This week, Chief Justice John Roberts was sworn in to preside over the third presidential impeachment trial in US history. What happens next? What’s Mitch McConnell’s game plan? And who the hell is Lev Parnas? Andrew Prokop breaks it all down.

Then, a Senate impeachment trial is one of the rarest and least understood events in American politics. Constitutional expert Jeffrey Tulis explains how the trial works, what the founders envisioned when they designed it, and why things should look very, very different from the Senate per usual.

And, at the end, the new evidence released by Lev Parnas was damning, but, then again, all of the evidence so far has been incredibly damning. The problem we face in this impeachment trial is not that we lack damning testimony, it’s that we lack Republican senators who are willing to put country over party.

Host:

Ezra Klein (@ezraklein), Editor-at-large, Vox

Guests:

Andrew Prokop (@awprokop), Senior politics correspondent, Vox

Jeffrey Tulis, Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin

Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com

Ezra's book is available for pre-order! You can find it at www.EzraKlein.com.

You can subscribe to Ezra's other podcast The Ezra Klein Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts

Credits:

Producer, Engineer, Editor - Jeff Geld

Researcher - Roge Karma

EP - Liz Nelson

Theme music composed by Jon Natchez

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"Constitutional decay" in the US Senate