As though she hasn’t been busy enough flying among the four early voting states in her campaign for for president, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar will add another high-profile duty this starting Tuesday: impeachment juror.
Klobuchar is one of three remaining presidential candidates who are also members of the U.S. Senate, where the formal trial of President Donald Trump will begin Tuesday afternoon. That means she, along with U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, will be in Washington, D.C. for a historic duty, but one that will also take her away from campaigning — just weeks before the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan[/image_credit][image_caption]Rally attendees filled the First Avenue dance floor on Friday night.[/image_caption]
During her speech to a First Avenue rally Friday night, held on the first day of early voting in the Minnesota presidential primary, Klobuchar said she would depend on her family and Minnesota supporters to help the campaign while she is in Washington, D.C.
“I don’t know how many days this is gonna last,” she said. “I just know that I have a constitutional duty to do my job.”
“I just want you to think: What can I do for Amy today?” she said.
She later added: “I am a mom. I can do two things at once.”
Speaking to reporters afterward, Klobuchar said she doesn’t know what the impeachment schedule will be, adding that during the 1998 trial of President Bill Clinton, there were days when nothing was scheduled but that there was often little advance notice of when that would happen. “We’ll have to figure it out,” she said.
Some of the timing will depend on whether the Senate hears from witnesses, which she said she thinks it should. (“The last time I checked, you can’t have a trial without witnesses and evidence,” she said during her rally speech.)
“There is more and more stuff coming out and it would be really troubling if they didn’t have witnesses,” she said.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan[/image_credit][image_caption]Following the rally, Sen. Amy Klobuchar stated she doesn’t know what the impeachment schedule will be.[/image_caption]
Klobuchar said she makes up for having less money than other candidates by making campaign appearances, up to 10 per day, and that her campaign would use telephone town halls and Skype to supplement appearances by her family and surrogates.
A recent New Hampshire poll had her in fifth place, at 10 percent, and she said she is adding endorsements in the first primary state, where she has already qualified for a Feb. 7 debate. She wasn’t aware of it when she took the stage Friday night, but she was co-endorsed Sunday along with Warren by the New York Times. After the Minneapolis rally Friday night, she left for yet another trip to Iowa.
On Monday, Klobuchar attended a Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration in South Carolina while her husband John Bessler and daughter Abigail Bessler attended a holiday event in New Hampshire. After Iowa and New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina are the next states to hold their nominating contests; then comes Super Tuesday, on March 3, when 14 states — including Minnesota — will have primaries.
For all the drawbacks, Klobuchar acknowledged that are also political advantages to being a juror in the impeachment. A lot of public and media attention will be on the U.S. Senate, and she has been invited on national television programs because of her role in the trial, not as a candidate.
[image_credit]MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan[/image_credit]
Klobuchar is also the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, where many of the battles over the proceedings could take place, including a rule that will keep news media away from parts of the Capitol where they have commonly had access.
How can she or any Senator running for President be impartial? Conflict of interest there. You can’t sit in judgement of the man you’re trying to run against. None of the Senators running for President should be allowed to sit in as jury for this process.
And none of the Senators who proclaim proudly that they are working with the White House should be allowed to sit in judgment. At the very least, they should be barred from making the rules.
Apples and oranges. None of them are running against the President for that office. Also, none of them are on his defense team either. Just like none of the Dems recused themselves from Clinton’s impeachment even tho they claimed to be working with him.
I’m not going to excuse the behavior of the Dems from 2 decades ago, but that’s irrelevant to your comment. GOP Senators took an oath to be impartial, an oath that they admitted they were going to violate, and you’re worried about a possible presidential challenger who as I said, should want Trump to remain in office because it would be much easier to beat a guy who doesn’t even know what Pearl Harbor is about, wants to know how the blood of our servicemen and women can be exchanged for cash and who think America’s enemies – brutal, ruthless dictators – are his best friend because they send him love letters.
“Also, none of them are on his defense team either.”
It is to laugh, my good man. Senator McConnell has already announced that he is coordinating the trial with the White House, so the fact that he is not “on his defense team” is pretty much a technicality.
If you will recall the Clinton impeachment trial, both parties worked together on determining the rules. They were not decided by ukase according to the whim of the moment. Yes, Democrats were in contact with the White House, but they did not allow the White House to dictate how the trial would go. Nor, for that matter, did President Clinton brag about all the evidence he was withholding.
If that’s the case then a lot of the GPO Senators should recuse themselves as well since they have openly admitted that they are collaborating with Trump on his defense. I mean, we already know their oath was a complete lie, but you’re concerned about someone who hasn’t even become the Democratic nominee and would frankly have a much easier time running against Trump than another Republican who might actually has a shred of concern for America.