Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blasted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) proposed Senate impeachment trial rules on Tuesday morning and Monday.
“After reading his resolution, 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 released on Monday. “On something as important as impeachment, Senator McConnell’s resolution is nothing short of a national disgrace.”
The Democratic leader emphasized his frustration on Tuesday morning, calling McConnell’s four-page resolution “a national disgrace.”
“If you don’t have a real trial that you can judge impeachment on the merits, then this democracy is eroded,” Schumer told CNN “New Day” anchor John Berman. “And Mitch McConnell will go down in history as one of the people eroding democracy because he has gone along with President Trump’s cover up hook, line and sinker.”
McConnell says McConnell's proposed impeachment rules show "he has gone along with President Trump's cover up, hook, line and sinker." pic.twitter.com/lismkp31sY
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) January 21, 2020
Under McConnell’s proposed rules, evidence gathered by the House will not be entered in the trial unless the Senate votes to allow it. Additionally, the House impeachment team and President Donald Trump’s lawyers will only have 24 hours each to make their arguments within 2 days.
Read McConnell’s resolution below:
The most important thing to McConnell is acquitting Trump. But approaching equal importance is putting Trump in the position to brag about that acquittal, and lambaste Dems for putting him through it, during the SOTU. Clock management vis-a-vis SOTU drives much of McConnell’s impeachment scheduling priorities.
Rigged.
For real.
Moscow Mitch - destroyer of democracy, despicable power-mad traitor.
Folks laughed at me when I said the Republican Party was turning into the Soviet Communist Party. Now the transition is complete.
This may be the least surprising thing I read all day.
It’s all about McConnell getting the trial done with and Trump “exonerated” before his State of the Union address on February 4. If successful, oh, how Trump will gloat and deflect that night.