Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1202928
23.01.2020 10 US POLITICS Bitter exchanges and incriminating evidence PRESIDENT Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial, if its first real day is any guide, will be a dramatic, divisive and fact-bending showdown in his own confrontational image and its after- shocks will rumble for decades to come. None of the bitter exchanges in the well of the chamber on Tuesday are likely to change the reality that there's no two-thirds majority in the Republi- can-led chamber to convict the Presi- dent and throw him out of office. And any dim hopes that the trial could stir a moment of national catharsis and a path out of the most bitter political crisis in decades are already dead after a rancorous day. e debate stretched long past midnight into Wednesday morning. Senators sat for hours, deprived of their phones and social media, listening to a stunning case: Democrats outlined evidence that Trump had solicited po- litical favors from a foreign nation -- Ukraine -- using nearly $400 million in taxpayer aid and then mounted a mas- sive cover-up to hide his actions. But the lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Adam Schiff, warned his fellow lawmakers that they could pay a price for suppressing the real story of what had happened between Trump and Ukraine. "e truth will come out -- the ques- tion is, will it come out in time?" the California Democrat asked, making a simple case that Trump's actions abused a public trust and endangered the char- acter of the republic. White House counsel Pat Cipollone, meanwhile, adopted the strategies of Trump's House defenders, who chose not to dispute the evidence but alleged a wider conspiracy that the President's enemies had always been bent on over- throwing him. "e only conclusion will be that the President has done absolutely nothing wrong, and that these articles of im- peachment do not begin to approach the standard required by the Constitu- tion," Cipollone said. After a tense exchange in the early morning hours on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts scolded both the impeachment managers and Trump's legal team for their behavior. "I think it is appropriate for me to ad- monish both the House managers and the President's counsel in equal terms to remember that they are addressing the world's greatest deliberative body," Roberts said. "One reason it has earned that title is because its members avoid speaking in a manner and using lan- guage that is not conducive to civil dis- course." Surreal scene dissolves into rancor It was still a surreal moment, at 1 p.m. ET, to see Roberts take the gavel as sen- ators met to decide whether Trump should be the first President in US his- tory convicted on articles of impeach- ment to be removed from office. e two rival teams, Schiff and his fellow impeachment managers and Trump's legal brain trust, sat arrayed at tables set up in front of the chamber, as members dug in for a long day at their desks, broken only by the odd trip to get some candy or a dinner break well into Wednesday morning. But for all the historic echoes, the day soon became like any other in the Trump era when mind-bending debates erupted over the nature of basic facts and ill will between the parties clogged Congress' most basic duty -- holding a President to account. e central question on Tuesday was whether the trial can be seen to be fair. In one unexpected twist, Senate Ma- jority Leader Mitch McConnell, appar- ently seeking to shield vulnerable swing state senators under pressure to back a fair trial, relented on a schedule that had envisaged testimony in two mara- thon 12-hour days from each side. Instead, House impeachment man- agers and Trump's legal team will each have three days to make their 24 hours of trial arguments, beginning Wednes- day. e Kentucky Republican rarely moves without certainty about his vote count. So his concession raised questions over whether Democrats were making head- way in pressuring a handful of GOP senators they hope to convince to back their demands for more witnesses. One of that group, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, said it was "likely" that she would vote to call new witnesses later in the trial. Two GOP aides told CNN that the changes by McConnell were meant to assuage concerns of moderate Republi- cans -- who the majority leader needs to win next November in order to keep hold of the chamber. e alterations were scribbled in ink on a paper copy of the resolution -- a sign of the speed in which they had come together. Still, Collins has disappointed Dem- ocrats before, and four Republicans would need to defect for Democrats to achieve their goal of admitting new evi- dence and witnesses. Democrats want to call former na- tional security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, among other former officials. Trump's team says the Senate should not subpoena witnesses who Demo- crats chose not to pursue through court challenges before the President was for- mally impeached. Going into the day, Democrats were using words such as "cover-up," "im- punity," "rushed" and "predetermined," reflecting their desire to paint the trial as a sham in the wider court of Ameri- can public opinion. Before the elections in November, they want to leave voters with a clear impression that Republi- cans are cooking up a fix to save a cor- rupt President. For once, the star of the show was oddly absent. Trump was halfway up a Swiss mountain, lobbing the odd tweet after giving a speech boasting about the economy at the World Economic Fo- rum. But his omnipresent shadow lingered over the Senate all day anyway. A string of Democratic defeats e first real day of the trial saw House impeachment managers and Trump's legal team slog through hours of debate over attempts by Democrats to expand the scope of the trial, all doomed to be tabled along party lines by 53 votes to 47. It didn't take long for the themes and personalities that will dominate the next 10 days or so to seize the center stage as the US Senate accustomed it- self to the surreal reality of only the third presidential impeachment trial in US history. Schiff showed off the forensic skills of a master advocate, weaving incrimina- tory facts into a wider narrative of the constitutional imperative to convict an unchained President. Every now and then he would reach outside the room to address "the Amer- ican people" -- looking directly at a camera fixed in the Senate gallery -- a piece of stagecraft that speakers in the chamber's well rarely perform. Schiff warned that if Trump were al- lowed to get away with pressuring for- eign leaders for dirt on his rivals, in this case former Vice President Joe Biden, the Senate would change American pol- itics forever. "You want to say that's OK, then you've got to say that every future pres-