Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will run the Senate impeachment trial “in total coordination” with the White House, which means he’ll likely frame it way that benefits President Trump. When asked why, he says the answer is obvious: Because everyone knows Trump’s going to be acquitted anyway by the Republican-controlled Senate, so why bother?
“We all know how this is going to end,” he said on “Fox and Friends” last week.
“I’m not an impartial juror,” the Senate majority leader said after a reporter asked him what his message is to Americans who might have concerns about his ability to be impartial during the anticipated Trump trial.
“This is a political process. This is not anything judicial about it,” the Kentucky Republican continued.
The impeachment focuses on concerns that Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2020 election by pressuring the president of Ukraine to publicly promise to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and his son, Hunter Biden.
The obstruction charge says Trump obstructed Congress by blocking testimony and withholding documents despite House subpoenas during the impeachment inquiry.
As a showdown intensifies over President Trump’s impeachment trial, the test for Mr. McConnell is whether he can again bulldoze over Democrats while keeping his Republican colleagues together, persuading them to share both his low regard for the impeachment charges and his view of the Senate’s role.
As his successful blockade of Judge Merrick B. Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court showed in 2016, Mr. McConnell is not afraid to defy norms and take intense heat for doing so, as long as he emerges a winner.
Mr. McConnell’s position has drawn outrage from Democrats, who argue that he is essentially aiding and abetting the president’s misconduct.
“His refusal to permit witnesses and documents really makes him complicit in the Trump cover-up, as it will rightly be seen, and that is going to be one of the main points in his legacy,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut.
Moreover, McConnell’s collusion with White House attorneys, is most likely illegal. Jurors, which is what the Senate is in an Impeachment trial, cannot coordinate with the defense. This would amount to jury tampering in any other trial. But somehow in McConnell’s senate, it is just another routine day at the office.
Brazenly, McConnell is even running ads on Google, saying: “Help Mitch McConnell stop Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment of President Donald Trump. Help Mitch fight to keep our Republican Senate majority.”
When you click on the ad, you are taken to a page to donate to McConnell’s re-election campaign.
Clearly, McConnell is not an impartial juror, willing to examine the testimony and charges brought forth. He has turned his back on his duty and his oath to the nation and to the Constitution.
Oaths are the most solemn of promises, and their breach results in serious reputational and legal consequences.
President Donald Trump will soon be on trial in the Senate on grounds that he breached one oath. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is about to breach two.
An oath in the Constitution is in Article VI, requires all state and federal officers to swear an “Oath … to support this Constitution.” This was a big deal to the framers. The Constitution was the “supreme law of the Land” and even state officials were henceforth “bound by Oath” to it. Like all U.S. senators, congressional representatives, state governors and judges, and other officials, Sen. Mitch McConnell took this oath when he took office.
Another oath is in Article I, of the Constitution which gives the Senate the “sole” power to “try all impeachments,” and the Constitution requires that “when sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation.” The framers wanted to make sure the Senate would never take such a trial lightly — this oath requirement is over and above the oath each senator has already taken to support the Constitution.
The Impeachment trial will begin with the Senators swearing that they “will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.’’
McConnell has no intention of abiding by that oath. So help us God.
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