It is unclear how the Senate leaders will comply with Mr. Schön’s request. If they rushed the process to ensure it was completed by Friday sundown, it would be by far the fastest impeachment trial of the president in history. If they put it on hold, as Mr. Schön has requested, the process could turn into a federal holiday on Monday and a holiday week for the Senate during which its members should take a break to go home to their states. If leaders instead chose to delay this further, it would support the planned measures to confirm Mr Biden’s nominations and further develop his pandemic relief law.
Mr Schön said in a telephone interview on Friday that he had not heard from the leaders about a number of issues related to the trial, including the timing and time each side would be given to present their arguments. It is expected that Mr Schumer, who negotiated these matters with Mr McConnell, will provide the details shortly before the trial begins.
Mr. Schön is part of a second group of attorneys who have represented Mr. Trump in his second impeachment trial. The first team resigned after their lawyers refused to set the former president’s preferred trial strategy – that they would defend him by reiterating his unsubstantiated claims that the election had been stolen from him.
Now Mr. Schön is joining a list of prominent Jews who have encountered problems in Washington because of Sabbath observance. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the daughter and son-in-law of the former president who are Orthodox Jews, said they received special permission from a rabbi to attend Mr. Trump’s opening ceremonies in 2017. They said they had at least received a similar exemption once later in Mr. Trump’s presidency to travel on the Sabbath.
During the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton in 1999, then Connecticut Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an observant Jew, went four miles from his Georgetown apartment to Capitol Hill to serve as a juror. Because Jewish law teaches that one can break the Sabbath when it comes to “caring for human life”, Mr. Lieberman, in consultation with his rabbis, has developed his own rule that he is not allowed to engage in purely political activities on the Sabbath . but would attend the Senate meetings and vote if necessary.
However, he did not ride in a car or elevator, which is a restriction resulting from a ban on the generation of sparks and fire.
Mr Schön’s request now has to be taken into account with decades of rules for impeachment proceedings as well as the timetable, work habits and politics of the Senate. The rules state that the Senate should meet for impeachment trials Monday through Saturday and only pause on Sunday, the schedule followed during both the final trial of Mr Trump and the trial of Mr Clinton.
