WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump's historic second impeachment trial opened Tuesday in the U.S. Senate with graphic video of the deadly Jan. 6 attack on Congress and the defeated former president whipping up a rally crowd - “We're going to walk down to the Capitol!” - as he encouraged a futile fight over his presidency.
Acquittal is likely, but the trial will test the nation's attitude toward his brand of presidential power, the Democrats' resolve in pursuing him, and the loyalty of Trump's Republican allies defending him. With senators gathered as the court of impeachment, sworn to deliver “impartial justice,” the trial was starting with debate and a vote over whether it's constitutionally permissible to prosecute Trump after he is no longer in the White House.
It appears unlikely that the House prosecutors will call witnesses, in part because the senators were witnesses themselves. At his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, Trump has declined a request to testify. A first test Tuesday will be on a vote on the constitutionality of the trial, signalling attitudes in the Senate. The chamber is divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with a two-thirds vote, 67 senators, required for conviction.
Presiding is not the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, as has been tradition for the nation's few presidential impeachment trials, but the chamber's senior-most member of the majority party, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
:)
Telling people to go protest “peacefully and patriotically?”
I think prosecutors did a great job presenting their case to hold trial. So far the defence is very confusing, I have no clue what the heck these guys are talking about.
The hackneyed polemics of our age cannot mask the venality of our political class. The genie is out of the bottle.
Your really reaching aren’t you!
Piling it higher and deeper
Democrat agrees with Democrats position. Not news
Far more concerned with the incompetence of my own government than I am ANY foreign leader Especially when their incompetence is killing my fellow Canadians