WASHINGTON – The Senate trial of President Donald Trump is scheduled to begin at noon Thursday, when House lawmakers will read aloud the articles of impeachment accusing the president of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
After the articles are read, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will be summoned to preside at the trial and will be sworn in at 2 p.m. Then senators will be sworn in.
Seven House lawmakers called managers will prosecute the case. They walked the articles across the Capitol late Wednesday but were told to return Thursday for the ceremonial opening of only the third trial of a sitting president in U.S. history.
“The trial will commence in earnest on Tuesday,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday, after being notified the articles had arrived. “We will pledge to rise above the petty factionalism and do justice for our institutions, for our states and for the nation.”
A two-thirds majority of the Senate would be required to convict and remove Trump, which is unlikely in the chamber where Republicans outnumber Democrats 53 to 47.
The articles accuse Trump of pressuring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rival, former vice president Joe Biden, while withholding a valuable White House meeting and $391 million in military aid.
Trump and his Republican defenders said he has the authority to conduct foreign policy and was justified in seeking to fight corruption in Ukraine. Republicans noted that Zelensky never announced an investigation, but that Trump met with him and released the aid anyway.
“They have a hoax going on over there. Let’s take care of it,” Trump told congressional Republicans who attended a White House ceremony Wednesday announcing a China trade agreement.
White House spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said “this sham, illegitimate impeachment” reveals House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is more focused on politics than on the American people.
“President Trump has done nothing wrong,” Grisham said. “He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him and expects to be fully exonerated.”
The House voted Wednesday to send the articles to the Senate. Pelosi, D-Calif., had been criticized for delaying the move after the House approved the articles Dec. 18. But she said the delay opened the door to more evidence, such as documents from Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and the offer of testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton.
Pelosi called the impeachment patriotic, rather than political, personal or partisan.
“This is as serious as it gets for any of us,” Pelosi said. “Only the vote to declare war would be something more serious than this.”
But McConnell said House Democrats have “taken a dangerous road” by weaponizing impeachment because they wanted to remove Trump. McConnell said any future president could be threatened by impeachment for policy differences with Congress.
“Going about it in this subjective, unfair and rushed way is corrosive to our institutions. It hurts national unity,” McConnell said. “And it virtually guarantees that future houses of either party will feel free to impeach any future president they do not like.”
The House managers – seven lawmakers chosen by Pelosi – will serve in a role similar to prosecutors in the trial by presenting the evidence against Trump. The lead manager is Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is joined by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.; and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.; Val Demings, D-Fla.; Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.; Jason Crow, D-Colo.; and Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas.
All of the managers are lawyers except for Demings, who was Orlando’s police chief. Jeffries, the Democratic Caucus chairman, is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House. Crow is the only manager who doesn’t serve on one of the committees that investigated Trump, but he is a former Army Ranger who was a lawyer in private practice.
“I think this is a diverse group,” said Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., who is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee that helped investigate Trump. Engel noted that two first-term lawmakers were chosen – Garcia and Crow – and said a larger number of managers would have been “unwieldy.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Senate opens impeachment trial Thursday for Trump: What will happen