A lot of this will be up to John Roberts. The Senate is just the jury. Roberts is the trial court judge in a courtroom with not much in the way of established rules or tradition.
If the trial is going to be dismissed before a final vote by the Senate, then (I think) it will have to be on a motion by the House Republicans. So Roberts will first have to agree to hear the motion, then he will have to rule on it (does that sound like John Roberts to you?).
In order for this to happen, they will first have to agree upon rules that allow for a motion (are Senate Rs smart enough to establish rules that allow for pretrial and mid-trial dispositive motions?). I hope they simply adopt and incorporate the FREs and FRCPs, because if they do, I can map out a resolution for you pretty quickly. But we wont know what rules they are going to use until they actually tell us. There is no "book" for this.
Last edited: Nov 10, 2019