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House sends Trump impeachment articles to Senate
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SME Times News Bureau | 16 Jan, 2020
Articles of impeachment against Donald Trump were sent to the
Republican-majority Senate, nearly a month after the
Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted to charge the US
President with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The
seven "impeachment managers" -- Democrats Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler,
Hakeem Jeffries, Zoe Lofgren, Val Demings, Jason Crow and Silvia Garcia
-- appointed earlier on Wednesday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to
prosecute the case carried the documents across the Capitol to the
Senate on Wednesday night, reports Efe news.
The Senate majority
leader, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, invited the managers to
return to the chamber at 12 p.m. on Thursday to read the articles of
impeachment aloud.
Following the reading of the articles, Supreme
Court Chief Justice John Roberts will be sworn-in as the temporary
President of the Senate for the duration of the impeachment proceedings.
Roberts
will then swear-in the 100 senators as jurors in preparation for the
trial, set to begin on Tuesday, when the Senate will re-convene after
the January 20 holiday honouring civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
"This
is a difficult time for our country - but this is precisely the kind of
time for which the framers created the Senate. I'm confident this body
can rise above short-termism and factional fever, and serve the
long-term best interests of our nation," McConnell said.
"We can do this. And we must," he added.
At a press conference, Pelosi said that the House was acting in accord with its "constitutional duty".
"Today,
we will make history, when we walk down - when the managers walk the
hall, they will cross a threshold in history, delivering articles of
impeachment against the president of the United States for abuse of
power and obstruction of the House," she said.
"This President
will be held accountable," the California Democrat said hours after the
House voted 224-190 vote to send the impeachment articles to the Senate.
"The emphasis is on litigators," she said, adding: "The emphasis is on comfort level in the courtroom."
Republicans
hold 53 seats in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be
required to convict Trump and remove him from office.
Pelosi held
back on sending the articles to the Senate because she wanted
Republicans there to guarantee that they would allow new witnesses to be
called in the trial, including former National Security Adviser John
Bolton and Trump's current acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.
McConnell, however, wants an expedited process culminating in an all but inevitable acquittal.
Trump
is only the third President in history to be impeached after Andrew
Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998-99, both of whom were
acquitted.
The case against Trump unfolded after a complaint by a
whistleblower from the intelligence community regarding a telephone
call in July 2019 between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky, in which the US leader - in exchange for releasing some $400
million in military aid to Ukraine and setting up a coveted White House
meeting for Zelensky - pressured the Ukrainian to investigate Biden for
corruption although no evidence seems to exist on that score.
Trump,
however, has consistently claimed that he did nothing wrong and
virtually all Republican lawmakers have toed the party line that
insufficient evidence of wrongdoing to justify impeachment and removal
from office was gathered by House Democrats in their impeachment
investigation.
Meanwhile, Trump prohibited administration
officials who have inside knowledge of the activities and motivations
surrounding the phone call with Zelensky from testifying before the
House and also denied Democrats access to documents that might shed
light on the matter, and this stonewalling resulted in the passage of
the impeachment article regarding obstruction of Congress in its
oversight responsibility.
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