Donald Trump’s Impeachment Trial Likely To End With Acquittal Before The Weekend, According To Report

President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial will likely be over before the weekend, as Republicans in the United States Senate appear to have the votes necessary to block witnesses and bring the months-long proceedings to an end. Trump is expected to be acquitted.

As NPR reported, Republicans signaled late on Thursday night that they had the support needed to block witnesses from being called. Senator Lamar Alexander announced that he believe the arguments were sufficient at proving the facts of the case, and he would be voting against witnesses. Alexander was seen as a potential vote in favor of witnesses, and his speaking out all but ensured there would not be enough votes to continue the trial with firsthand witnesses, the report noted.

“There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a ‘mountain of overwhelming evidence,'” Alexander said in a statement released late on Thursday. “Our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve with ‘the consent of the governed,’ not at the pleasure of the United States Congress. Let the people decide.”

Democrats had pushed for the inclusion of witnesses, especially after former national security adviser John Bolton reportedly wrote in a manuscript that Trump told him that the military aid withheld from Ukraine was intended to press the country into investigating his political rival, Joe Biden. Trump’s legal team had contended that there was no connection between the hold in aid and investigations, but later argued that even if Trump did press Ukraine to investigation Biden, the president believed it was in the best interest of the country to have him re-elected and could not face impeachment for it.

Republicans had already signaled that they were prepared to bring the trial to an end by the end of the week. Earlier on Thursday, before Alexander committed to voting against witnesses, Florida Senator Rick Scott had said that he was hopeful that the trial would be over by Friday night. He called it a partisan process, an argument echoed by the president and many other Republicans.

“I’m hoping that’s what is going to happen when each side presents their case,” he said in an interview with Breitbart News. “At that point we take the vote immediately. We say we’re not going to have witnesses, and we go forward and acquit the president.”