Republicans accused of dirty tricks as impeachment of US President Donald Trump begins
The Democrat attempt to unseat US President Donald Trump through impeachment got off to a rocky start, with the Senate denying three attempts to introduce evidence and witnesses to the trial.
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The Democrat attempt to unseat US President Donald Trump through impeachment got off to a rocky start, with the Senate denying three attempts to introduce evidence and witnesses to the trial.
Lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff, the Democratic congressman who led the pursuit of Mr Trump in House hearings that preceded today’s trial, tried unsuccessfully to introduce a raft of new evidence.
But the Republican-controlled Senate continued to vote along strict party lines to deny the amendments, 53-47.
While they lost the three votes, the hours-long debates did give Democrats an opportunity to remind the millions of Americans, who were tuned into the televised hearings, of their key charges against Mr Trump.
They are anticipated to spend the first full day of hearings raising such amendments, with opening arguments now predicted to begin on Wednesday, local time.
Earlier, Democrats accused Senate Republicans of a “cover up” as they brawled over the rules of Mr Trump’s trial.
Hearings in Washington started just after 1pm local time (5am AEDT), with fierce debate before a vote on whether to accept the Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s proposal for a speedy trial.
The possibility of a swift vote to dismiss the charges after several days of opening statements and questions remains, which would potentially mean no witnesses or evidence would be heard.
Mr McConnell also conceded some early ground, extending the amount of time the impeachment managers would have to present their cases to 24 hours each over three days, rather than two days.
He also agreed to the Democrat demand that evidence from the House hearings be included in the trial.
Democrats are arguing for a resolution ensuring documents and testimony from figures including senior Trump administration officials are included in the trial.
There were also claims Senator McConnell was trying to run the trial into the “dead of night” by commencing lengthy hearings from 1pm each day, local time.
“It’s clear Senator McConnell is hellbent on making it much more difficult to get witnesses and documents and intent on rushing the trial through,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democrat Senate minority leader.
He described the proposed rules a “national disgrace”.
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Congressman Adam Schiff, who led the House hearings that preceded the Senate called Mr Trump “corrupt” and said he was trying to hide evidence that he pressured Ukraine to help him “cheat” in the 2020 election.
White House chief counsel Pat Cipollone, who is one of several attorneys representing Mr Trump, opened by slamming the trial as a political exercise that was contrary to what the “framers” of the constitution had intended.
“Talk about the framer’s worst nightmare; it’s a partisan impeachment that they’ve delivered to your doorstep in an election year,” he said.
“They want to remove President Trump from the ballot.”
Meanwhile, Mr Trump again called the impeachment trial a “hoax” after landing in Davos for the annual World Economic Forum.
“It’s been going on for years,” he said, before touting America’s “spectacular” economic turnaround under his leadership.
TRUMP’S LAWYERS SLAM ‘FLIMSY’ CASE
Mr Trump’s impeachment lawyers slammed the case against him as “flimsy” and a “dangerous perversion to the Constitution” in an outline of the defence they will offer this week.
The trial, only the third of a US president and the first since Bill Clinton was tried over lying under oath about his extramarital relationships with an aide in 1998, could run as short as a week or longer than a month.
Mr Trump was impeached in December by the Democrat-held House for abuse of power and obstruction of justice, accused of using his position to pressure the Ukraine government to investigate his political rival.
Senators are expected to vote soon on rules, which could include an early vote to dismiss. There could be weeks of evidence and testimony from witnesses ranging from Trump administration figures including former National Security Adviser John Bolton to the family of leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Mr Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president and led the US relationship with Ukraine at the same time his son, Hunter Biden, held a highly paid seat on the board of an energy company there despite having no apparent qualifications for the role.
There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
Mr Trump has released a phone transcript of a July 2019 call with Ukarine’s newly installed leader, President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he describes as “perfect” and above board.
However, Democrats have used the same call, and more than a month of testimony to House hearings which preceding their impeachment vote, to argue that he was pressuring Ukraine to investigate the Bidens in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid and a sought after White House meeting.
Mr Trump’s high powered legal team, which includes lawyers who represented OJ Simpson and a key prosecutor from the Clinton impeachment, on Monday argued that he did “absolutely nothing wrong”.
They released a 110-page filing in response to a weekend brief filed by the seven Democratic prosecution managers, who will act similarly to prosecutors in the hearings.
Mr Trump’s lawyers said the articles of impeachment, or charges against the president, don’t amount to impeachable offences because they are not the “high crimes and misdemeanours” laid out in the Constitution.
“House Democrats were determined from the outset to find some way — any way — to corrupt the extraordinary power of impeachment for use as a political tool to overturn the result of the 2016 election and to interfere in the 2020 election,” the Trump-team filing said.
“All of that is a dangerous perversion of the Constitution that the Senate should swiftly and roundly condemn.”
“House Democrats were determined from the outset to find some way — any way — to corrupt the extraordinary power of impeachment for use as a political tool to overturn the result of the 2016 election and to interfere in the 2020 election,” the Trump-team filing said. “All of that is a dangerous perversion of the Constitution that the Senate should swiftly and roundly condemn.”
The televised trial is expected to draw millions of viewers in the US, where the question of impeachment has further split a nation already divided by the upcoming election which will decide if Mr Trump wins a second term.
It comes less than two weeks before Democrats cast their first influential primary votes on who will lead them in November polls, with four candidates including Mr Biden forced to suspend their Iowa campaigning for the duration of the trial while they sit as jurors.
The trial will run six days a week, for up to 12 hours a day from 1pm.
Mr Trump is only the third president to face an impeachment trial.
Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were also impeached, but both were acquitted in their Senate trials.
Such an outcome is almost inevitable for Mr Trump, with at least 20 Republicans needed to cross the Senate floor to convict the president and remove him through a majority guilty verdict.