"Fairness and due process will be restored" when the impeachment proceedings finally reach the Senate, and President Donald Trump will be "exonerated in a fair process," former White House Cabinet secretary William McGinley said Friday.
"Democrats are quite concerned about what they have done in this rigged, flawed process that denied the president fundamental fairness to put on the case he wanted to and due process to call the witnesses he wanted to make his case," McGinley told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
McGinley also said he believes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is "taking exactly the right approach."
"In order for a process to be fair, it should be interchangeable between Democratic presidents and Republican presidents," said McGinley, adding that McConnell's call to use the impeachment process that was used during former President Bill Clinton's trial is a "fair way to start."
On Monday, McConnell said that during Clinton's procedures, the Senate voted 100-0 to go through opening arguments, have a written question period, and then based on that, decide what witnesses should be called.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, however, is already calling for four witnesses, including former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, to testify.
McGinley, meanwhile, called the "drive to try to rig the trial" by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer "misplaced," and said that Pelosi's decision to delay sending the House's articles of impeachment to the Senate shows that the impeachment is proving problematic.
"She realizes she has a political and legal problem by handing down these articles of impeachment that have no factual basis," said McGinley. "This president should be re-elected, not impeached."
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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