President Trump’s impeachment trial will officially begin in the Senate on Tuesday afternoon. The Senate will vote on a resolution that sets up the rules, including how long the proceedings will last and how long everyone will have to speak.
The rules resolution — unveiled by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) late Monday — provides House managers and Trump’s legal team the same number of hours to make their opening arguments as in President Clinton’s impeachment trial, but allows for those arguments to be made in fewer days. McConnell’s proposal also doesn’t automatically admit House evidence into the Senate trial.
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Article appears on The HIll
Trump’s impeachment trial opens with squabbling over rules
The House, on a near party-line vote, accused Trump of a scheme to abuse presidential power to coerce Ukraine to deliver a political favor—announcing a baseless corruption probe targeting Democrat Joe Biden—then obstructed Congress by withholding evidence and witnesses.
Squabbling over rules dominated the first full day of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Tuesday, with Democrats balking at proposals to cram 24 hours of opening arguments from each side into two days and the GOP majority’s resistance to evidence and testimony.
“The president has done absolutely nothing wrong and … there is absolutely no case,” said White House counsel Pat Cipillone in an opening argument over the GOP’s proposed rules.
Not so, said Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrats who led the House impeachment inquiry, opening his argument over the rules by asserting that “The misconduct laid out in these articles is the most serious ever charged against a president.”