Once, not so long ago, congressional Republicans were impeachment’s constitutional stalwarts.
They stood up for the House of Representatives’ “sole power of impeachment,” a power granted in the Constitution, including the right to subpoena witnesses and evidence. Even when the president under investigation was a Republican. Even when the Republican political base threatened to turn against them.
But that was when the president was Richard Nixon, not Donald Trump. Continue reading.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will run the Senate impeachment trial “in total coordination” with the White House, which means he’ll probably frame it in a way that benefits President Trump. When asked why, he says the answer is obvious: because everyone knows Trump’s going to be acquitted anyway by the Republican-controlled Senate, so why bother?
“We all know how this is going to end,” McConnell said on “Fox and Friends” last week.
The limited history of Senate impeachment trials — there has been only one in the modern era — doesn’t give us much insight into whether this is normal. Continue reading
Republican and Democratic senators are gearing up for an intense battle over witnesses at an impeachment trial likely to set the tone for the 2020 elections.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have yet to start negotiating on the parameters for the trial, but lawmakers are already jockeying over key questions such as how long a trial should last, whether witnesses will be called and if the White House will be subpoenaed for documents.
Democrats and Republicans appear to be on the cusp of trading rhetorical places.
Editor’s note: If the House of Representatives concludes its impeachment inquiry by passing articles of impeachment of President Donald Trump, attention will turn to the Senate. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, is known as a master of the Senate’s rules, and has been raising campaign donations with ads touting the power he would have over impeachment proceedings. Constitutional scholar Sarah Burns from the Rochester Institute of Technology answers some crucial questions already arising about what McConnell might be able to do, to either slow down the process or speed things along.
The Constitution does not give any details about exactly how an impeachment trial should proceed. Instead, the Senate itself has set rules that govern the process. The first of those rules says the Senate must receive members of the House of Representatives to present the articles of impeachment – which McConnell has said he will do, should they pass the House.
The rules go on to say that senators have 24 hours to “proceed to consideration of such articles” and must continue until they reach a “final judgment.”
However, the Senate can adapt or change its rules, often by a simple majority vote. That means McConnell and other senators are much more free to take actions that influence the trial than members of a jury or even the judge in a standard criminal proceeding.
Duration, however, is ‘a whole different matter’Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reiterated on Monday that he is bound by Senate rules to take up articles of impeachment if they are presented by the House.
“Under the Senate rules, we’re required to take it up if the House does go down that path, and we’ll follow the Senate rules,” McConnell said. “It’s a Senate rule related to impeachment that would take 67 votes to change.”
That makes clear that he does not expect to have a path to use the “nuclear option” to set a new precedent to stop a trial with just a simple majority, effectively bypassing the rules.
View the complete September 30 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.
