28 January 2021 09:31 am
RT.com, 27 Jan, 2021 - Only five Republican senators opposed a motion by colleague Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to declare Donald Trump’s impeachment trial unconstitutional, signaling that Democrats won’t have enough votes to convict the former president.
The Senate voted 55-45 on Tuesday to set aside Paul’s motion to short-circuit the trial before it even starts on the basis that the Constitution doesn’t provide jurisdiction for impeaching a president who’s no longer in office. It would take a two-thirds Senate majority, or as many as 67 votes, to convict Trump. “Forty-five Senators agreed that this sham of a trial is unconstitutional,” Paul said on Twitter. “This is more than will be needed to acquit and to eventually end this partisan impeachment process. This trial is dead on arrival in the Senate.”