Sanders to headline Iowa event amid impeachment trial

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is set to headline a campaign event in Iowa for his presidential bid next week in the middle of the Senate’s impeachment trial.

Sanders’s campaign announced that he will hold a rally at the University of Northern Iowa on Wednesday evening, the day after the trial of President Trump is set to kick off.

The senator is also slated to hold two events in Iowa on Monday, on the eve of the impeachment proceedings.

The campaign events come roughly two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, where polls show Sanders locked in a tight race with former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D).

The upcoming trial will put senators in Washington during the day six days a week, a dynamic that could prove a hinderance to Sanders, Warren and Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) by keeping them from the trail.

Trump on Friday sought to exploit potential frustration among Democrats, accusing party leaders of deliberately diminishing Sanders’s chances of winning the nomination by keeping him off the campaign trail.

“They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even more obviously,” Trump tweeted. “They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial.”

Sanders this week said he was concerned about losing time on the campaign trail during the weeks-long trial.

“I would rather be in Iowa today. There’s a caucus there in 2 1/2 weeks. I’d rather be in New Hampshire and Nevada and so forth. But I swore a constitutional oath as a United States senator to do my job and I’m here to do my job,” he said Thursday.