William Blount was impeached and kicked out of the Senate on just a letter.
All 17 impeachments have not included witnesses in the Senate or to the Senate impeachment committee.
The Senate may or may not call witnesses depending on the desires of the 100 Senators, Nor is it a trial like any criminal or civil trial, It is possible to have no witnesses in a civil or criminal trial, and little in the way of documents. You could even have the only participants being the plaintiff or defendant in a civil trial. And there are no witnesses in a appeal and other trials that are similar to an appeal; such as when a traffic ticket heard at the local traffic court is appealed to the county superior court.
Whether there were witnesses in other impeachment trials is immaterial. Every impeachment, like every legal case, consists of applying general principles to the specific facts of the case. So the relevant question is whether you need witnesses to establish the latter. In this case, it seems obvious that, due to Trump’s obstruction and GOP complicity in his coverup, there are important witnesses who haven’t yet been heard and if the Senate trial is to be fair to the American people, those witnesses should be called. Bolton being the obvious, but not only, example. A Senate trial without his testimony won’t be a trial at all, only a charade and an extension of the GOP coverup of Trump’s Ukraine extortion scheme.
No one expects the Senate to remove Trump from office. Not because he shouldn’t be, but because the GOP is waging partisan warfare against the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for him and don’t support him. (He has, at most, about 42% – 44% of the public behind him; a 51% majority want him removed from office, and 54% tell pollsters they will vote against him in November.) Some Republicans argue, “let the voters decide,” and that’s apparently what will happen. We will, and when we do, they will complain they were robbed. One thing you can absolutely count on is for Republicans to be sore losers when the voters reject them.
William Blount was impeached and kicked out of the Senate on just a letter.
All 17 impeachments have not included witnesses in the Senate or to the Senate impeachment committee.
The Senate may or may not call witnesses depending on the desires of the 100 Senators, Nor is it a trial like any criminal or civil trial, It is possible to have no witnesses in a civil or criminal trial, and little in the way of documents. You could even have the only participants being the plaintiff or defendant in a civil trial. And there are no witnesses in a appeal and other trials that are similar to an appeal; such as when a traffic ticket heard at the local traffic court is appealed to the county superior court.
Whether there were witnesses in other impeachment trials is immaterial. Every impeachment, like every legal case, consists of applying general principles to the specific facts of the case. So the relevant question is whether you need witnesses to establish the latter. In this case, it seems obvious that, due to Trump’s obstruction and GOP complicity in his coverup, there are important witnesses who haven’t yet been heard and if the Senate trial is to be fair to the American people, those witnesses should be called. Bolton being the obvious, but not only, example. A Senate trial without his testimony won’t be a trial at all, only a charade and an extension of the GOP coverup of Trump’s Ukraine extortion scheme.
No one expects the Senate to remove Trump from office. Not because he shouldn’t be, but because the GOP is waging partisan warfare against the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for him and don’t support him. (He has, at most, about 42% – 44% of the public behind him; a 51% majority want him removed from office, and 54% tell pollsters they will vote against him in November.) Some Republicans argue, “let the voters decide,” and that’s apparently what will happen. We will, and when we do, they will complain they were robbed. One thing you can absolutely count on is for Republicans to be sore losers when the voters reject them.