Roberts would not want Trump’s second impeachment hearing to be presided over: Schumer

US. U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court is not interested in chairing another Senate impeachment trial against former President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Monday night in an interview.

There were rumblings that before the Senate trial, Roberts would bow out, which would make room for Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to preside. A Senate source told Fox News that in situations where the impeached person is no longer president of the U.S., the president pro tempore of the body presides.

MSNBC was told by Schumer that the decision was up to Roberts.

“The Constitution says the chief justice presides for a sitting president. So it was up to John Roberts whether he wanted to preside with a president who is no longer sitting, Trump, and he doesn’t want to do it,” Schumer said.

At the outset of his landmark hearing, House Democrats presented the impeachment case against Trump to the Senate late Monday, but Republican senators relaxed their condemnation of the former president and shunned appeals to prosecute him over the deadly blockade of the U.S. That Capitol.

President Joe Biden dealt a blow to Senate Democrats when he said in an interview that Trump would appear to be powerless to prosecute him for allegedly causing a mob before a Capitol riot..

Biden told CNN that he does not think that 17 Republicans are trying to get Senate Democrats to try to indict the former president. He said that if Trump had been in office for a couple more months, his view may have been different.

“The Senate has changed since I was there, but it hasn’t changed that much,” Biden said. However, Biden said that he shared with Democrats that the trial “has to happen.”