Lawmakers Signal Impeachment Trial Details Will Remain Unsettled into the New Year

Senate leaders signaled on Thursday that the details of the Senate impeachment trial will largely remain a mystery heading into the New Year, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) failed to reach an agreement on key details of the trial.

The two leaders had what McConnell described as a “cordial” conversation on Thursday but confirmed that they remain at an “impasse.”

McConnell said, according to the Hill:

As of today, however, we remain at an impasse because my friend, the Democratic leader, continues to demand a new and different set of rules for President Trump. We remain at an impasse on these logistics.

Those logistical questions revolve around documents and witnesses — including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton — which Schumer claims are necessary to “ensure a fair trial.”

McConnell is expected to “consider Sen. Schumer’s proposal over the holidays,” according to Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman.

“Senator Schumer made clear to Sen. McConnell that the witnesses and documents are necessary to ensure a fair trial in the Senate,” Goodman stated, according to the Hill.

“Sen. Schumer asked Sen. McConnell to consider Sen. Schumer’s proposal over the holidays because Sen. Schumer and his caucus believe the witnesses and documents are essential to a fair Senate trial,” he added.

Senate leaders, however, say additional witnesses are unnecessary, as Democrats should have already made their case in the House.

“The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury to hear a trial, not to rerun the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it,” McConnell said on Tuesday.

He continued:

So now the Senate Democratic leader would apparently like our chamber to do House Democrats’ homework for them. He wants to volunteer the Senate’s time and energy on a fishing expedition to see whether his own ideas could make Chairman Schiff’s sloppy work more persuasive than Chairman Schiff himself bothered to make it.

So, madame president, this concept is dead wrong. The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury to hear a trial, not to rerun the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it. The trajectory that the Democratic leader apparently wants to take us down or before he’s even heard opening arguments could set a nightmare nightmarish precedent for our institution.

If the Senate volunteers ourselves to do House Democrats’ homework for them, we will only incentivize an endless strain of dubious partisan impeachments in the future, and we will invite future Houses to paralyze future Senates with frivolous impeachments at will.

I am not going to support witnesses being called for by the president. I am not going to support witnesses being called for by Sen. [Charles] Schumer [D-N.Y.],” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Wednesday.

“I continue to believe that the unanimous bipartisan precedent that was good enough for President Clinton ought to be good enough for President Trump,” McConnell added on Thursday. “Fair is fair.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has yet to indicate when she will transfer the articles to the Senate. McConnell said on the Senate floor on Thursday that she is too afraid to send “their shoddy work product to the Senate.”

As Breitbart News reported, “the Senate can act, regardless — and would vote to acquit.”