McConnell Won’t Reconvene Senate for Impeachment Trial This Week

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) walks to open up the senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Dec. 20, 2020. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will not reconvene the Senate this week for an impeachment trial.

The Senate is currently out of session but Democrats hoped to reconvene to start a trial. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is expected to vote Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump.

McConnell’s team called staffers for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday and told them that McConnell wouldn’t consent to immediately reconvening, a McConnell spokesman confirmed.

Schumer was eying a 2004 resolution that enables the majority and minority leaders of the Senate to, when the body is out of session, “modify any order for the time or place of the convening of the Senate when, in their opinion, such action is warranted by intervening circumstances.”

“Leader McConnell is saying he can’t call the Senate back after the House votes for impeachment because it requires unanimous consent, the consent of every senator, that’s not true,” Schumer told reporters in New York City on Tuesday.

While Trump’s impeachment is all but certain, more Republican senators oppose acquitting Trump than convicting him.

According to an Epoch Times tally, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) became the 10th on Tuesday when he criticized the push to impeach Trump a second time.

President Donald Trump walks to the White House residence after exiting Marine One upon his return to Washington, on Jan. 12, 2021. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A handful of Republicans, on the other hand, have said they’re open to convicting the president.

Trump was impeached last year, but the Republican-controlled Senate dismissed both articles of impeachment. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was the only GOP member in either chamber to vote for either article.

This time around, at least six Republicans in the House said they would vote to impeach Trump.

No president in U.S. history has been impeached twice and no president has been impeached and convicted.

The Senate conviction requires a supermajority vote; Democrats will have technical control of the chamber once Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, and Alex Padilla are sworn in later this month, though the divide will be split evenly at 50-50.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CBS' “60 Minutes” that the effort is driven by wanting to bar Trump from ever holding office again.

While 67 senators must vote to convict, a simple majority is all that’s required to bar an official who’s been impeached from holding office in the future.