"Double-edged weapons": why the Senate decided to consider the case of impeachment trump on an expedited procedure

The US Senate approved a hearing procedure for the impeachment of Donald Trump. The corresponding resolution was proposed by the leader of the Republican majority in the upper house of the American parliament, Mitch McConnell.

According to this document, the trial in the trump case should take place according to an expedited procedure. The two parties to the process - the prosecution and the defense - will be given a total of 24 hours to state their arguments. Another 16 hours will be devoted to questions of the parties to each other, and they can only be asked in writing through the head of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, who presides over the process. The question of calling a particular witness or introducing additional materials to the case will be decided by a Senate vote. That is, everything will depend on the position of the Republican Party, since it has a majority in the upper house of Congress.

“Our clear resolution will provide the clarity and justice that everyone deserves — the US president, the House of Representatives, and the American people,” Mitch McConnell said in a statement.

Voting on the resolution divided the Senate on a party basis. All 53 members of the Republican faction supported the adoption of the document. 45 democrats and two independent senators voted against.

Recall that Trump is charged with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The US leader is blamed for trying to get the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky to intensify the investigation against Burisma. From 2014 to 2019, her board of directors included Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, who was vice president and curator of the Ukrainian direction of American foreign policy in the Barack Obama administration, and is now a likely Democratic presidential candidate and an opponent of Trump on 2020 election.

Trump categorically denies both charges against him, and believes that his opponents have arranged a witch hunt and are trying to review the results of the 2016 presidential election.

For the removal of the president from office requires the consent of two-thirds of the Senate - that is, at least 67 members of the upper house of Congress.

• US Congress Building
• Reuters
• © Joshua Roberts

“Absurdly compressed schedule”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi very negatively assessed the resolution. She stated that the procedure proposed by McConnell and endorsed by the Republicans was “intentionally aimed at hiding the truth from the Senate and the American people” and justifying Trump.

“No jury can operate on McConnell’s absurdly tight schedule, and it’s clear that not one of the senators voting for him really intends to really examine the evidence that exposes the president’s encroachment on our Constitution,” Pelosi said.

She stated that McConnell specifically proposed such a procedure for considering the case, since “she knows that violations by the president cannot be justified and that he must be removed from power for them.”

In turn, McConnell said that in preparing his resolution he was guided by a historical precedent. Exactly so - without calling witnesses and in an accelerated manner - there was a hearing of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1999.

“We just want to say that we will begin work in the order agreed by a hundred senators 20 years ago, ” said McConnell.

According to the expert of the International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Studies Vladimir Bruter, the American president is the true author of the resolution.

“The trial of impeachment in an expedited manner and without calling witnesses is the idea of ​​Trump and his team. They insisted on this from the very beginning. However, they did not succeed in holding such a resolution before, as several Republican senators were opposed. Now the whole faction has voted in a consolidated manner, ”Bruter said in an interview with RT.

Vladimir Vasiliev, the chief researcher at the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, notes that starting a long process is not in Trump's interests.

“Of course, there is a temptation to turn the trial of the president into a trial of the Democrats: to testify to hunter and Joe Biden, who spoke about the conversation between Trump and Zelensky, an informant from the CIA, one of the congressmen - in a word, those whom the democrats did not want to call. But impeachment hearings with witnesses are double-edged weapons. It can also hit Trump, ”Vasiliev said in an interview with RT.

According to the analyst, the American leader does not need to risk it again.

“The US president should not be afraid of the hearings under the expedited procedure more than Biden. Trump has a real chance of re-election. At stake is the fate of his victory in the 2020 presidential election. And Biden, without a story about his corrupt business in Ukraine, is likely to emerge from the political struggle during the primaries, ” said Vasilyev.

• US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
• Reuters
• © Tom Brenner

Democrats Choice

According to experts, expedited proceedings guarantee Trump's justification by the Senate. As Bruter notes, the removal of the incumbent American president is possible only if a split occurs in the Republican faction. This can only happen if there is some undeniable evidence of Trump's guilt. However, expedited hearings completely exclude this already unlikely possibility.

Nevertheless, the Democrats will not abandon attempts to accuse Trump of violating US laws, Bruter believes. In his opinion, they will try to make sure that the Americans do not forget about these charges as long as possible.

Earlier, the Democrats admitted that after a hearing in the Senate, proceedings against the president would continue in the House of Representatives. In particular, they were about to call Donald McGan, a former White House lawyer, who had previously refused to testify against the American president, to testify.

“Most likely, they will try to transfer to the public plane a debate about whether Trump is guilty or not of abuse of office. These will no longer be legal charges, it will simply be a buzz in the media. Democrats have strong positions in the American media, so they will try to use them. But the consideration of the trump case in Congress will be completed, ” says Bruter.

Director of the Franklin Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the United States at Moscow State University, Yuri Rogulev, believes that the threats of the Democrats to continue the investigation against Trump are empty.

“An attempt to remove the president from power a few months before the election campaign is nonsense. This has not happened in America before. And in February, the primary elections of party presidential candidates are already beginning. Who, in the midst of the election campaign and the primary elections, after an acquittal of the Senate, will conduct another investigation? This is unrealistic. In individual House committees, the investigation, of course, may continue. But this is the matter of the committee itself; it will not have a direct relationship with impeachment. If the Senate votes that the president is innocent, then for the Americans he will be innocent. This is where Trump’s case ends, ” Rogulev summed up .