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By John Wojcik
Undaunted by GOP attempts to stage a sham trial the Democratic House impeachment managers used time Tuesday that Republicans had hoped would embroil them in procedural arguments to instead lay out a clear narrative of why Trump should be removed from office.
They made a convincing argument that Trump is continuing today the abuses of power for which he was impeached last month in the House of Representatives. Today he still has his lawyer travelling to Ukraine to continue the pressure for getting that government to interfere in our elections, Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee said in the Senate chamber yesterday.
The Senate, however, under the control of Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, rejected eight proposed Democratic amendments to the rules that would have allowed documents and witnesses into the trial, always by a partisan vote of 53 to 47.
Republicans claim they will allow for a vote on whether to introduce documents and witnesses some time next week. Aside from the absurdity of beginning a trial without either, the logistics of asking for documents well into any trial are doubly problematic because it often takes time to procure those documents. Those requests are always made very early on in any normal trial where, in any case, documents and witnesses go together.
Notable in Tuesday’s remarks by Trump’s defense lawyers was their failure to deny any of the actual charges against the president and their attempts to focus only on false process issues. They tried to cast doubt on the all the proceedings by claiming there was never an official vote in the House to have an impeachment inquiry. The House of course did more than that by voting to impeach Trump and it is the House, not the president, that, under the constitution, determines impeachment rules....
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