WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate’s longest-serving member, Patrick Leahy, is expected to preside over the upcoming impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, a Senate source said on Monday.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts presided at Trump’s first impeachment trial last year, as the Constitution requires in presidential impeachments. But senators can preside when the person being impeached is not the current president of the United States, the Senate source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont who took office in 1975, is the senator with the most seniority in either party.
Asked by reporters in a Capitol hallway if he could be impartial while presiding over the trial, the 80-year-old Leahy said: “I’ve presided over hundreds of hours in my time in the Senate. I don’t think anybody has ever suggested anything impartial in those hundreds of hours.”
Leahy is the president pro tempore of the Senate, meaning he is empowered to preside over Senate sessions in the absence of Vice President Kamala Harris. However, this duty is usually rotated among senators of the majority party.
Being president pro tempore also makes Leahy, who is the senior member of the Senate judiciary committee, third in line of presidential succession, after the vice president and speaker of the House.
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
