Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is preparing to move forward on a set of impeachment trial rules for President Donald Trump without Democratic support, according to a Politico report.
Citing multiple unnamed senators, the report says McConnell is close to having enough backing among the 53 Senate Republicans to pass instructions for the trial that delays the debate over seeking witnesses and documents until after opening arguments.
Two prominent Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, have demanded that witnesses be allowed to testify in the Senate trial and that documents Trump has blocked be accessible.
Pelosi has refused to send over the articles of impeachment, passed by the House in December 2019, until McConnell agrees to a “fair trial.”
In a statement Tuesday, McConnell said the House conducted the “most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair presidential impeachment in American history.”
“Now they need to erode our constitutional order even further,” said McConnell, R-Ky. “They want to invent a new pre-trial hostage negotiation where the House gets to run the show in the Senate.”
No final decisions have been made on the impeachment trial rules, Politico reports.
Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., told the publication Tuesday that McConnell’s leadership team is “trying to get consensus among Republicans about how to go forward.”
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Written by Ben Tobin. Cross-posted from the
Courier-Journal via the Kentucky Press News Service.