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Impeachment trial drama builds

By HENG WEILI in New York | China Daily Global | Updated: 2020-01-21 23:33

US President Donald Trump puts his hand to his head while speaking at the American Farm Bureau Federation Annual Convention and Trade Show in Austin, Texas, Jan 19, 2020. [Photo/Agencies]

Issue of whether witnesses should be called debated day before trial activity set to pick up

The Senate trial of the impeachment charges against US President Donald Trump will begin in earnest Tuesday, but the president and his opponents took to Twitter and television Monday to make their own arguments.

"They didn't want John Bolton and others in the House," Trump tweeted. "They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!

Bolton is Trump's former national security adviser, one of a handful of possible witnesses whom some Senate Democrats want to call during the trial.

"Cryin' Chuck Schumer is now asking for 'fairness', when he and the Democrat House members worked together to make sure I got ZERO fairness in the House. So, what else is new?" Trump wrote.

"Senator McConnell is trying to stop witnesses and documents from coming to light. Democrats will force a vote on witnesses and documents," Senator Chuck Schumer of New York tweeted Monday, in reference to the Republican Senate majority leader.

"All America needs are four Senate Republicans for a fair trial," Schumer wrote.

There are 45 Democratic senators and two independents, who Schumer expects would vote with the Democrats.

If four of the 53 Senate Republicans left the party ranks and joined the other 47 senators, that would provide the simple majority needed for a vote on whether witnesses should be heard at the trial.

Separately, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell put forward rules Monday that could lead to a quick impeachment trial for Trump, with no guarantee that witnesses or new evidence would be allowed.

Under the resolution, which could face a vote as early as Tuesday, lawyers for Trump could move early in the proceedings to ask senators to dismiss all charges, a senior Republican leadership aide said.

The resolution McConnell unveiled would give House Democratic prosecutors and Trump lawyers 48 hours, evenly split, to present their arguments over a maximum of four days.

Schumer accused McConnell of failing to stick to the rules used during Bill Clinton's 1998 impeachment, calling it "nothing short of a national disgrace".

"It's clear Senator McConnell is hell-bent on making it much more difficult to get witnesses and documents and intent on rushing the trial through," Schumer said in a statement.

Also on Monday, Trump's legal team rejected the House of Representatives' impeachment articles and called for their immediate dismissal by the Senate in a memo offering a legal and political case against his removal.

The 116-page Trial Memorandum sought to undercut charges that Trump abused his power and obstructed Congress. The document was Trump's first formal, comprehensive defense against impeachment.

"The Senate should reject the Articles of Impeachment and acquit the president immediately," the memo concluded.

Trump is charged with abusing the powers of his office by asking Ukraine to investigate a 2020 Democratic political rival, former vice-president Joe Biden, and obstructing a congressional inquiry into his own conduct.

Democrats say Trump abused his power by withholding US military assistance to Ukraine as part of a pressure campaign, and obstructed Congress by refusing to hand over documents and by barring administration officials from testifying when they were subpoenaed by House investigators.

Trump's defense argued neither charge constituted a crime or impeachable offense, that he was within his rights as president to make decisions about foreign policy and what information to give Congress, and that the House pursued a flawed and one-sided process before impeaching him on Dec 18.

"House Democrats settled on two flimsy Articles of Impeachment that allege no crime or violation of law whatsoever — much less 'high Crimes and Misdemeanors,' as required by the Constitution," it said. "They do not remotely approach the constitutional threshold for removing a President from office."

The memo's executive summary asserted that the House Democrats' "novel theory of 'abuse of power'" was not an impeachable offense and supplanted the constitutional standard of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors".

It rejected the obstruction of Congress charge as "frivolous and dangerous", saying the president exercised his legal rights by resisting congressional subpoenas.

It also accused the House Democrats of conducting a rigged process, said they succeeded in proving only that Trump had done nothing wrong and argued, as the White House has repeatedly, that this was an effort to overturn Trump's 2016 election victory and to prevent his re-election in November.

"They want to use impeachment to interfere in the 2020 election. It is no accident that the Senate is being asked to consider a presidential impeachment during an election year," the memo said.

"Put simply, Democrats have no response to the President's record of achievement in restoring prosperity to the American economy, rebuilding America's military, and confronting America's adversaries abroad," it added.

In their own filing with the US Senate on Monday, the House impeachment managers who will make the Democrats case for Trump's removal to the Senate said he had "jeopardized our national security and our democratic self-governance".

"President Trump maintains that the Senate cannot remove him even if the House proves every claim in the Articles of impeachment. That is a chilling assertion. It is also dead wrong," they wrote, arguing that despite Trump's "stonewalling", the House had amassed "overwhelming evidence of his guilt".

Trump's team says he was within his constitutional authority to press Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last year to investigate Biden and his son Hunter as part of what Trump says was an anti-corruption drive.

On Monday, Joe Biden's campaign said in a memo sent to reporters and editors that the media need to be wary of contributing to "spreading a malicious and conclusively debunked conspiracy theory".

"It is not sufficient to say the allegations are 'unsubstantiated' or that 'no evidence has emerged to support them', the memo states. "Not only is there 'no evidence' for Republicans' main argument against the Vice President — there is a mountain of evidence that actively debunks it. And it is malpractice to ignore that truth."

"No political entity — not the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, not the Biden campaign nor the Trump campaign— can ever be allowed to act as your editors."

Michael Bloomberg, also a 2020 Democratic candidate, said Monday on the NBC Today show: "I was asked if I were senator how would I vote, and I'd have to swallow two or three times, but I'd say I would vote to convict because there's just so much evidence he acted inappropriately," the billionaire former mayor of New York City said.

"I think that impeachment is a political process. It's not good," Bloomberg said. "We'd be much better off letting the voters decide who is president in this country."

Trump was scheduled to leave Monday for Davos, Switzerland, to join global leaders at the World Economic Forum. Trump will meet with Iraqi, Pakistani, Swiss, Kurdish and European Union leaders.

The trial is expected to start at 1 pm Tuesday, with the Senate debating the ground rules for the proceeding before oral arguments begin later in the week. The afternoon start is due to the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside over the Senate trial, must be at the Supreme Court earlier in the day.

Reuters contributed to this story.

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