Impeachment trial to kick off next week, top senator Schumer announces, saying Trump incited ERECTION against US in viral gaffe

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will send the article of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate on Monday, kicking off what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer claims will be a “fair trial.”

The charge of incitement of insurrection against the 45th US president was previously passed by the House with only days left in Trump's term. With the Senate then on break, the path forward for impeachment was unclear. 

Rep. Pelosi (D-California), however, promised this week that despite Trump no longer being in the White House, Democrats were committed to a Senate trial. Answering to critics who say impeachment proceedings would work against President Joe Biden's repeated calls to unify a divided nation, Pelosi claims she is not worried. 

“I don’t think it’s very unifying to say, oh, let’s just forget it and move on. That’s not how you unify," she said during a Thursday press conference. 

“There will be a trial,” Sen. Schumer (D-New York) said on Friday about the now impending trial.

It will be a full trial, it will be a fair trial

While speaking on the Senate floor on Friday, Schumer may have taken a serious tone, but he opened himself up to mockery when he slipped and accused Trump of “inciting the erection,” instead of insurrection, a mistake that set social media aflame.

Trump is the first president to be impeached twice – by the House – and the first to face an impeachment trial after leaving office. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is seeking to have Trump's trial pushed to February to give him time to review and prepare his case, but if an agreement can not be reached to delay the proceedings, the trial will begin on Tuesday after the article of impeachment has been delivered.

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