Schumer, McConnell announce agreement on schedule, format for Trump trial

Trump attorney David Schoen late Monday withdrew his request for this week’s impeachment trial to pause for the Jewish Sabbath, explaining in a letter to Senate leaders that another lawyer will take his place on the former president’s defense team Saturday.

Under the bipartisan agreement announced by Schumer and McConnell on Monday afternoon, the chamber had been expected to recess Friday evening through Saturday to honor Schoen’s request to observe the Jewish Sabbath.

“I very much appreciated your decision; but I remained concerned about the delay in the proceedings in a process that I recognize is important to bring a conclusion for all involved and for the country,” Schoen said in the letter, which was first reported by the New York Times.

“Accordingly, based on adjustments that have been made on the President’s defense team, I am writing today to withdraw my request so that the proceedings can go forward as originally contemplated before I made my request,” Schoen added. “I will not participate during the Sabbath; but the role I would have played will be fully covered to the satisfaction of the defense team.”

Trump spokesman Jason Miller confirmed the letter’s authenticity but did not provide details on who might take Schoen’s place. He said Schoen withdrew his request so as not to further delay the trial’s proceedings.

“The letter spells it out,” Miller said.

The arguments by opposing lawyers in the Senate impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump this week are expected to revolve largely around a pair of constitutional questions: A First Amendment defense of his fiery speech ahead of the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and a challenge to the legality of putting a former president on trial.

Trump is the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice, and the only former president to be tried in the Senate after leaving office. While an impeachment proceeding is distinct from a typical criminal trial, with a different set of rules, Trump’s case will feature broad legal questions about whether his actions violate the Constitution.

A member of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s security detail tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday, sending Buttigieg into a 14-day quarantine less than a week after being sworn in.

Buttigieg tested negative Monday and has had no symptoms, according to a statement from chief of staff Laura Schiller.

“He received the first dose of the vaccination in recent weeks, and will receive the second dose when his quarantine is completed,” the statement said. Buttigieg was in “close contact” with the agent, including on Monday morning before the agent’s positive result, according to the statement.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines close contact as being within six feet of someone for at least 15 minutes “over a 24-hour period starting from 2 days before illness onset,” or, if the person is showing no symptoms, starting from two days before going in for a test.

The office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has opened an inquiry to assess whether Trump broke any laws when he placed calls to Raffensperger as well as the agency’s chief elections investigator.

The inquiry was prompted by complaints the office received about the Trump-Raffensperger call, including one from a law professor at George Washington University, John Banzhaf.

“The Secretary of State’s office investigates complaints it receives,” Raffensperger spokesman Walter Jones said in a statement. “The investigations are fact-finding and administrative in nature. Any further legal efforts will be left to the Attorney General.”

In the extraordinary, hour-long call with Raffensperger on Jan. 3, Trump urged the fellow Republican to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat — a request that legal scholars described as a flagrant abuse of power and a potential criminal act.

Separately, Trump called Raffensperger’s investigations chief shortly before Christmas — while the individual was leading an inquiry into allegations of ballot fraud in Cobb County, in the suburbs of Atlanta.

The Post has withheld the name of the investigator, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, because of the risk of threats and harassment directed at election officials.

But the individual will lead the new inquiry — unless Raffensperger or his aides decide to assign a different investigator to avoid a conflict. Raffensperger has told aides that he is likely to recuse himself when the results of the inquiry come to the State Election Board, which will decide whether to refer the matter to the state attorney general or a local district attorney.

If the lead investigator is the one presenting those findings, it could give election board members a chance to ask questions about the earlier phone call, about which few details are known other than a description that Trump asked the official to “find the fraud” and become a “national hero.”

The Senate on Monday confirmed Denis McDonough as Biden’s Veterans Affairs secretary, choosing a non-veteran but a manager with years of government service to lead the sprawling health and benefits agency.

McDonough, 51, was chief of staff during President Barack Obama’s second term and held senior roles on the National Security Council and on Capitol Hill before that. He told senators at his confirmation hearing that although he is not a veteran, his long career as a behind-the-scenes troubleshooter and policymaker would serve him well at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a massive bureaucracy beset by multiple challenges.

“I can unstick problems inside agencies and across agencies, especially at an agency as large as VA,” McDonough told the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee in January.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Monday that they have reached an agreement on a bipartisan resolution that will govern the timing and structure of Trump’s second impeachment trial.

The agreement will give members of both parties equal time to ask questions and deliver closing arguments. The trial will begin with a debate over the constitutionality of trying a former president. And the chamber will recess Friday evening through Saturday to honor Trump lawyer David Schoen’s request to observe the Jewish Sabbath, Schumer said.

The trial will resume Sunday afternoon rather than Monday, according to the agreement, breaking with the previous trial rules that called for no proceedings on Sunday.

“The structure that we have agreed to is eminently fair,” Schumer said in remarks on the Senate floor Monday afternoon. McConnell said he is “pleased” that an agreement has been reached that “preserves due process and the rights of both sides.”

Trump’s legal team said in a statement that it approved of the agreement as well.

“This process will provide us with an opportunity to explain to Senators why it is absurd and unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial against a private citizen,” Trump’s lawyers said in the statement, which was issued in an email from Trump’s office that included the Great Seal of the United States at the top.

The four-hour debate over the constitutionality of the trial will be followed by a simple-majority vote on whether the chamber has jurisdiction to try the former president. Trump’s legal team and most Republican senators argue that it is unconstitutional to try the former president now that he has left office.

That sets up the beginning of opening arguments for Wednesday, with up to 16 hours of debate each for the House managers and the Trump defense team. There will also be a total of four hours for senators to question the two parties.

At that point, the Senate could vote on calling witnesses or presenting additional evidence, if the managers or defense team wish to proceed. Finally, there will be four hours equally divided between the House impeachment managers and Trump’s legal team for closing arguments.

“I don’t think the case is particularly complicated,” said Bruce L. Castor Jr. on Thursday, while driving his Corvette back to his suburban Philadelphia home after being inside the U.S. Capitol for the first time in 15 years.

Castor is defending Trump at his second impeachment trial, scheduled to begin Tuesday, where the former president stands accused of inciting the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The attorney was given little more than a week to prepare — during a pandemic.

For the first eight years of the millennium, Bruce Castor was the local evening news here, at 6, 10 and 11. Tall, telegenic, in bold pinstripes that skewed a tad too Dick Tracy but popped on camera, not to mention cowboy boots (curious, those, in the affluent Pennsylvania suburbs), he was the pol at the mic, the swaggering prosecutor cleaning up crimes that the public never tired of following: Mayhem on the Main Line. In one year alone, he racked up five first-degree murder convictions.