An oath of office establishes a moral commitment to faithfully discharge official duties and responsibilities. Members of the U.S. Senate have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, “foreign and domestic.” In an additional oath, integral to the performance of their duties in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, senators have sworn to do “impartial justice.”

If senators fail to keep their oath to render “impartial justice,” they must be held accountable by the American people, for the commission of an act of public immorality is of far greater consequence to the nation than acts of private immorality.

An act of private immorality as in, say, President Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern, was a matter of considerable pain and consequence for his family, but it was a private matter, left to resolution by a relatively small number of family members.

Acts of public immorality--President Lyndon Johnson’s lies about the Vietnam War, or President George W. Bush’s lies to the American people about the Iraq War--necessarily entail a broader scope of pain, injury and tragedy, as they did in the loss of tens of thousands of lives and the infliction of hundreds of thousands of horrific injuries, not to mention the cost of trillions of dollars to American taxpayers.

It is likely that Americans focus more closely on private, rather than public, acts immorality of their elected representatives. But in a constitutional system, in which officials derive their limited authority from the sovereign people and the Constitution, it is high time that voters scrutinize more closely acts of public immorality, for they are the actions that will profoundly affect the future and fate of our constitutional democracy.

An oath to render “impartial justice” in an impeachment trial requires, at a minimum, the presentation of witnesses and documents that will illuminate the issues and charges central to the question of whether President Trump should be removed from office. A trial without witnesses and documents would be no trial at all.

If senators vote next week to block testimony from witnesses positioned to shed light on the charges against Trump, they will be engaging in an act of public immorality, for they will be shirking their responsibility to seek the truth about his actions, thus failing to do “impartial justice.” Such a failure would carry long- term consequences for the future of presidential accountability, the rule of law and the constitutional system itself.

In December, a Washington Post Poll revealed that 70 per cent of Americans believed that Trump should allow his aides to testify. Clearly, Americans understand that a fair trial--a real trial and not a sham trial--requires testimony from key witnesses. It is frankly pathetic that defenders of President Trump argue that the Senate should not hear “new” witnesses, that is, those that did not testify before the House of Representatives when Trump, himself, prohibited his aides and advisers from testifying. In this argument, Americans can see and smell a cover up.

If Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell falls on his sword for Donald Trump and manipulates this impeachment trial to a conclusion without witnesses and documents, he will have dealt a severe blow to the integrity of the Senate, the principle of executive accountability to the law and the people, and the premise that, in America, the truth matters. Such a manipulative end will leave Americans in our time, and for all time, to wonder: What were Trump and McConnell hiding? Indeed, happened to the patriotism of our representatives in the year 2020, when they committed sweeping acts of public immorality?

Patrick Henry, the great orator of the American Revolution, warned fellow delegates in the Virginia Ratifying Convention in 1788, that the citizenry should not count on the patriotism of elected representatives: “Must I give my heart, my lungs and my soul to my country? If you depend upon the patriotism of your representatives, you are gone.”

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Adler is president of The Alturas Institute, created to advance American Democracy through promotion of the Constitution, civic education, equal protection of the law and gender equality. His scholarly writings have been quoted by the US Supreme Court, lower federal courts, the Attorney General, White House Counsel and republicans and democrats in Congress.