WASHINGTON -- Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, told senators Thursday that he planned to ask Democrats to delay the start of former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial until early February to allow Trump's legal team time to prepare a defense, according to a person familiar with his remarks.
The proposal emerged as McConnell and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, haggled privately behind the scenes over the timing and structure of the proceeding, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused again to say when she would transmit the impeachment charge to the Senate, thus prompting the start of the trial.
The uncertainty has left Democrats puzzling over how to push forward in trying the former president for his role in egging on the violent mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 without overshadowing President Joe Biden's first days in office.
Pelosi, D-Calif., insisted that the trial would not detract from Biden's call for unity and implied that the prosecution's case could be speedy, but she would not pinpoint a precise date for pressing the charge, beyond saying the House would do so "soon."
"I don't think it's very unifying to say 'Let's just forget it and move on,'" the speaker told reporters in the Capitol. "Just because he is now gone -- thank God -- you don't say to a president, 'Do whatever you want in the last months of your administration, you are going to get a get-out-of-jail-free card' because people think we should make nice-nice, and forget that people died here on Jan. 6, that he attempted to undermine our election, to undermine our democracy, to dishonor our Constitution."
Once a trial gets underway, lawmakers in both chambers agree it should move quickly. Still bitter over the length and repetition of last year's trial of Trump, senators were closing in on rules that would compress the meat of the trial into three days of oral presentations, with the prosecution and defense each getting up to 12 hours to make their case, people involved in planning said.
When the Senate tried Trump a year ago, each side had up to 24 hours.
Ceremonial requirements, deliberations and votes would add several additional days, but the trial could be the speediest presidential impeachment trial in history.
Still, the timeline could balloon if either the House managers or Trump's defense team ask to call witnesses. On Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on a conference call with Republican senators that Trump had hired a lawyer, Butch Bowers, according to a person on the call.
Bowers, whose practice is based in South Carolina, did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment.
Whether Democrats would be able to secure enough Republican votes to convict the former president remains unclear. McConnell has said he has not made up his mind yet.
His counterpart in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said Thursday that he did not believe that Trump incited the attack at the Capitol.
"I don't believe he provoked it, if you listen to what he said at the rally," McCarthy said.
The remarks struck a different tone than McCarthy had last week on the House floor, when he argued during the impeachment debate that Trump "bears responsibility" for the attack.
"He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding," McCarthy said then.
