Daily US Times, Washington: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell sparred on Monday over the guidelines 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, stated she isn’t prepared yet to announce her team for Trump’s Trial in the Republican-majority Senate.
Pelosi said on Twitte ‘The House cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of Trial the Senate will conduct’.
The House managers will prosecute President Trump in the Senate where Trump’s Republican party has majority (53-47). The Trial is expected to start in early January next year.
Last week Trump was impeached by the US House of Representative, where Democrats hold the majority. Pelosi didn’t send the impeachment articles passed by the House to the Senate.
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, whom Trump blocked from testifying before in the House.
Democrats believe if these four aides testify in the Senate, it would be a bolster in the case for conviction and it would be easy to gain two-thirds majority what will be needed to remove President from office.
Speaking with Fox & Friends television show on Monday, Senate majority leader McConnell slammed Pelosi saying ‘Pelosi apparently believes that she can tell us how to run the trial.’
He said 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. What was good enough for President Clinton is good enough for President Trump’, he added.
McConnell scolded Pelosi for not sending impeachment articles to the Senate yet.
House has to physically sent the impeachment articles to the Senate. Otherwise, the Senate can’t go forward to hold a trial.
McConnell added ‘You know, I’m not anxious to have this Trial. So if she wants to hold all the papers, go right ahead’.