Updated at 2:57 p.m. ET
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., will preside over former President Donald Trump’s trial in the Senate, a Senate source tells NPR. Leahy, 80, is the president pro tempore of the Senate, a constitutional role given to the longest-serving lawmaker in the majority party. The president pro tempore is third in the line of presidential succession, after the vice president and House speaker.
“I have presided over hundreds of hours in my time in the Senate,” Leahy told reporters. “I don’t think anybody has ever suggested I was anything but impartial in those hundreds of hours.”
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