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How does it go down? well, the answer differs from most government proceedings. we will talk you through amazing examples and footage. the trial of a president basically has three layers. the first is the constitution, which has ironclad rules for the trial and a high bar for kicking presidents out of office. now, that s set in stone. totally unchangeable. the second layer are the current senate rules originally passed in 1986 that provide how the trial runs. when you hear senators say what the rules require, they re usually talking about these rules. and then there is the third layer. and that s where the senate just makes up new rules as it goes along, which is different than every other trial in america and different than every other day in congress. so other than those requirements i mentioned in the constitution, the senate can actually change most of the trial rules with a bare majority of just 51 votes. you can think of this as the jazz layer which senators can go ....
Witnesses and add them later or start with a plan to hear witnesses and vote not to hear them. senators can get votes on all of this. that s what senator schumer is talking about when he says that no matter how this kicks off, they can get later votes on specific trump witnesses. i will ask during the impeachment proceeding for a vote on whether mulvaney should testify and whether bolton should testify. any republican who thinks they can escape having to vote on this, no matter how quickly mitch mcconnell tries to truncate the trial doesn t know the rules. doesn t know the rules. mcconnell knows them. he was talking about them and how they apply to this very issue of witnesses back in 1999. under the rule srules, to deh impeachment trials, it would take 51 votes to call a witness, unless two-thirds of the senate agreed to do otherwise. fact check true. if republicans unite around, ....
Rules give the first call to the chief justice. but the senators have the final call. sometimes the judge can lead and his call will hold. most of our footage tonight is from the one televised impeachment trial. but take an example from the 1868 trial of president johnson. the chief justice ruled about senators deliberating behind closed doors. 130 laters we found he cited that for ruling on an open trial until senators closed the door to deliberate. and chief justice chase in the andrew johnson trial stated in response to an inquiry, there can be no deliberation unless the doors are closed. senators can follow those leads, and there may be topics where they would rather not weigh in at all. but the senators can also override any evidence call a chief justice makes with the bare majority. and history shows on the big calls the rules give way to that ....
Question. it is a work shoot where you mix reality and fiction into one spectacle. well, he s played himself, and i mean that in the brooklyn sense. great points all around. i have to fit in a break because we have so much in the special. my thanks to maya and kurt. coming up, as promised, we have a breakdown of how it works, the precedence, the rules and amazing footage i want to show you. we will speak to the country s leading historian of what this means for the long view. and thomas friedman joins us. that s all ahead on our msnbc special, the impeachment of donald j. trump. do you recall, not long ago ....
how would you like to do without witnesses? that is mr. graham. this is also where the rules matter because the constitution requires a senate trial but not of my particular length. the senate can make those decisions as the trial goes. in the clinton case, the senate voted to both continue the trial and add those three witnesses. there were two critical votes today, and the republicans held all the members in line. votes to dismiss the trial and to subpoena witnesses. here is how the votes went. on the motion to dismiss, no 56, yes 44. on the motion to subpoena witnesses, the mirror imagine, yes 56, no 44. republicans won that vote on evidence. they added a new witness interviews and they had lewinsky, jordan, blumenthal. 51 votes can change the rules any time. the trial can start without ....