As the impeachment trial for U.S. President Donald Trump continues, Democrats have been advocating for his removal from office (pictured above). With Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s barring of the hearing of anymore witnesses in the trial, the Democratic party might get to see this occur (Workingfamiliesparty/creative commons).
On Friday Feb. 1, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Arkansas, announced her intention to vote against hearing additional witnesses during the Senate trial for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Murkowski’s vote doomed any effort to hear from witnesses or other new testimony.
Democrats across the nation reacted by panning the Senate’s handling of impeachment as a kangaroo court, but the move also gave Democrats one of their biggest political gifts of the Trump era.
The best-case scenario for Democrats in the impeachment process would be for them to be able to convince the Senate that the President abused his power to gain an electoral advantage. Democrats have already delivered this message to the American people with the witnesses conducted in the House’s impeachment inquiry.
In texts handed over to the House impeachment inquiry, Bill Taylor, the former Ambassador to Ukraine under George Bush and Trump as well as an army captain in Vietnam, stated his belief that the President was attempting to “withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” according to The Washington Post.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an employee of the National Security Council and Purple Heart recipient, raised concerns to the committee that Trump’s political actions in Ukraine undercut the nation’s ability to meet its national security goals.
Fiona Hill, a career State Department expert who has served under administrations of both parties, stated before the House of Representatives that “U.S. support for Ukraine—which continues to face armed Russian aggression—has been politicized.”
The prosecution, backed by sworn testimony of men and women who dedicated their professional careers to the U.S., has been able to make a solid case that President Trump used aid from Ukraine to help himself rather than the nation.
There is not much more we could learn from further witnesses as Democrats already have a strong case without further testimony; however, there is the risk of a media circus ruining their case to the American people.
We know exactly who the Republicans wanted to call as a witness. In addition to Trump tweeting incessantly about him, the GOP sent out a letter containing a list of requested witnesses and calling for Hunter Biden and his former colleague to testify.
If Biden were to testify, the media wouldn’t be talking about how Trump abused his power. Instead, the discourse would revolve around the debunked conspiracy theory of alleged corruption in Ukraine relating to Joe and Hunter Biden.
If Joe Biden wins the Democratic nomination for the upcoming presidential election, Republicans will likely continue to hammer home their conspiracies about him which would force the media to routinely talk about this—similar to the “but her emails” narrative from 2016.
Rather than call more witnesses to testify, however, Republicans have decided to anger the 75 percent of Americans that wanted additional witnesses allowed in the Senate, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
Removal from office, clearly, was never an option. It would have required over a third of Republicans to remove a president with a 94 percent approval rating within the party, according to a recent Gallup poll. For both sides, this was always about the 2020 election.
The GOP’s refusal to allow for witness testimony in the Senate trial has the potential for up to 75 percent of the nation to believe the trial was nothing more than a cover-up. This should be celebrated among Democrats as a win that helps their case going into November.
Matthew Pyskaty is a political science major sophomore who can be found outside of Jones yelling about toboggans.