This week, the Senate impeachment trial abruptly got underway with votes on the rules for the main bulk of the proceedings. During a late night vote on an amendment to those rules that had been proposed by Democrats, Maine’s Republican Senator and perceived moderate Susan Collins broke with her party and voted against tabling the amendment. It was the apparently tenth such amendment vote during the Tuesday debate, and it would have extended the time in which one side could respond to a motion from their opponents. That could have helped keep the trial from devolving into the quick acquittal for the president that Republicans want, but the GOP — except Collins — voted the proposal down.
Her reasoning for the vote isn’t immediately clear, but her advocacy did apparently weigh on another actually successful rules change. The first version of the trial rules gave sides only two days to make opening remarks and did not actually add the actual evidence collected by House investigators to the official record. But after a group of Republicans including Senators spoke out during a private party lunch, the rules were changed to extend opening arguments to three days and add the House’s evidence to the record.
Collins spokeswoman Annie Clark connected that advocacy to Collins trying to keep the current proceedings in line with the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. Clark explained:
‘Senator Collins and others raised concerns about the 24 hours of opening statements in two days and the admission of the House transcript in the record. Her position has been that the trial should follow the Clinton model as much as possible. She thinks these changes are a significant improvement.’
There’s still a major looming question where Collins’s perspective could have some sway — whether or not the Senate will hear from witnesses. At present, that question is apparently set to be formally considered after opening arguments and initial questions from Senators. The opening arguments that have already taken place have already included plenty of lies from the president’s team, like their completely false claims that Republicans had been kept out of the initial proceedings.
