The U.S. Senate continues to move forward with the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump at 13:00 p.m. EST on Wednesday (10).
On the 9th, the U.S. Senate opened the impeachment trial proceedings against Trump. First addressing the constitutionality of the trial itself, the two sides debated fiercely for about four hours before the Senate voted 56 to 44 to move forward with the impeachment of Trump.
As per the scheduled procedure, there will be 2 days of arguments on the merits starting today. The impeachment monitor and Trump’s legal team will each have up to 16 hours to present their case over 2 days (10-11), and the Senate will have a “total of 4 hours” to question both sides.
Each side will then have another 4 hours to present a “call to the witness” to the Senate, and after completing the witness process, each side will have another 4 hours to present their closing arguments.
Finally, the Senate will proceed to the final “conviction vote,” in which more than two-thirds of the total of 100 senators, or at least 67 seats, must endorse the “impeachment of the president” for Trump’s impeachment to be truly convicted.
Only 6 of the 50 Republican senators in this vote have crossed their votes, implying that the loyalty of Republican senators to Trump remains high and the probability of Trump being convicted is zero.
The Senate is expected to vote as soon as next Monday (Feb. 15).
In yesterday’s vote, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy was the newly defeated Republican senator, joining five previously defeated Republican senators who agreed to impeach Trump. The state Republican Committee then issued an official statement condemning Cassidy’s actions.
In the debate, the three Democratic impeachment managers opened their arguments by showing a 13-minute video recapping the January 6 congressional riot and Trump’s statements and tweets, arguing that Trump instigated the riot and failed to stop it in Time, and citing numerous historical cases to emphasize that “there is no ‘January exception’ to impeachment ‘”.
In their arguments, two of Trump’s defense attorneys, former Pennsylvania prosecutor Castor and criminal defense attorney Scone, said no one on Trump’s team approved of the actions of the congressional rioters on Jan. 6 and showed a group of Democratic lawmakers calling for Trump’s impeachment since 2017, calling it “an attempt by a group of partisan politicians to remove Trump from the American from the political scene” and would contribute to further dividing America.
They stressed that the main purpose of impeachment is removal from office, but Trump is now an ordinary citizen and cannot be removed from office, so the trial is unconstitutional, and specifically pointed out that Trump was denied due process and the trial lacked fairness.
Yesterday, Biden said at the White House in response to a reporter’s question about the impeachment trial that he did not watch the trial and trusted the Senate to do a good job of it.
Trump watched it on television in Florida, and according to several U.S. media reports citing sources, he was unhappy with the performance of his defense legal team.
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