#What the GOP is saying is that impeachment can't be considered serious or fair without direct fact witnesses and there can be no direct fact witnesses because President Trump contends he has every right to deny their appearance.
#Article I, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution and the Senate rules state that every senator is mandated to "swear or affirm" an oath to do "impartial justice" in every impeachment hearing, So far, senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell have said they will ignore their required oaths. Senator McConnell has said""Every thing I do during this, I'm coordinating with White House counsel" "There will be no difference between the President's position, and our position as to how to handle this to the extent that we can." McConnell also said that he will not be "impartial" in the proceedings because impeachment is a political matter. Senator Graham has said, in regard to impeachment, that his aim is to ensure that the impeachment matter "dies quickly." "I'm not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here." In 1999, Graham said every senator must keep an "open mind"; also, he stressed the need to have witnesses in the Clinton impeachment.
#Trump';s six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a boiling mix of fury, self-pity and mendacity. In one section he wrote: "Fortunately, there was a transcript of the conversation taken, and you know from the transcript (which was immediately made public) that paragraph in question was perfect." Another section reads: "You know full well that Vice President Biden used his office and $1 billion dollars to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the economy, and paying his son millions of dollars."
#Contrary to what Trump has claimed about the Ukraine prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, going after Joe Biden's son, Hunter, a more credible account in that Shokin let the investigations of Burisma and others to go dormant, and the United States and its allies decided he was not effective in his job, and, in fact, let corruption flourish. Western allies and nongovernmental organizations, such as the Wolrd Bank and the IMF, wanted Shokin gone.
#A common claim being made by the GOP is that Trump was interested in rooting out corruption in Ukraine. President Trump did not mention rooting out corruption in the two calls he made to President Zelensky.
#GOP lawmakers have made the charge that closed hearings are unfair, and deprive the public of needed information. The opening statements of witnesses were made public on the day they were delivered, and the witness transcripts were later publicly released after classified information was erased. As for being unfair, committee hearings are run on the basis of assigning equal time for asking questions of witnesses, and the questioning alternates between the two parties. If the staff of one political party gets a chunk of time to ask questions, the staff of the other party gets equal time. And as for hiding information from the public, it is President Trump's stonewalling on providing witnesses and documents that is, by far, the main reason that information is not being made available.
#When the GOP got the public hearings they were demanding, they unanimously voted against having them... . They said, in effect, it was "too little, too late." The GOP claim that the Democrats were being unfair to Trump should have been washed away by the fact that the rules put into effect on October 31, were essentially adopted from the GOP rules established in 2015. The charge of unfair to Trump is ludicrous when one considers the law-breaking he has been allowed to get away with, the democratic norms he has trampled, and the severe damage he has done to the checks and balances structure of the U.S. government by stonewalling on witnesses and documents.
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