Senate to Vote on Whether Trump Can Be Tried

The Senate will vote Tuesday on whether former President Donald Trump can be tried after leaving office. The U.S. House’s single article of impeachment against Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol was delivered Monday.

Senators to Vote Whether Trial Is Constitutional

GOP Senator John Barrasso, a member of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership team, said the Senate will hold a Republican-backed vote Tuesday on whether it’s constitutional to hold an impeachment trial of a former president.

“There will be a vote today on the floor of the Senate in terms of whether this should even move forward,” the Wyoming lawmaker said Tuesday morning on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

A notice to senators from Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin early Tuesday morning said Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has reserved floor time to debate the matter and that he could force a vote on a “point of order” shortly after senators are sworn in as jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial at 2:30 p.m. Such a vote would almost certainly fail but would be an early test of Republican sentiment.

Barrasso also said that Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University professor who has taken the position that you can’t try a president who’s out of office, will speak on a caucus call with all Republican senators immediately before the swearing in. McConnell, who hasn’t said yet whether he would convict or acquit Trump, leads those calls.