Epoch Times: "McConnell: ‘There Will Be No Haggling’ With House Over Senate Impeachment Rules"
|
===== McConnell: ‘There Will Be No Haggling’ With House Over Senate Impeachment Rules by Zachary Steiber The Senate won’t haggle with the House over rules guiding the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Wednesday. “There will be no haggling with the House over Senate procedure. We will not cede our authority to try this impeachment,” he said on the Senate floor a day after he said Republicans secured the necessary votes to start the trial under similar rules that governed President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999. “The House Democrats’ turn is over. The Senate has made its decision,” he added. McConnell said he wasn’t summarily dismissing the idea of calling witnesses but that the Senate would follow the precedent set during the Clinton trial, where the Senate heard from the prosecution and defense before voting on whether to hear from any witnesses. “The 1999 precedent does not guarantee witnesses or foreclose witnesses,” McConnell said. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 8, 2020. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images) McConnell cited multiple Democratic senators who this week said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) should stop withholding the impeachment articles against Trump from the Senate, which has so far prevented the trial from starting. “My Democratic friends are losing patience, just like the American people are losing patience,” McConnell said. “We all know that senators have a diversity of opinion about President Trump, about the House inquiry, about the optimal structure for a trial, but withstanding all of this, no senator—no senator—should want the House of Representatives to steamroll institutional norms and dictate our business to us.” Continues - paywall w/ some free each month: |