The US Senate has rejected repeated Democratic attempts to secure new evidence in President Donald Trump’s impeachment as his trial began.<\/p>\n
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell meanwhile backed off on a plan to fast-track the hearings after coming under pressure from fellow Republicans.<\/p>\n
Democrats said this would have been no less than a cover-up.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump is charged with abuse of power and obstructing the congressional inquiry. He denies wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Mr. Trump dismissed the accusations against him as “just a hoax”.<\/p>\n
Senators have taken oaths to act as impartial jurors, hearing arguments for six hours a day, six days a week in a trial presided over by the US Chief Justice, John Roberts.<\/p>\n
It is only the third time in US history that a president is facing an impeachment trial and it is unclear how long it will last.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump was impeached last month by the Democratic-led House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
But the Senate, which is controlled by his fellow Republicans, is not expected to convict the president and remove him from office.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, by party-line votes of 53-47, the Senate rejected three Democratic bids to obtain documents and evidence in the impeachment trial.<\/p>\n
Senators blocked a motion from Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to subpoena White House files related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.<\/p>\n
They also rejected follow-up motions demanding a subpoena of records and documents from the state department and White House budget office.<\/p>\n
In his opening statement, Adam Schiff, the House Democrat leading the impeachment case, said most Americans “do not believe there will be a fair trial”.<\/p>\n
“They don’t believe the Senate will be impartial,” he added. “They believe the result is pre-cooked.”<\/p>\n
The president’s legal team had earlier demanded he be immediately acquitted, calling the trial “a dangerous perversion of the constitution”.<\/p>\n
Source: BBC.com<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US Senate has rejected repeated Democratic attempts to secure new evidence in President Donald Trump’s impeachment as his trial began. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell meanwhile backed off on a plan to fast-track the hearings after coming under pressure from fellow Republicans. Democrats said this would have been no less than a cover-up. Mr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3535"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3539,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3535\/revisions\/3539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonotarsomoy.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}