Will senators put party aside, and meet Alexander Hamilton's expectations?
warned in 1788 that impeachment risks “agitat[ing] the passions of the whole community” and spurring “pre-existing factions” to “animosities, partialities, influence and interest”. The process, he wrote, carries the “greatest danger” that “real demonstrations of innocence or guilt” will amount to little in the face of raw political calculations.
A Senate trial could nonetheless prove a crucible at a fraught time. Mr Trump’s questionable foreign-policy moves—particularly his abrupt decision to withdraw American forces from northern Syria—have provoked condemnation from even stalwart supporters like Senator Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader.
The details of removal trials are “all entirely fluid in theory,” says Frank Bowman, author of the book “High Crimes and Misdemeanours”, but their contours are clear. Senate rules, last updated in 1986, require the body to summon the president after the House impeaches him. Select members of the House of Representatives—dubbed “House managers”—prosecute their case. The president presents a defence. Senators may not question anyone directly.
Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who testified at the Clinton impeachment, says that Republicans could change the rules by majority vote. Democrats could try to filibuster any change, but the filibuster could itself be nixed by a simple majority. Yet there may be little need for Mr McConnell to resort to that.
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