World - Democrats accused
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of trying to rig U.S.
President Donald Trump's impeachment trial and demanded the
president's top lawyer be made a possible witness in the case.
Hours before the start of Trump's trial in the
Republican-controlled Senate on charges he abused power and
obstructed Congress, Democrats said the rules proposed by
McConnell would prevent witnesses from testifying and bar
evidence gathered by investigators.
McConnell unveiled a plan on Monday that would execute a
potentially quick trial without new testimony or evidence, and
give House Democratic prosecutors and Trump lawyers 48 hours,
evenly split, to present their arguments over four days.
In a letter on Tuesday, the seven House Democratic
"managers" prosecuting the case demanded White House counsel Pat
Cipollone disclose any first-hand knowledge he has of evidence
he will present in the trial, calling him a material witness.
Cipollone was widely criticized for writing an October 8 letter
in which he said Trump could not permit the administration to
participate in the House probe of the president's pressuring
Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a top
Democratic contender to face Trump in the 2020 election, and
Biden's son Hunter.
Opening arguments are expected to begin this week and may
well run late each night. With a two-thirds majority needed in
the 100-member Senate to remove Trump from office, he is almost
certain to be acquitted by fellow Republicans in the chamber.
But the impact of the trial on his re-election bid is far
from clear. Americans go to the polls in November.
Under McConnell's plan, lawyers for Trump could move early
in the proceedings to ask senators to dismiss all charges,
according to a senior Republican leadership aide, a motion that
would likely fall short of the support needed to succeed.
"This is not the process for a fair trial. This is the
process for a rigged trial," Representative Adam Schiff said in
a news conference alongside other Democrats who will prosecute
the case against Trump.
"I do think that by structuring the trial this way it
furthers our case that what's going on here really is a cover-up
of evidence to the American people," he said.
Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he
would offer amendments to fix what he called flaws in
McConnell's proposals.
"It almost seems as though the resolution was written in the
White House, not in the Senate," Schumer said in a separate news
conference, referring to McConnell's plan.
McConnell has repeatedly said the rules for the trial would
mirror those the Senate used in the 1999 impeachment of
then-President Bill Clinton, and Republican senators have not
ruled out the possibility of further witness testimony and
evidence.
Votes in the Senate could take place as early as Tuesday on
the rules, including deciding whether the Senate should at a
later date consider subpoenas for witnesses, such as Trump's
former national security adviser John Bolton.
Democrats accuse Trump of pressuring Ukraine, a vulnerable
ally, to interfere in U.S. elections at the expense of American
national security and say he needs to be removed from office
because he is a danger to American democracy and national
security.
Trump and his legal team say there was no pressure and that
the Democrats' case is based on hearsay. They say the president
did nothing wrong and that Democrats are simply trying to stop
him from being re-elected.
Cipollone has described the Ukraine investigation as an
illegal attempt to remove a democratically elected president.
After Cipollone's letter, not a single document was produced
by the White House, the State Department and other government
agencies in response to 71 requests or subpoenas for records,
according to the House report on the impeachment inquiry. The
administration also sought to block current and former officials
from testifying.
TRUMP SUPPORT FIRM
The Senate proceedings are due to start at around 1 p.m. EST
(1800 GMT) and the trial is expected to continue six days a
week, Monday through Saturday, until at least the end of
January.
Trump has sought to rally his base with the impeachment
issue, fund-raising off it and at raucous election rallies
painting himself as the victim of a witch hunt.
Televised congressional testimony from a parade of current
and former officials who spoke of a coordinated effort to
pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens has done little to
change support for and against Trump's impeachment.
Reuters/Ipsos polling since the inquiry began shows Democrats
and Republicans responding largely along party lines.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll conducted Jan.
13-14, 39% of U.S. adults approved of Trump's job performance,
while 56% disapproved. It also found 45% of respondents said
Trump should be removed from office, while 31% said the
impeachment charges should be dismissed.
The impeachment drama has consumed much of Trump's attention
even as the United States faces a series of international
challenges, including tensions with Iran that nearly boiled over
into open war and an on-again, off-again trade war with China.
Trump is attending the annual gathering of world business
leaders in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday to project an air of
business as usual and tout the strength of the U.S. economy.
Asked whether Trump was planning to watch the impeachment
trial from Davos, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham
said, "He has a full day here in Davos, but will be briefed by
staff periodically."
ACQUITTAL ALMOST CERTAIN
The trial of a U.S. president could be a moment freighted
with drama, huge political risk and the potential unraveling of
a presidency. But financial markets have shrugged it off, and
the revelations in the months-long impeachment investigation
thus far have done little to boost anti-Trump sentiment among
undecided voters or shift away moderate Republican voters.
This is only the third impeachment trial in U.S. history. No
president has ever been removed through impeachment, a mechanism
the nation's founders - worried about a monarch on American soil
- devised to oust a president for "treason, bribery or other
high crimes and misdemeanors."
A pivotal event in the impeachment case is a July 25 call in
which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to
investigate the Bidens, as well as a discredited theory that
Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 election.
Hunter Biden had joined the board of Ukrainian energy
company Burisma while his father was vice president. Trump has
accused the Bidens of corruption without offering evidence. They
have denied wrongdoing.
Democrats said Trump abused his power by initially
withholding $391 million in Ukraine security aid intended to
fight Russia-backed separatists, and a coveted White House
meeting for Zelenskiy, to pressure Ukraine to announce the
investigations into the Bidens. Trump's legal team says there is
no evidence he conditioned the aid on getting that help.
The obstruction of Congress charge relates to Trump
directing administration officials and agencies not to comply
with House subpoenas for testimony and documents related to
impeachment.