House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, who has led the House impeachment inquiry and who now heads the team of House managers, denounced McConnell's proposal, saying "the resolution should allow the House managers to call their witnesses, and then the President should be allowed to do the same and any rebuttal witnesses."
"Why should this trial be different than any other trial? The short answer is it shouldn't. But leader McConnell's resolution would turn the trial process on its head," Schiff, a California Democrat, said, adding that "the president places himself beyond accountability, above the law."
McConnell's four-page resolution does not require additional witnesses to be subpoenaed and does not allow House prosecutors to admit evidence into the Senate trial record until after the opening arguments are heard.
Instead, the resolution allows for a motion to be introduced to dismiss the impeachment charges by a simple majority vote in the Republican-controlled upper chamber.
Democrats had demanded that whether to subpoena new witnesses or request additional documents be decided before the start of the trial. In a statement Monday bashing McConnell's resolution, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that he would be "offering amendments to address the many flaws in this deeply unfair proposal and to subpoena the witnesses and documents we have requested."
McConnell in a floor speech Tuesday ahead of the debate vowed to block early votes on witnesses. "If a senator moves to amend the resolution in order to subpoena specific witnesses or documents, I will move to table such motions because the Senate will decide those questions later in the trial," said the Kentucky Republican.
【国际英语资讯:Trump impeachment trial formally starts in Senate】相关文章:
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