The Senate impeachment trial of US President Donald Trump is likely to begin in seven days, with key players sworn in later this week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday, SIA reports referring to AFP.
McConnell said he expected the House of Representatives to deliver the articles of impeachment against Trump to the upper chamber on Wednesday. "We believe that if that happens, in all likelihood, we'll go through preliminary steps here this week which could well include the chief justice coming over and swearing-in members of the Senate and some other kinds of housekeeping measures," McConnell told reporters.
Trump faces charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and the 100 senators will be his judge. On Thursday or Friday this week, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is expected to be sworn in to preside over the trial, which should last at least two weeks, and could run through mid-February.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, called for a fair trial and demanded the Senate subpoena witnesses and documents from the White House that will be crucial in the trial. "The American people deserve the truth and the Constitution demands a trial ... the president and the senators will be held accountable," she added.
New evidence
Late Tuesday Adam Schiff, the House Democrat who led the Trump investigation and is expected to lead the team of House impeachment managers in the Senate, announced that they had received new evidence supporting the charges that they would forward to the Senate. The evidence comes from phone records provided by Ukrainian-born American Lev Parnas, who allegedly worked with Trump's private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, in the alleged scheme to pressure the Ukraine government for dirt on Trump's Democratic rivals.
Parnas's records "demonstrate that there is more evidence relevant to the president's scheme, but they have been concealed by the president himself", Schiff said. "There cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate without the documents that President Trump is refusing to provide to Congress," he said.
Bütün xəbərlər Facebook səhifəmizdə
.jpg)
USD
EUR
GBP
RUB