The House just revealed how it’s going to make the Senate impeachment trial particularly ugly for Donald Trump

| 6:18 pm EST January 14, 2020
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Right now it’s up to Republican Senators whether they want to stick their necks out for Donald Trump by refusing to call any witnesses in his impeachment trial, or protect their own backsides by calling witnesses who could hurt Trump. As of last night, the GOP Senate is in disarray on this, and we’re still waiting to see which way it’ll go. But the House just revealed how it’s going to make the Senate impeachment trial a particularly ugly affair for Donald Trump, whether there are witnesses or not.

The House gets to send managers to the Senate impeachment trial, and they essentially get to run the prosecution. This evening the House announced that in the four weeks since it closed out its impeachment hearings, it’s collected a treasure trove of new evidence in Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal – and it intends to put that evidence to use at the Senate impeachment trial.

This means that the incriminating evidence from witnesses like Lev Parnas will be introduced during the televised Senate impeachment proceedings, whether or not the Republican Senate allows people like Parnas to show up and testify. The House has publicly posted a sampling of that evidence online, but as Politico’s Kyle Cheney is pointing out, the House is keeping a significant portion of the new evidence under wraps.

The new documents released today will ensure that the media will spend this week focusing on that incriminating evidence. The additional evidence introduced at the Senate impeachment trial will ensure that most of the media spends the trial talking about how guilty Donald Trump is. We knew Nancy Pelosi had to have something up her sleeve, and now we’re seeing at least some of it. The kicker is that Trump and the GOP Senate still don’t know what else she’s sitting, meaning they have to make decisions about witnesses while in the dark.