Schumer Hints That Impeachment Trial Will Begin Next Week

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says that Nancy Pelosi is likely to transmit the Articles of Impeachment against Trump on Monday, which means the Senate impeachment trial would then begin next week. Trump has finally gotten himself a lawyer - Butch Bowers - so the whole drama is ready to unfold. Farron Cousins discusses what we could see early next week.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

On Friday Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer announced that Nancy Pelosi has indicated that she is going to be transmitting the articles of impeachment from the house of representatives to the Senate. And that this is likely to happen on Monday, which means at that point at the time when those articles of impeachment are in fact transmitted over to the Senate, the Senate then has an obligation to begin deliberation on the articles of impeachment.

Um, look,

There is a whole long drawn out process that actually takes place when the house transmits the article of impeachment, uh, because they don't just send a little messenger over there and say, Hey, uh, here's your papers have a great day.

No, there's

A lot of formality that goes along with it. Uh, cert members of the house sitting on certain committees will walk over to the Senate chambers with the articles of impeachment. They deliver them. Uh, they give their statements. Uh, there are certain oaths that they have to take. There's certain things they have to recite. It is absolutely, um, just a complete, I don't want to say waste of time, but it really is. But look, you gotta make sure everything, you know, you've crossed all your T's, you've doubted your eyes and all your lowercase J's and that everything is totally cool. And you do it by the process. Sure. But, uh, really need all that. Do we really need all of that is the question I think not. But anyway, supposing these articles of impeachment get transmitted on Monday, then what happens? Well, chief justice of the U S Supreme court, John Roberts will also be getting the documents.

And then he is required. Once he gets those documents, he shows up in the Senate the next day at 1:00 PM. And every other day after that, he will show up in the Senate except on Sundays because that's in the rules too. So you get a day off. So every day he will go over to the Senate and he will oversee the trial. That is what happens once these articles are in fact transmitted. So if it happens Monday, John Roberts starts going over there on Tuesday. And that's what the Senate is going to be focusing on. Republicans had wanted to kick the can down the road. They had wanted these articles of impeachment to maybe hold off till February and maybe March, if we could not happening according to Chuck Schumer. And that's the best thing possible. Now, Trump had been struggling to find legal counsel to represent him.

He now has a lawyer, uh, from South Carolina, a man by the name of Butch Bowers who actually represented former South Carolina, governor Mark Sanford in his impeachment trial. Uh, he was able to get Sanford, not impeached. So that's actually, uh, in terms of Trump world, a good, good guy to have on your side. So we'll see how the process plays out. We'll see if Pelosi even transmits these things on Monday, but the fact of the matter is it needs to happen sooner rather than later, the later it happens. The more you push these things back, the less likely a conviction is if you strike while the iron is hot, while the public anger is at an all time high, while Trump's disapproval rating is at an all time high, you increase the likelihood of conviction. You increase the likelihood of getting certain Republicans to join your side. So you can get that two thirds, majority needed to convict him. That's a Herculean task. Honestly, at this point, I don't even know that they can get all 50 Democrats to vote for conviction. Mansion seems a little iffy, but some other Republicans, uh, seem like they're willing to go along with it. So we'll see. And we may begin to see early next week,