Veteran Senator Leahy, judge and party in Trump's impeachment

With one he had enough.

A year ago, the honorable Judge John Roberts spent long hours sitting in the Senate, far from his comfort zone, presiding over the trial for the first

of Donald Trump.

Now he is not interested in repeating the role that would put him back at the center of the political fight, from which the neutrality of his position advises him to flee.

The Constitution establishes that the president of the Supreme Court will preside over any trial for

of a president or vice president.

But it says nothing about the fact that it also corresponds to the work when the one who is judged is a former president.

In the absence of precedents, no one is more authorized than Roberts himself, president of the Supreme Court, judge and party to this small constitutional debate, to dictate jurisprudence.

And he has come to say what happens.

Thus, the honor of presiding as of this Tuesday the trial for the second

of Donald Trump has fallen to Senator Patrick J. Leahy, 80, a Democrat from Vermont, in his capacity as president

of the Senate, a title that it fell to him when Democrats took control of the House this January.

The

presidency

of the Senate, which means becoming third in the line of succession to the presidency (after the vice president and the majority leader in the lower house), corresponds to the legislator of the majority party who has served the longest. Camera.

Leahy, of Italian and Irish descent, a jurist by training and a fan of Batman comics, has been sitting in the Senate since 1975. He was first elected to the House when he was 34 years old.

He is the last of the Senate's so-called “Watergate babies”, those Democrats who first won their seat in the 1974 election after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

He is the only serving senator already in the House during Gerald Ford's presidency.

And this is not the first time that Leahy has served as president

it was also between 2012 and 2015, when the Democrats also controlled the Senate.

Roberts' presidency a year ago was quiet.

As the presidency of the trial falls to an active senator and not to a judge, the scenario is different.

Not only because, like any other senator, he will be able to vote at the end of the trial.

Also because, as president of the trial, he could rule on the admission or not of evidence or on the very constitutionality of trying a former president, a line of defense that Trump's lawyers have suggested they will explore.

Presiding over the trial by a Democratic senator will put Republicans on guard against any attempt of bias from Leahy.

There weren't many alternatives either, once Roberts declined the invitation.

Another option would have been Kamala Harris, who, as vice president, is responsible for presiding over the Senate.

But it would have been even more delicate for her to plunge into the mud of impeachment.

"When I preside over the

trial of

former President Donald Trump," Leahy said in a statement, "I will not waver in my constitutional obligation and my oath to administer the trial fairly."