US House speaker, Senate Leader Spar over Trump Trial

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sparred on Monday over the ground rules for President Donald Trump’s trial in the Senate on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Pelosi, the speaker of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, said she is not yet ready to name her team for Trump’s trial in the Republican-majority Senate.

“The House cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of trial the Senate will conduct,” Pelosi said on Twitter.

House managers will prosecute the case against Trump in the Senate in a trial expected to begin in January. Trump’s Republicans have a 53-47 seat edge in the chamber.

Pelosi has not yet sent the impeachment articles passed by the House last week over to the Senate amid a standoff with McConnell over the form the trial will take.

Democrats have been pushing for four current and former White House aides with direct knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine dealings to testify in the Senate.

Trump blocked all four from testifying in the House. Democrats believe their appearances would bolster the case for conviction in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is needed to remove the president from office.

“President Trump blocked his own witnesses and documents from the House, and from the American people, on phony complaints about the House process,” Pelosi said. “What is his excuse now?”

McConnell, speaking on the Fox & Friends television show on Monday, said Pelosi “apparently believes that she can tell us how to run the trial.”

“We haven’t ruled out witnesses,” McConnell said, adding that he wanted to apply the same rules as in the impeachment trial of president Bill Clinton.

“You listen to the opening arguments, you have a written question period, and at that point in the Clinton trial, we had a decision about which witnesses to call,” he said.

“What was good enough for president Clinton is good enough for President Trump,” the Republican senator from Kentucky said.

Source: AFP

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