Will Kamala Harris preside over Donald Trump's impeachment? Chief Justice John Roberts keen to avoid trial
With President Donald Trump’s tenure coming to an end on Wednesday, January 20, all eyes are now set on the impending second impeachment trial. The outgoing commander-in-chief was impeached a week ago by the Democratic-controlled House for on charges of inciting insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and the trial is now due in the Senate which had acquitted Trump the last time he was impeached by the House.
But just as the upper chamber is in the middle of planning a procedure on how to proceed with the trial without affecting the start of Joe Biden’s presidential journey, it has been reported that Chief Justice John Roberts wants to avoid presiding over the trial. The chief justice has an important role to play in the impeachment of an American president as per the Constitution which says: “When the President of the United States is tried the Chief Justice shall preside.” However, it has not been clearly stated what would happen if a president has left office by the time the trial begins.
If not Roberts, Harris or Leahy could be the people
According to Politico Playbook, multiple sources in both the Republican and Democratic parties close to the impeachment trial negotiations said Roberts is not in favor of becoming a part of the trial that could heavily influence Trump’s political future. According to the report, the 65-year-old Roberts, who has been attacked in the past including by Trump himself, was not happy with the fact that he became a soft target while presiding over Trump’s first impeachment trial in the Senate. Since Trump will be an ex-president by the time the Senate trial proceeds (there is also no clear language on what should happen if a former president goes on trial), lawmakers were discussing other figures who have historically presided over lower-level impeachments, the Politico report added. They are Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Patrick Leahy, the longest-serving senator and president pro-tempore. If Harris doesn’t want to do the job in her very first week in office, then it could go to 80-year-old Leahy from Vermont.
Roberts, who is a lifelong Republican and serving since the days of George W Bush, had previously clarified that he wants to keep the Supreme Court out of political battles and preferred to leave those decisions to the lawmakers in the Congress. During Trump’s first impeachment trial, he refused to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate when the chamber’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer asked him whether he would do so.
“If the members of this body, elected by the people and accountable to them, divide equally on a motion — the normal rule is that the motion fails,” the chief justice had said then. “I think it would be inappropriate for me, an unelected official from a different branch of government, to assert the power to change that result so that the motion would succeed.”
The Senate is now an evenly split body with both the parties having 50 representatives and it comes down to Harris to break ties with her vote, tilting the chamber in favor of the Democrats. In the case of impeachment, the Constitution asks the chief justice to preside over the president’s trial even though the vice president is the chamber’s head because it will be the vice president who would assume the presidency in case the commander-in-chief is convicted and removed.
Whatever happens, the Senate is certainly facing an unprecedented situation.