- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Pramod Thomas
INDIA’s first British governor-general Warren Hastings found mention during the impeachment proceedings of Donald Trump on Tuesday(9).
US prosecutors invoked the trial of Warren Hastings by the House of Lords in 18th century after he had left office.
They used Hastings’ case to defend the former US president’s stand that the trial by the Senate was unconstitutional as he was no longer in power.
Hastings ruled Bengal from 1772-1774 and was the first de facto governor-general of India from 1774-1785. His impeachment proceedings were initiated in 1786 after he went back to England for alleged mismanagement, mistreatment of natives, and personal corruption while in India.
The trial began in 1788. However, he was acquitted in the trial in 1795, according to various reports.
The US Senate confirmed the constitutionality of Trump’s impeachment trial by 56-44 votes following presentation from both sides-house impeachment managers and lawyers representing the former president.
“Our case is based on cold, hard facts. It’s all about the facts. President Trump has sent his lawyers here to try to stop the Senate from hearing the facts of this case. They want to call the trial over before any evidence is even introduced,” said impeachment manager Jamie Raskin, who is also a Democratic member of the US House of Representatives.
“The first point comes from English history. And it would have been immediately obvious to anyone familiar with that history that former officials could be held accountable for their abuses while in office. It was the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the former governor-general of the British colony of Bengal, and a corrupt guy.
“Even though everyone there surely knew that Hastings had left office two years before his impeachment trial began, not a single framer, not one raised a concern when Virginia and George Mason held up the Hastings impeachment as a model for us in the writing of our Constitution.”
Countering the mention of Hastings, Trump’s lead lawyer Bruce Castor said, “If we’re really going to use pre-Revolutionary history in Great Britain, then the precedent is we have a parliament and we have a king. Is that the precedent that we are headed for?”
Trump, 74, is accused of inciting the January 6 Capitol Hill riots, threatening democracy in the country. The incident left five people dead, including a police official.
Starting from Wednesday(10), each side would have up to 16 hours to present their case before the 100-member Senate for them to vote on the impeachment of Trump later. Both the Republicans and the Democrats have 50 members each.
To impeach Trump, the Senate needs to vote the House impeachment motion by 67 votes.
Trump is the first president in the American history to be impeached twice. He is also the first president ever to have faced impeachment trial after leaving the office.
