Why Trump’s
impeachment trial is unlikely to result in removal from office
McConnell
and his fellow Republicans have signaled they will seek to move the Senate
trial on and off the national stage as quickly as possible
McConnell
and Pelosi set for showdown over next steps
Tom
McCarthy
Fri 20 Dec
2019 10.00 GMTLast modified on Fri 20 Dec 2019 16.56 GMT
The basic
expectation is that Trump skates, with all 53 Republican senators voting to
acquit.
Some time
early next year, 100 senators are expected to swear an oath ahead of the Senate
trial of Donald Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
That oath
reads: ‘‘I solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the
impeachment of Donald Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according
to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.’’
The trial
could, theoretically, result in Trump’s removal from office. But with
Republican senators circling the wagons and majority leader Mitch McConnell
vowing to work “in total coordination” with the White House on Trump’s defense,
that outcome appears extremely unlikely despite the vow of “impartial justice”.
Instead,
McConnell and his fellow Republicans have signaled they will seek to move the
impeachment trial on and off the national stage as quickly as possible, with
zero witnesses testifying and unclear allowances for Democrats to make their
case.
“If the Senate blesses this historically low
bar, we will invite the impeachment of every future president,” McConnell said
in a floor speech Thursday. Earlier he had declared: “I’m not an impartial
juror”.
The basic
expectation is that Trump skates, with all 53 Republican senators taking the
above oath and then, with the phrase “so help me God” still echoing in the
chamber, voting to acquit. A two-thirds majority of senators – 67 if everyone
votes – voting to convict would be required to remove Trump from office.
“Even in
spite of the president’s clear misconduct, everything for Senate Republicans
comes down to politics right now,” said Elliot Williams, a former justice
department official and principal with the Raben Group, a public affairs and
strategic communications firm.
“The
president is immensely popular with Republican voters, and he has shown that he
is willing to declare war on any Republican who steps out of line. That will
largely affect Republican senators’ behavior and that’s unfortunate.”
Senate
majority leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to work in ‘total coordination’ with
the White House on Trump’s defense.
Political
and legal analysts warn the senate impeachment trial might not run so smoothly
as McConnell might wish, however.
Under
historic senate rules, a simple majority of 51 votes would be enough to prevent
a quick dismissal of the case, and to upend McConnells’ minimalist preferences
on everything from calling witnesses to presenting evidence.
Further
uncertainty will be introduced by the role of supreme court chief justice John
Roberts, whose presence at the trial is prescribed in the constitution but
whose actual role appears largely up to his own discretion.
“The rules
give us a lot of specific stage instructions about what certain actors are
supposed to say, the oaths they take, and at what time of day certain events
are supposed to occur,” said Hilary Hurd, a JD candidate at Harvard Law who has
dissected the procedure for the Lawfare blog.
“But when it comes to the major aspects of how
this trial is actually going to work, it lays out some guidelines, but they’re
default guidelines that can be changed with 51 votes. So the twists and turns
of the actual trial are not something that can be envisioned by just reading the
rules.”
In the
weeks leading up to impeachment, an intriguing split developed between
McConnell, with his quickie game plan, and Trump, who has expressed a desire to
produce the trial as reality TV tailored for conspiracy theorists and Trump
superfans.
Trump dared
the House to impeach him “fast”, “so we can have a fair trial in the Senate,”
with a parade of witnesses who would “reveal, for the first time, how corrupt
our system really is.” The president’s draft witness list includes House
intelligence chair Adam Schiff, House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Joe and Hunter
Biden “and many more”.
In reply,
Senate Democrats have proposed a witness list of their own, including former
national security adviser John Bolton, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and
two officials from the office of management and budget, all of whom the White
House blocked from testifying previously.
House
speaker Nancy Pelosi injected added uncertainty to the process on the night of
Trump’s impeachment, by saying the House would wait to refer articles of
impeachment to the Senate until the terms of the Senate trial were made clear.
House
speaker Nancy Pelosi said McConnell ‘says it’s OK for the foreman of the jury
to be in cahoots with the lawyers of the accused … That doesn’t sound right to
us.’
McConnell
“says it’s OK for the foreman of the jury to be in cahoots with the lawyers of
the accused,” Pelosi said. “That doesn’t sound right to us.”
The
flagrant advertising by McConnell and colleagues such as Lindsey Graham – “I’m
not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,” Graham has said – of their
intention to acquit Trump is “utterly inappropriate” and “shocking”, said Norm
Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and
bestselling author of One Nation After Trump.
“Imagine if
somebody’s up on a murder trial, and it turns out that the foreman of the jury
has worked with the defense team before the trial started to make sure that the
outcome was just what they wanted,” Ornstein said. “We would view it as
outrageous.”
The peril,
for Republicans, lies in a potential political price to be paid for seeming too
dismissive of the allegations against Trump – and in the possibility that a
small, renegade faction of four Republican senators could decide to hobble
McConnell, if the majority leader is seen as moving too dismissively.
While such
a breakaway faction of elected Republicans has yet to materialize on any
Trump-related question, there remains the possibility that Republican senators
who are either relatively free from Trump’s political power – Mitt Romney of
Utah – or senators facing difficult re-election bids in 2020 – Susan Collins of
Maine; Cory Gardner of Colorado; Dan Sullivan of Alaska; Joni Ernst of Iowa;
Martha McSally of Arizona – could congeal to form some sort of temporary
resistance.
“You have
four, five, six Senate Republicans up in 2020 who are going to have to answer
for those votes,” said Ornstein. “So this is frankly pretty tricky business.”
Williams
said: “It’s hard to know how vulnerable Republican senators might act, given
that for three years, we’ve heard maddening stories about how in private,
Republican senators seem to be quite concerned about the president’s conduct –
but they simply refuse to engage in their constitutional duties and hold the president
accountable.”
Roberts is
another wild card. The two chief justices to have previously presided at Senate
impeachment trials – William Rehnquist in 1999 and Salmon Chase in 1868 – left
two opposing models for the role, said Hurd, with Chase treating the Senate
like a courtroom in which he ruled frequently, and Rehnquist treating it like a
political theater in which he played a limited role.
“Roberts is
obviously Rehnquist’s protegé,” said Hurd. “How he decides to approach this is
anybody’s guess, and I imagine this is going to have a huge effect on how the
different strategies will work themselves out.”
What’s at
stake in the Senate goes beyond the political fate of any member of Congress,
Williams said.
“The core
question here is what standard do we want to set for future presidents,” said
Williams. “If we accept that future presidents can invite foreign meddling in
our elections, then senators are free to condone that.
“That would
be a very sad day for American democracy.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário