War of words over Trump trial
US House Speaker and Senate leader at odds about ground rules
WASHINGTON: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are sparring over the ground rules for President Donald Trump’s trial in the Senate on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Pelosi, the Speaker of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, said she was not ready to name her team for Trump’s trial in the Republican-majority Senate.
“The House cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of trial the Senate will conduct,” Pelosi said on Twitter on Monday.
House managers will prosecute the case against Trump in the Senate in a trial expected to begin next month. Trump’s Republicans have a 53-47 seat edge in the chamber.
Pelosi has not yet sent the impeachment articles passed by the House last week over to the Senate amid a stand-off with McConnell over the form the trial will take.
Democrats have been pushing for four current and former White House aides with direct knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine dealings to testify in the Senate. Trump blocked all four from testifying in the House.
Democrats believe their appearances would bolster the case for conviction in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is needed to remove the president from office.
“President Trump blocked his own witnesses and documents from the House, and from the American people, on phony complaints about the House process,” Pelosi said. “What is his excuse now?”
McConnell, speaking on the Fox& Friends television show on Monday, said Pelosi “apparently believes that she can tell us how to run the trial”.
“We haven’t ruled out witnesses,” he said, adding that he wanted to apply the same rules as in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton.
“You listen to the opening arguments, you have a written question period and at that point in the Clinton trial, we had a decision about which witnesses to call,” he said.
“What was good enough for President Clinton is good enough for President Trump,” the Republican senator from Kentucky said.
McConnell chided Pelosi for not sending the impeachment articles over to the Senate yet.
“The papers have to be physically brought over to the Senate, and we can’t go forward until the Speaker does that,” he said.