Judgment day is approaching for Donald Trump . This Wednesday, the leader of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi presented who will be the managers of the political trial, that is, who will act as the prosecutors on behalf of the lower house to present the charges that are attributed to the president.
What will happen on Thursday?
This day will be more than everything about procedures and protocols. The seven managers , representatives Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Val Demmings, Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Jason Crow and Sylvia Garcia, will take the charges, physically, and read them in the full Senate at noon.
Video: These are the seven congressmen who will act as prosecutors in the political trial against Trump
At 2 pm, the president of the Supreme Court, Judge John Roberts , will be sworn in, and then he in turn will swear to all senators, 100 of them, who will act as the jury in this trial.
And then what next?
On Tuesday, January 21, the Senate will debate and vote on what the rules will be during the trial itself, which begins at 1 pm.
The managers will have 24 hours in total, spread over several days, to present their case against the president.
Then the defense has 24 hours to present your case. Afterwards, the senators will have 16 hours in total to ask questions.
Which are the rules?
According to the rules set forth by Mitch McConnell, leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, and Chuck Schumer, leader of the Democratic minority, the senators
- They can't talk with their classmates.
- They cannot have electronic devices such as cell phones, iPhones, iPads, etc.
- They cannot have reading materials that have nothing to do with impeachment .
- They must be sitting in their seats all the time.
- They must attend all sessions at all hours.
This leaves them no choice but to focus on what they will have in front, the trial of the president.
Can we see what happens at the trial?
It is not clear how much information will be available to the public, as the Senate is considering significantly restricting what reporters will be able to cover.
According to the rules that Republicans have proposed, they want to limit how much reporters can move , that they can only be in a restricted area, increase security tests for the press and include them in restrictions on electronic devices, which would limit and It would make your job very difficult.
The Correspondents Standing Committee, an elected body of journalists advocating the print media, wrote to Senate leaders on Tuesday that they "vigorously objected to the restrictions," NBC News reported, and said it was unclear how that would increase security "instead of simply limiting the coverage of the trial."
Susan Swain, the president of C-SPAN, the public channel that broadcasts all government procedures in Washington, wrote a letter to McConnell asking permission for C-SPAN to have cameras in the full Senate and cover the trial. The channel currently has no control of the cameras in the Senate.
Will there be witnesses?
Democrats have asked to testify to key figures in the case: among others, John Bolton , the former National Security advisor during the scandal; Mick Mulvaney , the director of the Office of Management and Budget and Chief of Staff, and Rudy Giuliani , the personal lawyer of President Trump.
The latter was the one who was working harder to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, Trump's most likely political rival in the 2020 elections. For asking this investigation from Ukraine, in exchange for releasing military and financial aid to the country, is that Trump is being prosecuted.
"There cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate if Leader McConnell prevents the Senate from hearing witnesses and obtaining documents that President Trump is covering up," tweeted Pelosi late Wednesday.
To be accepted to bring witnesses to the trial, a simple majority of senators who approve it is necessary. All Democratic senators agree, all Republicans oppose, and since these are a majority, they will most likely not ask for more witnesses. But if four Republican senators join the Democrats, they would get the necessary votes to ask for these witnesses.
Who could these key senators be? There are five: Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Mike Lee, who occasionally have not voted in line with their party. Many in Washington and the rest of the country have their eyes on them.
New evidence and an incriminating testimony
When everything was already scheduled for Thursday and the intense days ahead, the impeachment took an unexpected turn.
Text messages, photos, an explosive interview: the Judicial Committee of the Lower House on Tuesday presented new evidence that could inculcate the president and show how much he knew about Giuliani's efforts for Ukraine to investigate Biden's son.
At the center of these communications are efforts to expel the ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch , from her position, as she was blocking the attempts of Trump and his allies to investigate (without foundation and outside the law) Biden's son.
Yovanovitch, a career diplomat, was one of the key witnesses brought by the House Democrats during those hearings in past months.
The new evidence includes voice messages between Giuliani and Lev Parnas , an associate of his to whom the Southern District of New York charged him with violating campaign financing laws .
It also includes exchanges between Parnas and Victoria Toensing , another Trump lawyer, in which she asks him to update her on her most recent efforts to harass Yovanovitch and pass it on to the "big one," which is understood to be the president.
Point directly to the president
In addition to the evidence presented today, Parnas gave an exclusive interview to Rachel Maddow of MSNBC in which she said that President Trump "knew exactly what was happening" despite his repeated denials of irregularities. I was aware of all my movements. I would do nothing without the consent of Rudy Giuliani, or the president. "
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1217647261292867585
Parnas said that, as the European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland testified before Congress, "everyone knew what was happening, including the president."
A new character enters the scene
The new evidence brought to light another key player in this saga: Robert Hyde , who is launching as a Republican representative in Connecticut, would also have been following and intimidating Yovanovitch and would have been in contact with Parnas for all this.
In his messages with the associate of Giuliani on WhatsApp, Hyde told Parnas in March 2019 that “you can do anything with money in Ukraine”
In a series of aggressive tweets, Hyde denied everything.
“How low can little Adam Bull Schiff get? I was never in Kiev. Take some text messages that my friends and I wrote to a fool we were playing with and we saw only a couple of times while we had drinks, it's definitely ridiculous. Schiff is a desperate idiot who is playing with this Lev guy, ”he wrote.
https://twitter.com/rfhyde1/status/1217291153982312449?
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham responded this afternoon that the impeachment was "illegitimate," accused Pelosi of lying and said "President Trump has done nothing wrong. He is anxious to be respected by his rights in the Senate trial, those denied by Pelosi and the House Democrats. ”
To date, Republican senators have not said whether they will accept this new evidence or the testimony of Parnas in the trial of the president, although it points directly to him.
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