Why can't Schiff ask Roberts to call witnesses?

[Kid Berwyn]

One would think the trial judge would have the authority to determine what does and does not happen in his or her courtroom.

Fuck Moscow Mitch.

[Bettie]

1. I think you are mistaking Roberts for someone

who would put country over party.

Wrong. He won't.

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Guy helped protect Poppy Bush in Iran Contra.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2005/8/28/142183/-

Later Roberts helped steal Florida.

Now he pals with William Barr.

Wonder if Epstein made prints?

[comradebillyboy]

2. The Senate makes the rules on the trial, not Roberts. It isn't a judicial activity.

[Kid Berwyn]

4. The Senate may make rules for debate,

...set rules for committee assignments. This is more than politics — and more than a criminal matter. Trump and what he did and does for Putin amounts to treason. It should be treated as such.

Knowing all that, I guess I hoped that the least we could do is ask.

[ancianita]

7. Yes, but in an impeachment trial, it has to make the rules up front, not as it goes along.

Roberts is there for judicial witness only.

They even had to raise the question officially, and take a vote yesterday, before the trial began today, about whether the Senate would let Roberts break a tie. They voted no.

[Kid Berwyn]

13. Thank you.

In a cube today. Wondered why the Founders named the Chief Justice to preside, not the Senate.

I don’t think they thought a partisan Majority Leader would run a President’s trial.

[ancianita]

15. I hear you. It all sounds counterintuitive to me, too, until you get to the strict adherence to

the separation of the coequal branches of government part. Coequal has always been respected until now.

Now we're in the predicament of the Executive Branch elevating itself above the coequal First Branch, the People's Branch, Congress. It's disgusting, ruins the Constitution, and wrecks this Republic. If there is no law the president has a duty to respect, then we're a dictatorship.

We are rolling over a cliff, and right before the drop, we're getting the disastrous view.

[FBaggins]

5. The request would be out of order

The senate just confirmed that last night.

And of course... he is neither the trial judge nor is this his courtroom. The actual trial judge (the Senate) has already ruled on the issue.

[Kid Berwyn]

6. So why did the Founders put him in charge of the trial?

Every court and trial I have heard of has a presiding judge who runs the courtroom.

[ancianita]

9. When the Constitution says he "presides," it doesn't mean that in ANOTHER branch, he can run

that legislative body like a JUDICIAL branch court. This is a legislative branch body holding a legislative trial. They have sole charge of their trial rules, which McConnell announced before the introduction of any amendments yesterday.

All through the days of the trial, the Chief Justice presides as a judicial witness only. That's it. That's the Constitutional separation of powers.

(The majority leader calls on the Sergeant-at-Arms to keep order.)

[onenote]

11. Because ordinarily the presiding officer in Senate proceedings is the Vice President

or a member of the Senate (President Pro Temper). And in non-presidential impeachment trials, the VP (or President Pro Tempore) is the presiding officer. But not in a presidential impeachment where it would create an appearance of conflict for the VP to be the presiding officer.

The Presiding Officer in Senate proceedings, whether legislative in nature or an impeachment proceeding, is basically a traffic cop with no substantive powers.

[FBaggins]

14. They didn't

All they did was replace the presiding officer (who at that time would have been the President’s biggest political rival) with someone else... but the presiding officer of the Senate has no real power.

[onenote]

8. Because, as explained multiple times, Roberts doesn't have that authority.

He is not a "trial judge." He's not a "judge" at all. He's a "presiding officer -- essentially a traffic cop whose authority is limited to ensuring that the trial is conducted in accordance with the rules adopted by the Senate (i.e.,the standing rules on impeachment as well as the resolution specifically adopted with respect to this particular impeachment).

[ancianita]

10. Not even ensuring the rules are kept, either. He functions solely as a judicial witness.

[Karma13612]

12. So he is more like a referee? nt

[ancianita]

16. Not even. Referees get to enforce rules, make calls. He's simply a judicial witness. That's it.

No input, consultation, or even tie breaking. The rules just disallowed that last night.

[Karma13612]

18. Wow! Sounds pretty toothless.

Many apologies for missing your response earlier!

[ancianita]

20. It's just something we have to face about coequal govt.

On the other hand, he ruled last night, at the end, that the one-page evidentiary letter presented to the Senate be viewed by each Senator the way any "classified" evidence is.

That block on the public's knowing the evidence is an issue to Democrats, who claim the letter's classification violates classification rules that say evidence of a crime cannot be hidden by simply claiming it "classified." This could go to court, since Pence, the subject of the letter, classified it.

No apology needed.

[Thomas Hurt]

17. Presiding to McConnell only means Roberts is warming a chair.

He probably over stepped when he scolded the lawyers today.

[Kid Berwyn]

21. It's not McConnell's Senate. Place belongs to We the People.

I’d recommend we march en masses on Washington.

[gratuitous]

19. You mean Bernie, from Weekend at Bernie's?

Roberts is trying to slip through this whole unpleasantness as anonymously as possible. He's practicing the narrowest possible interpretation of his constitutional mandate to "preside" over the trial.

[Kid Berwyn]

22. Guy earned his Sgt. Pepper stripes shepherding Iran Contra blame from Poppy.

Roberts & the 'Apex of Presidential Power'

By Nat Parry
September 6, 2005

EXCERPT...

In the 1980s, Roberts also provided legal advice to the Reagan administration on how to pick its way around the legal obstacles erected by Congress to limit military and other assistance to the Nicaraguan contra rebels who were fighting to overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

SNIP…

Conflict of Interest

Regarding the Hamdan case, Roberts also saw no impropriety in his simultaneous interviewing with senior administration officials for a life-time job on the Supreme Court and his judging of a case in which Bush was a defendant.

On April 1, Roberts was interviewed by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who had formulated many of the arguments for the “apex of presidential power,” including Bush’s right to override anti-torture laws.

Other interviews with Roberts were conducted by Vice President Dick Cheney; White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card; White House legal counsel Harriet Miers; Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove; and Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby.

CONTINUED…

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/090605.html