The impeachment trial of Donald Trump, coming up early next year, will be heard in the Senate, where, according to the Constitution, members will be jurors. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s public admission that he’s coordinating the trial with the White House makes a mockery of the process.
McConnell made his pronouncement on the propaganda arm of the White House, Fox News. He promised “total coordination” with the team Trump’s defense lawyers and said there was “zero chance” Trump would be removed from office. The Washington Post spoke to Congressional Democrats.
“I think it was pretty bad for who is essentially the foreman of the jury to announce the verdict,” said Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), a Judiciary Committee member and potential impeachment manager. “The idea that he is working like that is pretty shameful.”
“Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) went further, calling on McConnell to recuse himself from the Senate proceedings based on his Fox News remarks.“
“He’s working hand in hand with the White House, the president’s attorney, and yet we are supposed to expect him to manage a fair and impartial impeachment inquiry?” she said. “They’ve screamed ‘bias,’ ‘kangaroo court,’ ‘witch hunt’ and everything else. . . . When the Senate majority leader stands at the microphone and says I’m basically going to coordinate with the president’s attorney, that scares me.”
In a separate opinion piece, The Post writes of how Democrats can use the McConnell tactic to put Republicans on the defensive:
“Democrats could demand that the mountains of documents the administration refused to turn over to the House impeachment inquiry be admitted as evidence at the Senate trial. The administration stonewalled those documents on the absurd grounds that the inquiry was illegitimate.
“But McConnell presumably can’t argue that his own impeachment trial is illegitimate, rendering that excuse a dead letter.
“So Democrats could insist that the administration produce some of these documents during the trial.
“That could be revelatory. During the inquiry, House Democrats subpoenaed documents from the State Department, the Office of Management and Budget, Vice President Pence and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, among others.“
Democrats could also insist on calling witnesses, such as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and former national security adviser John Bolton.
While it requires two thirds of the Senate to convict and remove Donald Trump from office, it only requires 51 Senators to set the rules for the impeachment trial. From The Post:
“Of course, McConnell might not have 51 votes for such a process — because a handful of vulnerable GOP senators might balk at voting for something so obviously rigged to protect Trump. Indeed, reporting indicates he doesn’t have those votes yet — which means he can’t yet do what he promised Hannity he’d do.“
