Radio Recap – Leader McConnell Rejects Schumer’s “Fishing Expedition”

As the House prepares to vote on impeachment, today Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected what he referred to as a “fishing expedition” by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed Senator McConnell’s comments as well as Senator Schumer’s response.

Senator McConnell said on the Senate floor today:

Instead of a tried and true 1999 model, start the trial and then see how Senators wish to proceed, the Democratic leader wants to write a completely new set of rules for President Trump.

He continued:

So now, the Senate Dem. Leader would apparently like our chamber to do House Democrats’ homework for them. He wants to volunteer the Senate’s time and energy on a fishing expedition to see whether his own ideas could make Chairman Schiff’s sloppy work more persuasive than Chairman Schiff himself bothered to make it.

Senator Schumer proposed an entirely different set of Senate rules for this impeachment than he did for the trial of President Clinton.

Senator Schumer said in 1999 regarding the Senate procedures for the Clinton Impeachment:

Any fair process will be consulting the White House, because it’s the President who is the defendant, and due process would guarantee him more fairness. It seems to me that no good case has been made for witnesses. What we ought to be doing instead of this is doing what the American people want us to do, which is make the schools better and preserve social security, and reign in the HMO.

He contradicted himself yesterday:

I haven’t seen a single good argument about why these witnesses shouldn’t testify. I told Leader McConnell that I was ready to discuss trial rules. Instead of talking to me, he spoke publicly about what a trial may look like, and said that he was taking his cues from the White House. It was very partisan, very slanted, and very unfair.

ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett provided his analysis on Senator Schumer’s remarks:

I think it all comes back to one fact and it’s that Leader Schumer looks at the case that Chairman Schiff put together and he realizes that he can’t try that case to conviction. He’s scrambling for anything. If he has to leave previous standards for impeachment procedures that he previously set, he will. If he has to suggest that the Minority in the Senate is now going to demand that witnesses come and what the process looks like even though the Majority controlled the process exclusively in House, he will do that.

Thann also pointed out on the show that Congressman Jeff Van Drew is switching political parties over how bad this impeachment is.

You can listen to the entire episode with our analysis here.