Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday urged all senators to vote to acquit President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial, arguing it was House Democrats who abused their power and not the president.
“It insults the intelligence of the American people to pretend this was a solemn process reluctantly begun because of withheld foreign aid,” the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor, a day ahead of the scheduled vote on Wednesday on whether to remove Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
McConnell said House Democrats had been plotting to impeach Trump “for years” for defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and derided their arguments that they were trying to protect democracy.
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He said Democrats were the ones shattering norms, adopting the “absurd proposition” that “we think this president is a bull in a china shop so we’re going to drive a bulldozer through the china shop to get rid of him.”
McConnell, who said before the trial that he was working in “total coordination” with the president’s defense team, said that partisan fever “led to the most rushed, least fair and least thorough presidential impeachment inquiry in American history.”
“We must vote to reject the House’s abuse of power,” McConnell said, and “vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our Republic.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed McConnell’s “talking points,” and accused Senate Republicans of working with the White House to cover up the president’s wrongdoing.
“This is the first impeachment trial of a president or impeachment trial of anybody else that was completed with no witnesses and no documents. The American people are just amazed,” the New York Democrat said.
A trial with no witnesses “fails the laugh test,” Schumer said. “It makes people believe, correctly in my judgement, that the administration, its top people and Senate Republicans are all hiding the truth. They are afraid of the truth.”
Other senators also took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to declare how they’ll vote on Wednesday and why, and were clearly split down partisan lines.
Republican Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Roger Wicker of Mississippi said what Trump is accused of — withholding almost $400 million in aid to pressure Ukraine’s president into announcing an investigation into Trump rival Joe Biden — doesn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense and that House managers hadn’t proven their case.
Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Tina Smith of Minnesota and Gary Peters of Michigan said the managers had proven their case, and they would vote to convict on both articles of impeachment.
