The Senate impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump will begin Tuesday, with arguments beginning Wednesday at 1 p.m.
According to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s organizing resolution, each side will get a total of 24 hours to present their arguments, but that time will have to be wrapped up in two working days.
Democrats have complained that those rules will make for long days and make it more difficult to introduce evidence, but the rules do include a vote about whether witnesses will be asked to testify.
Under the rules that the Senate is expected to adopt Tuesday, House impeachment managers would go first with their opening arguments, but face the challenge of summarizing weeks of testimony and mounds of evidence into 24 hours over two days.
Then, team Trump will mount their legal defense. In a brief delivered to the Senate on Monday, Trump’s defense team said he did “absolutely nothing wrong” and should be quickly acquitted because he’s the victim of a partisan plan to remove him from office. (NBC News)
Hot Takes:
- Depending on your political leanings, you either think Trump is guilty of high crimes or this whole impeachment thing is a sham.
- Trump continues to tweet his displeasure with his impeachment on a daily basis.
- Since Republicans are the majority in the Senate, they’re likely to find Trump innocent of high crimes and misdemeanors.
Donald J. Trump✔@realDonaldTrump
They didn’t want John Bolton and others in the House. They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!