McConnell-proposed timeframe for Trump impeachment trial opposed by Democrats

Democrats arguing their case against President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial called on the Senate on Tuesday to reject a timeframe proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell giving each side in the trial 24 hours to present their reasoning.

According to McConnell's organizing resolution, which was made public Monday and which the Senate on Tuesday will vote on as it starts the trial, House managers who act as prosecutors and Trump's legal defense team will each get a 24-hour timeslot over two days to make their case, raising the prospect of the trial going into late night.

"A White House-driven and rigged process, with a truncated schedule designed to go late into the night and further conceal the President's misconduct, is not what the American people expect or deserve," the managers wrote in the statement.

The four-page resolution does not require additional witnesses to be subpoenaed and does not allow House prosecutors to admit evidence into the Senate trial record until after the opening arguments are heard.

Instead, the resolution allows for a motion to be introduced to dismiss the impeachment charges by a simple majority vote in the Republican-controlled upper chamber.

"The McConnell Resolution goes so far as to suggest it may not even allow the evidence gathered by the House to be admitted," the managers' statement said. "That is not a fair trial. In fact, it is no trial at all."

The managers argued that McConnell's plan "deviates sharply" from the rules governing former President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, which the Kentucky Republican vowed to follow. McConnell's draft resolution, the managers said, is devised "in an effort to prevent the full truth of the President's misconduct from coming to light."

"In the Clinton case, the President provided all of the documents - more than 90,000 pages of them - before the trial took place. McConnell's resolution rejects that basic necessity," they added.

According to the resolution, House impeachment managers will be allowed to begin their arguments 1 p.m. ET (1800 GMT) on Wednesday. They will have 24 hours over two days to make their opening arguments when they begin to present their case against Trump on the Senate floor on Wednesday.

Republicans and Democrats have been wrangling over the impeachment trial rules ever since the articles of impeachment were passed in the Democratic-controlled House in December, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer urging witnesses including current and former White House officials to testify and related documents to be provided during the trial - requests rejected by McConnell.

In a statement Monday bashing McConnell's resolution, Schumer said that he would be "offering amendments to address the many flaws in this deeply unfair proposal and to subpoena the witnesses and documents we have requested."

Trump, while in Davos, Switzerland for the annual World Economic Forum, was asked Tuesday to comment on the impeachment.

"That whole thing is a hoax," he responded. "It goes nowhere because nothing happened. The only thing we've done is a great job."