Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has reportedly been pushing back against Democratic House impeachment managers’ call to have witnesses testify at ex-President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, which is set to begin on Tuesday.
Politico reports that Schumer and his fellow Democrats in the Senate believe that videos and Trump’s actions in front of the public are sufficient evidence for convicting the former president on the impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection” over the deadly storming of the Capitol that Trump egged on last month.
Additionally, Senate Democrats reportedly argue that calling on witnesses would needlessly drag out a trial that is all but guaranteed to end in Trump’s acquittal anyway given that most GOP senators have voted that impeachment would be unconstitutional (an argument that constitutional experts across the political spectrum have rejected).
TPM has reached out to Schumer’s office.
Impeachment managers have invited Trump to testify at the trial, a request the former president flatly rejected as a “public relations stunt” last week.
The last trial didn’t have witnesses and the Dems wanted them. Now they can have them and don’t want them? Please don’t be this stupid, Schumer. And honestly, the longer this goes on, with more witnesses and coverage, the greater the chance that Trump will want to testify.
No witnesses equals "let’s move on "
Well this is an idea that hopefully fails. At least some of the Capitol Police that were harmed and their families should testify to their injuries for simple decency sake.
I privately argue that we should not needless drag out the careers of Schumer, Durbin, Kaine, Feinstein, Cardin, Coons, Sinema, Leahy, Menendez, Reed, Smith, and at least 5 other professionally petrified/conspicuously mediocre D senators.
It all depends on who gets called and what they have to share. It’s easy to forget that as we watched the crowd we kept wondering why the security response was insufficient, and we heard that the Pentagon slow walked any NG response. That part isn’t on video. Get us some witnesses who can tell us what happened there.