In a 51-49 vote, the U.S. Senate voted against hearing from witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump affirming a sham trial and all accounts.
“We know these truths to be self-evident: Trump is guilty and removal is our only option for dealing with dangerous leaders in power,” said impeachment advocacy group By the People executive director Alexandra Flores-Quilty. “Yet, Trump’s defenders are saying that our Constitution does not apply to the powerful few.”
“This is a crisis of democracy,” Flores-Quilty added.
The vote wasn’t surprising considering Alaskan senator Lisa Murkowski’s decision to vote down party lines against hearing from witnesses sealed the deal for the GOP after Lamar Alexander announced as such the day prior.
This all comes after former National Security advisor John Bolton dropped a bombshell in an upcoming book stating that he personally was witness to Trump’s quid-pro-quo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to withhold military aid to the Country in an effort to get an investigation into Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) were the only two Republicans to vote in favor of hearing from witnesses.
🏛 Fake Trial is a testament to the flaws of a “representative” democracy
Common Cause’s president Karen Hobert Flynn said in a statement that the vote was indicative of a greater rot at the heart of the Senate—and the country.
“These votes are doing lasting damage to our democracy by normalizing presidential abuses of power and giving free reign to a president who has continued to invite foreign interference in our elections and will now see no reason to stop,” said Hobert Flynn. “The President’s abuses of power, and the Senate’s refusal to check them, tear at the very fabric of our democracy.”
Not that today’s revelations were some turning point in American representative democracy or that the Ukrainian quid-pro-quo scandal was the first instance that Donald Trump should have been impeached and ultimately removed from office. This is the same president who didn’t think twice about locking kids up in cages at the Southern border or deport individuals to countries they had zero familiarity with only to have them end up dying in the streets.
In essence, what happened today is elitism at its finest, on both fronts. The GOP wanted to protect their party and their president by withholding information from the American people. Meanwhile, Democrats without a doubt had zero interest in putting Joe or Hunter Biden on the stand in the event that any testimony would expose the DNC’s ultimate agenda in protecting their corporate, mainstream candidate.
Next up from the Senate is a vote next Wednesday to either acquit or convict Donald Trump.