witness for the prosecution

The US House of Representatives transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate yesterday and announced the appointment of seven members of Congress that were dispatched to the other chamber to formally exhibit, present their case.
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was earlier criticised for her timing by detractors and snapped back that her decision to start the trial now was beyond reproach, since she had resisted calls for impeachment for months until Trump’s behaviour made them irresistible (Republicans were noisily sharpening their knives for the impeachment and imprisonment of Hillary Clinton before election night)—and that exchange was itself overshadowed by the number of writing implements Pelosi used to sign the articles of impeachment (an established tradition) as a trigger for the GOP. Though the Republican majority in the Senate will almost assuredly deliver a swift show-trial, there’s also a calculated and accepted risk insofar as the every senator is on jury duty—and they’re to sit in silence and contemplation in the well of chamber whilst the court proceedings continue—and that means that a good number of the Democratic party candidates, other than the former vice-president and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, will be off of the campaign trail.