Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) isn’t usually the Republican senator one thinks of to give a scathing speech about Democrat partisanship, but on Wednesday she gave just such an admonishment regarding the organizing resolution for impeachment.
“First, the Democratic House impeachment managers told us the evidence against President Trump was ‘overwhelming.’ Right after, we heard there wasn’t enough evidence, and we would need to allow additional testimony in order to get it,” Blackburn said.
The first-term senator went on to criticize the impeachment process taken by House Democrats:
House Democrats had ample opportunity to seek testimony from the witnesses they are now requesting, but they decided instead to rush through their unsubstantiated articles of impeachment. The Democrats are entangled in an intellectually dishonest effort to force a constitutional challenge against executive privilege in the name of taking down President Trump at all costs. We don’t need more testimony – we need less abuse of the Constitution, less mania and zero impeachment do overs. President Trump, like any American, has the right to seek relief in the courts, and if Democrats will punish him for this right, they will do it to anyone. Enough is enough.
Majority Leader McConnell pledged that the trial in his chamber would employ fair process. And today, the Senate set fair rules to review the House’s work. We will continue to run a thorough, constitutional process so we can all get back to improving the lives of the American people.
Blackburn also published an op-ed at Fox News Tuesday evening calling the impeachment trial “a political farce.”
“In the days to come, out of respect for the Constitution, 100 senators will sit quietly and listen to arguments that will no more reveal President Trump’s darkest intentions than they will those of Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or any other person who has relied on candor and objectivity to keep our country afloat,” she wrote.
“No additional witnesses or documents are necessary for the impeachment trial. To admit them would be to legitimize Democrats’ caricature of fairness, and the continuation of a process that will never be more than a political farce,” Blackburn continued.
Her remarks come after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) gave reporters on Tuesday a summary of the first day of the impeachment trial and offered a prediction.
“We’ve seen one motion after another after another. They’ve been redundant; they’ve been making the same arguments,” Cruz said. “This seems to be a time for Adam Schiff and the House managers to lecture the American people and attack the president.”
“But, you know, there’s an old saying that ‘If you have the facts, you bang the facts. If you have the law, you bang the law. If you don’t have either, you bang the table,’” Cruz continued. “Well, this afternoon, we’ve seen a whole lot of table banging.”
“And at the end of the day, we’re in the same spot we were in when we began the day,” he continued, “which is the House articles of impeachment that were passed on a partisan basis, they don’t meet the constitutional standard.”
Cruz then predicted the House managers wouldn’t “meet the constitutional threshold” to remove Trump from office.