GOP senator: 2020 candidates must recuse themselves from impeachment trial

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said on Wednesday that Democratic senators running for the party’s 2020 nomination should recuse themselves from taking part in President Trump’s impeachment trial.

“Tomorrow, one hundred United States Senators will be sworn in to serve in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Four of those Senators must recuse themselves for their unparalleled political interest in seeing this President removed from office,” Blackburn said in a statement.

She added that Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “cannot sit in judgment of the very President they seek to replace.”

Senators are expected to be sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday afternoon; no one is expected to recuse themselves from the trial.

The call for the presidential contenders to recuse themselves from the trial comes after some Democrats have called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to do the same after he pledged to be in “total coordination” with the White House and that he would not be an “impartial juror.”

“Do you think Chuck Schumer is impartial? Do you think Elizabeth Warren is impartial? Bernie Sanders is impartial? So let’s quit the charade. This is a political exercise,” McConnell said during a Fox News interview last month. “All I’m asking of Schumer is that we treat Trump the same way we treated [President] Clinton.” 

Blackburn added on Wednesday that the candidates’ “presidential ambitions prohibit their ability to view this trial through an objective lens.”