Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he won’t seek to shorten a trial if House Democrats send the Senate articles of impeachment against the president.
“We want it opened and we don’t want it truncated,” Schumer told reporters after a closed-door lunch with fellow Democrats.
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A Senate trial is likely to take several weeks and would require the attendance of all senators in the chamber, six days of the week.
Five Senate Democrats are running for the party’s presidential nomination, so a trial would pull them off the campaign trail most likely in December or January, which is critically close to the February Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
Neither Schumer nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has speculated on how long a trial could take. It took senators about six weeks to dismiss charges against President Bill Clinton in 1999 after the House impeached him.
“We want to make sure all the facts come out, so both the American people and senators can hear them all,” Schumer said. “And we hope Leader McConnell will negotiate in a fair way with us to achieve those goals.”
Schumer said he could not determine the timing of a trial in the Senate “until you see what the House does.”
