The Senate has heard testimony from witnesses at every trial
it has completed in its 231-year history. If the current Senate takes seriously
its constitutional responsibility to conduct an impeachment trial of Trump and
the oath its members will take to “do impartial justice,” then it must not
depart from this unambiguous body of precedent. It must hear from witnesses to
the president’s misconduct.
Only 19
other individuals besides Trump have been impeached by the House of
Representatives. The Senate completed a trial in 15 of those cases, and in
every single one of them, it heard testimony from witnesses. Those cases
include the only two prior instances in which a president was impeached. At the
impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, the Senate permitted House managers to
obtain trial depositions of three
witnesses — Monica Lewinsky, Clinton confidant Vernon Jordan and White
House aide Sidney Blumenthal — and the full Senate viewed video excerpts of
those depositions. At
The Senate has obtained testimony from a large number of
witnesses in every impeachment trial conducted in the last 50 years: 21 in the
1986 trial of
Judge Harry Claiborne; 55 in the 1989 trial of
Judge Alcee L. Hastings; 10 in the 1989 trial of
Judge Walter Nixon, and 26 in the 2010 trial of
Judge Thomas Porteous. Although at least one senator has suggested that
the Senate has no duty to go beyond testimony obtained by the House, that has
happened on multiple occasions. The Senate heard from seven witnesses at Walter
Nixon’s trial who had not testified before
the House; three at Clinton’s trial who also had not testified before
the House; and 17 at Porteous’s trial who had not testified
before the House.
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