn tomorrow.If they were committed to democracy, CEOs would permanently cease corporate donations to all candidates, close their Pacs, stop giving to secretive “dark money” groups and discourage donations by their executives.They’d stop placing ads in media that have weaponized disinformation – including Fox News, Infowars, Newsmax and websites affiliated with rightwing pundits. Social media giants would start acting like publishers and take responsibility for what they promulgate.If corporate America were serious about democracy it would throw its weight behind the “For the People Act”, the first bills of the new Congress, offering public financing of elections among other reforms.Don’t hold your breath.Joe Biden intends to raise corporate taxes, increase the minimum wage, break up big tech and strengthen labor unions.The fourth branch is already amassing a war chest for the fight. More

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      Senate Republican threatens impeachments of past Democratic presidents

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      The Texas Republican senator John Cornyn warned on Saturday that Donald Trump’s second impeachment could lead to the prosecution of former Democratic presidents if Republicans retake Congress in two years’ time.Trump this month became the first US president to be impeached twice, after the Democratic-controlled House, with the support of 10 Republicans, voted to charge him with incitement of insurrection over the assault on the Capitol by his supporters on 6 January which left five people dead.Trump failed to overturn his election defeat and Joe Biden was sworn in as president this week.After a brief moment of bipartisan sentiment in which members from both parties condemned the unprecedented attack on Congress as it met to formalize Biden’s victory, a number of Senate Republicans are opposing Trump’s trial, which could lead to a vote blocking him from future office.“If it is a good idea to impeach and try former presidents, what about former Democratic presidents when Republicans get the majority in 2022?” Cornyn, a 19-year veteran of the Senate who last year tried to distance himself from Trump when it seemed his seat was at risk, tweeted at majority leader Chuck Schumer. “Think about it and let’s do what is best for the country.”Democrats hold narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate but it is common for a president’s party to lose seats in elections two years after a presidential contest. Impeachment begins in the House. The Senate stages any trial.Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has said the mob in the Capitol putsch was “provoked” by Trump – who told supporters to march on Congress and “fight like hell”. Other Senate Republicans claim trying Trump after he has left office would be unconstitutional and further divide the country.There are also concerns on both sides of the aisle that the trial could distract from Biden’s legislative agenda. Schumer, who became majority leader this week, tweeted on Friday that the Senate would confirm Biden’s cabinet, enact a new Covid-19 relief package and conduct Trump’s impeachment trial.The trial is due to be held in the second week of February. More

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      US man charged with threatening to 'assassinate' Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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      A Texas man who participated in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January has been charged with threatening to “assassinate” the New York Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Garret Miller of Texas faces five criminal charges arising from his participation in the pro-Trump riot, including “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted buildings or grounds without lawful authority” and making threats.According to court documents, he allegedly tweeted: “Assassinate AOC.”He is also charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, obstructing or impeding any official proceeding, and certain acts during civil disorder.Asked for comment on Saturday, Miller’s lawyer, Clint Broden, said in an email: “The charges are based on an inappropriate comment made in the heat of the moment on Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitter feed.”On Friday night, Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive Democratic congresswoman from New York, responded to news that Miller had been arrested, and had posted a selfie to Facebook, writing that he “just wanted to incriminate myself a little lol”.Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Well, you did!”She added: “On one hand you have to laugh, and on the other know that the reason [the Capitol rioters] were this brazen is because they thought they were going to succeed.”Miller is also alleged to have said an officer who shot and killed a Trump supporter inside the Capitol “deserves to die” and would not “survive long” because it’s “huntin[g] season”.Broden said: “Mr Miller regrets the actions he took in a misguided effort to show his support for former President Trump. He has the full support of his family and has always been a law abiding citizen.“His social media comments reflect very ill-considered political hyperbole in very divided times and will certainly not be repeated in the future. He looks forward to putting all of this behind him.”The criminal complaint filed in Washington DC federal court lists example after example of social media posts apparently placing Miller on Capitol grounds, participating in the riot.Several hours after the insurrection, authorities allege, Twitter user @garretamiller publicly posted a video from within the Capitol captioned: “From inside congress”.“In examining Miller’s Facebook account, there are many posts relating to his involvement in criminal activities at the Capitol,” officials wrote.On 2 January, Miller allegedly wrote on Facebook: “I am about to drive across the country for this trump shit. On Monday … Some crazy shit going to happen this week. Dollar might collapse … civil war could start … not sure what to do in DC.”On 3 January, Miller allegedly said he was bringing to Washington “a grappling hook and rope and a level-3 vest. Helmets mouth guard and bump cap”. The last time he was in Washington for a pro-Trump rally, Miller allegedly added, he “had a lot of guns” with him.Miller also seems to have sought to set the record straight about participants in the riot. When someone wrote on Twitter that “the people storming The Capitol are not Patriots. They are PAID INFILTRATORS”, Miller allegedly responded: “Nah we stormed it. We where [sic] gentle. We where [sic] unarmed. We knew what had to be done.”In a 15 January Facebook chat, Miller allegedly wrote that he was “happy to make death threats so I been just off the rails tonight lol” and was “happy to be banned now [from Twitter]”. Asked if police knew his name, he allegedly wrote: “[I]t might be time for me to … Be hard to locate.”A bail hearing was scheduled for Monday.The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported that the FBI and Department of Justice were considering not charging some of the hundreds of people arrested over the riot.It was “a politically loaded proposition”, the paper said, “but one alert to the practical concern that hundreds of such cases could swamp the local courthouse”.Donald Trump was impeached for inciting the Capitol attack. He will face trial in the Senate. More

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      The Squad shouldn’t have to feel terrified of their colleagues in Congress | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter​ on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday.Trump is gone but the violence he incited remainsThe Republicans have always been the party of law and order: they love ordering other people around while acting as if the law doesn’t apply to them. Over the past couple of weeks, Republicans have been having temper tantrums about new safety protocols that have been put in place in the US Capitol following the deadly 6 January insurrection. Lawmakers are now supposed to walk through metal detectors to enter the chamber and vote but a number of Republicans have been ignoring the rules. “You can’t stop me,” Louie Gohmert, a Texas congressman, reportedly sneered at Capitol police, as he shamelessly skirted a metal detector. Just imagine going to an airport and doing what Gohmert did: it would not end well.Think Gohmert is brazen? Some Republican lawmakers have been setting off the metal detectors but refusing to be searched. “Nah, I’m not going to do that,” the Georgia congressman Rick Allen reportedly told officers who attempted to scan him after he set off the machine. Similarly, the newly elected congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who tweeted earlier this year that she was going to carry a loaded Glock handgun to Congress, refused to have her bag searched. Congressman Andy Harris, meanwhile, did consent to a search on Thursday afternoon: a concealed weapon was found in his suit coat. Harris then asked a colleague to hold his gun while he went and voted on a bill. (Very normal behaviour; very normal country.) His colleague declined because he didn’t have a firearm license.House members that refuse to comply with safety protocols now face hefty fines. But fines are a woefully inadequate response to a worryingly incendiary situation; trying to smuggle guns into the Capitol isn’t just disrespectful, it’s dangerous. Particularly as there are still questions being asked about whether some members of Congress aided and abetted the violent attack on the Capitol earlier this month.Nobody should have to go to work every day wondering whether one of their colleagues is going to kill them. And yet, that’s precisely what some Democrats – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members of the Squad, in particular – are having to do. The Squad are a favourite target of rightwingers; they’ve had reason to worry about their safety long before the Capitol riots. Last year, for example, the QAnon supporter and new congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted an image on Facebook of her holding an assault rifle alongside Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart,” her post’s caption read. A Florida Republican running for Congress also openly suggested that Omar be executed for treason. “The fact that those who make these violent threats very publicly without hesitation reaffirms how much white supremacy has spread within the [Republican party],” Tlaib tweeted at the time.Following the Capitol riots, AOC spoke out about how she feared for her life. She wasn’t just afraid of the rioters, she was worried that “white supremacist members of Congress” would disclose her location and endanger her safety. Squad member Ayanna Pressley was probably thinking the same thing: somehow every panic button in her office had been torn out before the riots.“[Many of us] still don’t yet feel safe around other members of Congress,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday. “One just tried to bring a gun on the floor of the House today.” Gun culture in America is so warped that instead of agreeing that bringing guns to work was bad, Cuomo suggested the armed congressman might have been trying to keep everyone safe. “I don’t really care what they say their intentions are,” AOC replied. “I care what the impact of their actions are and the impact is to put 435 members of Congress in danger … it is absolutely outrageous that we even have to have this conversation.”I know the last four years have warped our idea of “normal” but there is absolutely nothing normal about members of Congress having to worry that their colleagues might murder them. “GOP lawmakers campaigned with images of them cocking guns next to photos of myself,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Friday. “Now they are trying to violate DC law and House rules to sneak guns onto the House floor two weeks after a white supremacist insurrection that killed 5 people. Why?”Why, indeed? That’s a question that we all need to be asking. Trump may have left the White House but the violence he helped incite has not been eliminated. The Capitol isn’t just a hostile working environment at the moment, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.Joe Biden will end the awful ‘global gag rule’The president (how nice it is to say that and not refer to Trump!) is repealing a policy banning groups that receive US aid from doing anything abortion-related. Trump had expanded the global gag rule to cover almost all US bilateral aid for global health, affecting as much as $12bn (£8.9m) in funding.A Gwyneth Paltrow vagina candle reportedly exploded“There was an inferno in the room,” the victim of the incident told the Sun. The woman eventually got the situation under control by throwing the vagina candle out of her front door.Egyptian pastry chef arrested for making indecent cupcakesThe female chef was interrogated by security forces after making cakes with penis decorations for a private birthday party. The arrest is part of a worrying crackdown by the Egyptian authorities to control “public morality”, which involves policing everything women do.Twitter locks Chinese embassy’s account over tweet about Uighur womenRemember when the Chinese embassy in the US tried to claim forced sterilization was actually feminism? Twitter has now said it violated company policy against dehumanization and locked the Chinese embassy’s account.How Amanda Gorman became the voice of a new American eraAmerica’s youth poet laureate was a highlight of the inauguration and Gormania has now swept the country. “The right words in the right order can change the world; and you proved that,” Lin-Manuel Miranda told Gorman on Good Morning America. “Keep changing the world, one word at a time.” Gorman intends to: she’s got plans to run for president. “Save the 2036 date on your iPhone calendar,” she said.The week in mittenarchyGorman may have been the start of the inauguration but Bernie Sanders’ mittens were a close second. The Vermont teacher who made the gloves, which are fashioned out of repurposed sweaters and recycled plastic, has been inundated by requests from people looking to get their hands on them. Too bad, she’s said, they’re unique: “sometimes in this world, you just can’t get everything you want.” Perhaps you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get the wholesome recycled mitten story you need. More

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      Mitch McConnell proposes delaying Trump's impeachment trial

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      The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, is proposing to push back the start of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial by a week or more to give the former president time to review the case.House Democrats who voted to impeach Trump last week for inciting the 6 January Capitol attack have signaled they want a quick trial as President Joe Biden begins his term, saying a full reckoning is necessary before the country – and the Congress – can move on.But McConnell told his fellow GOP senators on a call Thursday that a short delay would give Trump time to prepare and stand up his legal team, ensuring due process.The Indiana senator Mike Braun said after the call that the trial might not begin “until sometime mid-February”. He said that was “due to the fact that the process as it occurred in the House evolved so quickly, and that it is not in line with the time you need to prepare for a defense in a Senate trial”.The timing will be set by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who can trigger the start of the trial when she sends the House charges for “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate, and also by McConnell and the new Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, who are in negotiations over how to set up a 50-50 partisan divide in the Senate and the short-term agenda.Schumer is in charge of the Senate, assuming the majority leader post after Democrats won two new Senate seats in Georgia and Vice-President Kamala Harris was sworn in on Wednesday. But with such a narrow divide, Republicans will have some say over the trial’s procedure.Democrats are hoping to conduct the proceedings while also passing legislation that is a priority for Biden, including coronavirus relief, but they would need some cooperation from Senate Republicans to do that, as well.Schumer told reporters on Thursday that he was still negotiating with McConnell on how to conduct the trial, “but make no mistake about it. There will be a trial, there will be a vote, up or down or whether to convict the president.”Pelosi could send the article to the Senate as soon as Friday. Democrats say the proceedings should move quickly because they were all witnesses to the siege, many of them fleeing for safety as the rioters descended on the Capitol.“It will be soon, I don’t think it will be long, but we must do it,” Pelosi said on Thursday. She said Trump did not deserve a “get out of jail card” for his historic second impeachment just because he has left office and Biden and others are calling for national unity.[embedded content]Without the White House counsel’s office to defend him – as it did in his first trial last year – Trump’s allies have been searching for lawyers to argue the former president’s case. Members of his past legal teams have indicated they do not plan to join the effort, but the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham told GOP colleagues on Thursday that Trump was hiring the South Carolina attorney Butch Bowers, according to a person familiar with the call who was granted anonymity to discuss it. Bowers did not immediately respond to a message Thursday.Prosecuting the House case will be Pelosi’s nine impeachment managers, who have been regularly meeting to discuss strategy. Pelosi said she would talk to them “in the next few days” about when the Senate might be ready for a trial, indicating the decision could stretch into next week.Trump told thousands of supporters to “fight like hell” against the election results that Congress was certifying on 6 January just before an angry mob invaded the Capitol and interrupted the count. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in the mayhem, and the House impeached the outgoing president a week later, with 10 Republicans joining all Democrats in support.Pelosi said it would be “harmful to unity” to forget that “people died here on January 6, the attempt to undermine our election, to undermine our democracy, to dishonor our Constitution”. Following his first impeachment, Trump was acquitted by the Senate in February after his White House legal team, aided by his personal lawyers, aggressively fought the House charges that he had encouraged the president of Ukraine to investigate Biden in exchange for military aid. This time around, Pelosi noted, the House was not seeking to convict the president over private conversations but for a very public insurrection that they experienced themselves and that played out on live television.“This year the whole world bore witness to the president’s incitement,” Pelosi said.Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No 2 Senate Democrat, said it was still too early to know how long a trial would take, or if Democrats would want to call witnesses. But he said: “You don’t need to tell us what was going on with the mob scene – we were rushing down the staircase to escape.”McConnell, who said this week that Trump had “provoked” his supporters before the riot, has not said how he will vote. He told his GOP colleagues that it would be a vote of conscience. More