The US Senate has voted to adopt the rules for Donald Trump’s impeachment after angry clashes between Republicans and Democrats over whether the president would get a fair trial.
The vote was passed after midnight in Washington following a marathon debate lasting nearly 13 hours.
All 11 attempts by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer to change the impeachment rules by introducing new witnesses and evidence were shot down by Republican lawmakers, who hold a majority in Congress’s upper chamber.
As tempers frayed in the early hours of the morning, Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial, admonished senators from both sides “to remember that they are addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body”.
Under the rules, eventually passed along party lines by 53 to 47, lawyers for the Democrat-led House of Representatives and for Mr Trump will each have 24 hours starting this afternoon to argue their cases for and against the articles of impeachment.
The president has strongly denied abusing his power and obstructing justice.
It is alleged that he withheld a military aid package in the hope of persuading the Ukrainian leadership to launch an investigation into his political rival Joe Biden.
Soon after the trial began yesterday, Mr Trump demonstrated his frustration from the Word Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, tweeting in capital letters: “READ THE TRANSCRIPTS!”
The reference to the transcript of his phone call last summer, in which he was accused of putting undue pressure on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, came after he again described the trial as a “hoax”.
During an acrimonious debate on Capitol Hill, Republicans rebuffed Democrat efforts to compel testimony from Mr Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, and to subpoena documents from the White House and the State Department.
“If the House cannot call witnesses or introduce documents and evidence, it’s not a fair trial,” said Senator Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“It’s not really a trial at all,” he added. He said most Americans believe the trial was “pre-cooked”.
The Democrats are likely to demand another vote to call the White House witnesses once the trial is under way.
