U.S. Senate begins trial of Trump dismissal

It is the third time in American history that a president faces possible dismissal, on charges of wrongdoing.

One of the first steps of the process in the republican majority Senate is to vote on the programme proposed by leader Mitch McConnell for the trial.

Senator McConnell's resolution would give democratic lawmakers who will be in the role of prosecutors, as well as President Trump's legal team from 24 hours over the next two days to present their arguments.

The draft resolution does not state whether witnesses will be called and whether new evidence will be presented.

Mr. McConnell and the Republicans have made it clear that they want the trial to end as soon as possible and end with Mr. Trump's innocent statement.

Minority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has said that a trial without evidence, witnesses or documents “is not a trial at all”.

When reading the resolution drafted by McConnell, it is clear that he is determined to make it as difficult to call witnesses and submit documents as possible and that his aim is to make the trial in haste. Given how important and serious a dismissal process is, Senator McConnell's resolution is a national disgrace”, Senator Schumer said.

President Trump's lawyers are attacking arguments of the dismissal process against him, calling them a “dangerous version of the Constitution”. They said he didn't do “obsolutely nothing bad” when he urged Ukraine to undertake investigations into his rival, which, according to the Democrats, was intended to help the president gain politically.

Lawyers said the democratic lawmakers, who earnestly seek the president's dismissal, are not intent on finding the truth about President Trump's actions in Ukraine, but do so in a way to disqualify Mr. Trump's election in 2016 and intervene in his campaign to re-election in this year's race.

The House of Representatives passed two counts against Mr. Trump. According to one of them, he abused the presidential post by pressuring Ukrainian President Volody Zelenskiy to investigate one of President Trump's main rivals for the 2020 elections, former Vice President Joe Biden. The second charge is that he prevented Congress investigation.

Democrat lawmakers have said that “testimony unequivocally prove” that Mr. Trump is guilty of both charges filed in the process against him.

Mr. Trump's lawyers, in their 110-page file, claim President Trump was developing normally foreign policy in conversations with President Zelenskiy.

They say he has committed no crime, even though the conviction and dismissal of a US president does not depend on a specific violation of a criminal law. Rather, it all depends on how all 100 members of the Senate, performing the jury's role, interpreting the standard guilty claim as defined in the Constitution, if a president has committed “high crimes and violations”.

Despite the pro and anti-Mr. Trump legal arguments, it will surely be declared innocent of the Republican majority Senate, where two-thirds of the senators would have to vote for its dismissal.

In such a case, at least 20 of the 53 Senate republics would have to join the 47 Democrats to convict President Trump. So far, no republic has requested his dismissal.

The White House predicts the president will be declared innocent within two weeks, but the trial may last much longer if the Democrats manage to convince the four republics to join them in the request to invite to trial as witnesses some of President Trump's former principal aides.

The Democrats want to hear evidence from former National Security Council John Bolton, White House Chief in charge of staff Mick Mulvaney and others regarding Mr. Trump's request to investigate Mr. Biden, his son Hunter's job for a Ukrainian gas company and a conspiracy theory that has collapsed, under which Ukraine had intervened in the 2016 elections, in favour of the Democrats.

Mr. Trump's actions regarding Ukraine coincided with his temporary deadlock of a $331m military aid that needed that country to fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. / VoA