The Senate should be careful about presenting live witnesses during an impeachment trial, because of the chaos they could cause, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Tuesday.
"I just don't think we should have a continuation of the circus-like atmosphere that we've seen in the House," Cornyn told Fox News' "America's Newsroom," adding that new witnesses could be "unpredictable."
Cornyn said he thinks the impeachment trial will start in the Senate on the day after Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 21, but he finds House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's repeated delays "ironic."
Pelosi said the House will vote Wednesday on sending the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate and to name impeachment managers.
"It just seems ironic that Speaker Pelosi has sat on the articles of impeachment for 28 days and [now] she wants to wait one more day in deference to the Democratic presidential debate," Cornyn remarked. "She knows that this looks really bad because after saying it was a compelling, urgent, and constitutional matter – sitting on it for almost a month – I think undermines her most basic argument."
Cornyn agreed, if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., calls for a vote on each article of impeachment after each side presents its case without allowing new witnesses, the trial could end in two weeks.
"The fact may be that the facts aren't all that disputed and the only question is, given this set of facts, does that rise to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor under the Constitution and justify the impeachment, the conviction, and the removal of a president 11 months before the next general election?" Cornyn said. "I am very skeptical, as you might know, but that is the way I think this is going to go forward."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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