On Monday, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a request that, during the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump, the Senate hear from a limited number of witnesses. “In the trial of President Clinton,” said Schumer, “the House Managers were permitted to call witnesses, and it is clear that the Senate should hear testimony of witnesses in this trial as well.” Schumer specifically mentioned four potential witnesses, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who publicly confessed that military assistance to Ukraine had been withheld over Trump’s demands for investigations into a political rival, and former national security adviser John Bolton, who referred to the attempts to extort Ukraine as a “drug deal.”
But on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that he wasn’t taking any chances with witnesses. After all, witnesses could provide testimony. And testimony might contain … information. McConnell is not about to allow that. McConnell sneered at the idea of the Senate engaging in either “fact-finding” or “investigation.” And to make it clear that having anyone provide any information that Republicans senators would actually have to hear was beyond the pale, McConnell called the idea of witnesses “nightmarish.”
At almost the same time that McConnell was making it clear he wasn’t about to have witnesses, former Republican Congressman Bill McCollum, who served as a floor manager for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, was declaring that witnesses were a necessary part of the process. “Both sides should be able to select a certain number,” said McCollum, “and those key witnesses should be subpoenaed and come forward and testify.” Though McCollum continued to defend Trump in an ABC News interview, he also made it clear that witnesses are vital to a fair hearing, and live witnesses in the Senate are far better than reports prepared elsewhere.
As CNN points out, McConnell sang a very, very different tune at the time of Clinton’s impeachment. Back then, McConnell pointed out that, counting federal judges, there had been 15 impeachment trials in the U.S. Senate. Thirteen of those 15 included live witnesses, and the two that didn’t have witnesses ended when the person being impeached resigned before the witnesses could be called.
What McConnell called “normal” then, he calls “nightmarish” now. Because he’s on the side of cover-up. Instead, he’ll have a trial like no other ever held in the Senate for any position. Just consider it another step in Mitch McConnell’s lifelong goal of destroying every rule, tradition, and function of the U.S. Senate.