Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says that if the House goes ahead and impeaches President Donald Trump, the Senate “has no choice” but to conduct a trial to determine whether the president is removed from office.
The Kentucky Republican told NPR on Friday that “if the House were to act, the Senate immediately goes into a trial.”
McConnell had not previously indicated whether the Senate would act on any articles of impeachment, though the Constitution anticipates that it would. It’s commonly assumed that the GOP-held chamber would acquit Trump just as Democrats held together in 1999 to deny the GOP House from winning a conviction of President Bill Clinton.
McConnell is among the few senators remaining in the chamber who participated in the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial.
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