Trump impeachment article being sent to Senate Monday, ahead of trial next month

Just before 7 p.m. on Monday, the House of Representatives' impeachment managers will march an article accusing former President Donald Trump of inciting an insurrection across to the Senate side of the Capitol, officially triggering a trial of the former president that could result in him being barred from holding office in the future.

That outcome appears unlikely with more and more Republican senators coming out to say they are against holding an impeachment trial in the first place -- citing the fact that Trump has already left office. But the trial will be a cloud hanging over the Senate and the first 100 days of the Biden administration for as long as it goes on, and will shut down business in the upper chamber once it gets started in earnest next month.

"Look, everyone wants to put this awful chapter in American history behind us, but sweeping it under the rug will not bring healing," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a press conference over the weekend. "The only way to bring healing is to actually have real accountability, which this trial affords. And so we will move forward with the trial."

"I think this is going to be really bad for the country," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said of the upcoming impeachment trial in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

Rubio has been one of the Republican senators willing to criticize the president for his role in the Jan. 6 riots. Sunday he said, "I think the president bears responsibility for some of what happened, it was most certainly a foreseeable consequence of everything that was going on."

But, Rubio also said: "It's going to ... keep us from focusing on really important things, but it's also just going to stir it up even more and make it even harder to get things done moving forward."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had suggested a schedule for an impeachment trial that would put off the main part of the trial until February, giving the House impeachment managers and Trumps's legal team a chance to submit briefs outlining their arguments before the main part of the trial.