Sean Hannity Urges Republicans To Get On With Impeachment Trial: ‘End This For The Sake Of Our Country’
Fox News host Sean Hannity is apparently troubled by how the impeachment of President Donald Trump is playing out. On Saturday, he urged Republicans in the United States Senate to get on with the trial and “end this for the sake of our country,” according to Mediaite.
Hannity opened his monologue by defending Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, arguing that the president has every right to block John Bolton, his former national security adviser, from testifying in the impeachment trial.
Bolton, who did not testify before the House of Representatives, has said that he would be open to testifying before the Senate. Trump is threatening to invoke executive privilege to stop Bolton from testifying, but some legal experts have suggested that he does not have the power to do so.
Trump can block Bolton from testifying, Hannity suggested, because the Democrats’ allegations pertaining to his dealings with Ukraine are completely false.
Impeachment, the host said, “is a desperate last-minute attempt to smear, slander, besmirch the president to try and get the political advantage.” Democrats, he insisted, “want to hurt the president politically.”
Hannity dedicated a key part of his monologue to Senate Republicans, urging them to speed through the trial, so that impeachment can come to an end as soon as possible.
“Members of the U.S. Senate, especially Republicans, you need to end this for the sake of our country and our Constitution and frankly, for the sake of future presidents.”
“In America it is we the people you’re supposed to be serving,” the host added, seemingly demanding that Republicans carry out the trial without taking into account Democratic demands for a fair process with additional witnesses such as Bolton.
Hannity was echoing comments made earlier on his radio show, where he adamantly insisted that GOP senators take a hard-line approach to the trial, threatening to give out their phone numbers unless they do so.
“They now get to present their case to all of you Republican senators, don’t make me start giving out the phone number,” the host remarked.
In December, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump, formally accusing him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. According to the impeachment articles passed by the House, Trump withheld military aid from the Ukrainian government in an effort to pressure it to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the Democratic front-runners in the 2020 presidential election.
House Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, held on to the articles, demanding that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell commits to holding a fair and impartial trial. McConnell, who announced that he plans on collaborating with White House lawyers during the process, has refused to accommodate their demands. The stalemate is expected to end next week, according to The New York Times.
