Mitch McConnell Is Getting Ready to Bury Trump's Impeachable Conduct
On Thursday, members of the House Judiciary Committee put the finishing touches on articles of impeachment for President Donald Trump, formally charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for his role in the Ukraine scandal and subsequent attempts to cover it up. From there, the resolution will go to the House floor for a vote of the full chamber, likely sometime next week. Although Democrats do not expect unanimity among the caucus, they are confident they have the numbers to make Donald Trump the third-ever president to be impeached.
In all likelihood, that act is as far as the process will go. In the Republican-controlled Senate, the Washington Post reports, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing to make the trial that would follow a brief, simple affair with no witnesses. Instead, he envisions a stripped-down trial with little more than statements from House impeachment managers and the president's defense lawyers before proceeding to a final vote of the full Senate. "Members want to deal with the arguments, hear the case, and hopefully reach a conclusion," South Dakota senator John Thune explained, citing a burgeoning desire among Republican lawmakers to avoid a "prolonged spectacle." And, of course, nothing signals a fair and open-minded approach to the solemn task at hand quite like jurors deciding they literally don't need to look at evidence in order to "reach a conclusion" and render a verdict.
The trial's subject is less enthusiastic about this approach. After months of lashing out at the impeachment inquiry as an unconstitutional witch hunt, Trump sees the trial as his opportunity to "get his story out," as deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley put it, and to defend himself on what he sees as friendly turf. He doesn't just want to survive, in other words; he wants to defeat his enemies in combat. Privately, the administration has been lobbying McConnell to call people like Hunter Biden, House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, and the Ukraine scandal whistleblower as witnesses, intending to embarrass and expose them in a de facto right-wing kangaroo court—the dramatic, nationally-televised exoneration ritual for which he's long hoped.
During impeachment trials, however, settling on the rules and procedures to be followed requires a majority vote of the Senate. And even though Republicans control the chamber by a 53-47 margin, McConnell is concerned that there aren't enough Republicans who would back a plan that allows only Trump's preferred witnesses, according to the Post. If that coalition doesn't exist, he'll need the support of Democrats in order to move forward. Presumably, the price of their votes would be appearances from the likes of acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and others who might have damning personal knowledge of the extent of the president's wrongdoing.
At Trump's urging, these members of the president's inner circle mostly refused to cooperate during the House phase of the impeachment inquiry, defying subpoenas and taking lawmakers to court over attempts to secure their participation. If Trump didn't want to hear from them then, it's hard to imagine him blessing their cooperation now. Faced with a choice between calling witnesses whose testimony might be disastrous for Trump on the one hand, and proceeding with a truncated, hollowed-out farce that includes no witnesses at all on the other, McConnell is leaning towards the better-safe-than-sorry approach. As Post columnist Jennifer Rubin notes, such a nakedly partisan maneuver arguably makes the Senate complicit in the very campaign of obstruction for which Trump is being impeached.
Mitch McConnell, of course, is both adept at and unbothered by abusing procedural mechanisms to strengthen the Republican Party by any means necessary. He was the architect of the unprincipled blockade of former Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, for example, and famously proclaimed in 2010 that his most important responsibility was to make Barack Obama a one-term president. Since Democrats took back the House in the midterm elections, McConnell's refusal to take up hundreds of bills passed by the House—despite the breakneck pace at which his Senate is still confirming Trump's judicial nominees—has prompted some Democrats to label the Senate a "legislative graveyard." Whitewashing Donald Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors like this would be just one more element of his legacy: a shameless exercise of his power that allows members of his party to close their eyes, cover their ears, and vote to acquit.
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Originally Appeared on GQ
