The Founding Fathers ‘did not foresee a complicit Senate’ covering for a corrupt president: Ex-prosecutor Joyce Vance

In an op-ed for TIME Magazine this Tuesday, MSNBC contributor and University of Alabama law professor, Joyce White Vance, wrote that she doesn't expect President Trump's trial in the GOP-controlled to Senate to determined by the facts, since "the Senate (or at least the party that holds a majority in it) gets to make decisions about more than just the facts."

"...during impeachment, Senators sit as sort of supersized jurors who not only decide the facts, but also make the rules," Vance writes. "For instance, they get to determine what the process will be, whether witnesses can be called, which ones, what the burden of proof is and what kind of conduct by a President rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors so as to be impeachable."

While the Founding Fathers knew that there might one day come a time where the removal of a president might be necessary, they "did not foresee a complicit Senate, unwilling to check a President who was acting in his own best interests instead of the country’s."

One of the ways the Senate is providing cover for Trump is disallowing witnesses to testify, and if Trump "is acquitted in a proceeding against him where vital witnesses can’t testify, where relevant evidence is 'unavailable,' and where some members of the jury declare their allegiance to the defendant instead of to a fair process, it’s hardly justice."

Nevertheless, even if Trump is acquitted in the Senate, "that acquittal will not exonerate him," Vance writes.

Read her full op-ed over at TIME.