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Ethics Complaint Alleges McConnell May Have Violated the Rules of the Senate on Impartiality with Impeachment
Public Citizen Asks the Senate Ethics Committee to Restore the Oath of Impartiality in the Impeachment Trial
WASHINGTON
Public Citizen today filed an ethics complaint against U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) over his public statements on the pending impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. The complaint, filed with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics, requests it investigate and determine whether recent public declarations by McConnell violate his oath under the U.S. Constitution as well as the rules of the Senate requiring impartiality. The complaint seeks a determination on whether he should recuse himself from the impeachment proceedings.
Senate rules on the procedure for conducting impeachment trials, adopted unanimously in 1986, call for members to take an oath of impartiality in weighing the evidence. Senators are asked to pledge the following: "I solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of ____ ____, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God."
"The public declarations by Senator McConnell that his role in the impeachment process is to coordinate with the White House and thereby make a mockery of the trial directly contradict his oath of impartiality," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen. "This is not about whether McConnell has views on Trump's guilt or whether he has reached a conclusion based on the available evidence. It's about whether he will design a process that aims to render impartial justice. He has made clear he has no intention of doing so."
"We understand that senators are partisan politicians and have very clear opinions on whether Trump has committed impeachable offenses stemming from what they heard in the House process," said Lisa Gilbert, vice president of legislative affairs for Public Citizen.
"Today's ethics complaint reflects the distinct issue raised by McConnell's actions to rebuke his oath of impartiality and coordinate the rules of the impeachment trial with the White House."
In the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, Senate leaders on both sides of the aisle sought to try the president in a "respectable way." Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) had their opinions on the merit of impeaching Clinton, but both also understood their obligations to the Senate as an institution. They kept their distance from the White House in the course of the impeachment process and pursued their constitutional duties seriously.
"Holding a kangaroo court not only mocks the institution of the Senate, but it also does no favors for Trump," said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen's Congress Watch division. "If the public views the trial as rigged, a 'not guilty' verdict from the Senate will not be seen by the public as grounds for exoneration."
Public Citizen's complaint against McConnell is available here.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Spain Withdraws Ambassador to Israel Over Unprovoked War on Iran and Gaza Assault
"Every country with a single ounce of decency should do the same," said one academic.
Mar 11, 2026
Doubling down on its commitment to saying, "No to war" as Israel and the US bombard Iran in a widening conflict of choice that has also included Israeli attacks on Lebanon, the Spanish government on Wednesday formally withdrew its ambassador to Israel, Ana María Sálomon Pérez.
“At the proposal of the minister for foreign affairs, the European Union, and cooperation, and following deliberation by the Council of Ministers at its meeting on March 10, 2026, I hereby order the termination of Ms. Ana María Sálomon Pérez’s appointment as ambassador of Spain to the state of Israel,” a communication from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in the official state gazette read Wednesday morning.
The Foreign Ministry told Reuters that the Spanish Embassy in Tel Aviv will be led by a charge d'affaires.
"Every country with a single ounce of decency should do the same," said UK-based researcher Philip Proudfoot.
The decision to terminate the appointment of Sálomon Pérez comes more than a week after Sánchez denounced the United States' and Israel's assault on Iran as "unjustified, dangerous, and outside international law," and said the countries would be barred from using Spanish military bases to launch attacks on Iran.
Spain has also been outspoken in its condemnation of Israel's US-backed war on Gaza, which began in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
Last September, the prime minister announced an arms embargo on Israel, noting that its attacks on Gaza—which have now killed more than 75,000 Palestinians, according to peer-reviewed studies—has been described as a "genocide" by experts, including the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.
Sánchez also announced Spain would formally recognize Palestinian statehood in May 2024, angering Israel and prompting the country to recall its ambassador to Spain.
Last week, Sánchez gave a 10-minute address saying he was not intimidated by President Donald Trump's threat to impose a trade embargo on Spain in retaliation for its refusal to allow the US and Israel use its military bases. He reiterated that Spain's view on Iran is, "No to war."
"Spain stands with the founding principles of the European Union. It stands with the charter of the United Nations. It stands with international law and therefore with peace and peaceful coexistence between countries," said the prime minister.
In an interview with El Diario on Tuesday, Sánchez called on other European countries to "raise the rules-based international order and the defense of renewed multilateralism."
The war against Iran "has been a war unilaterally driven by two nations," he said. "We are consistent with the foreign policy we have maintained during these almost eight years of government. We will not resolve the situation of instability in the Middle East with such flagrant illegality."
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Trump's War of Choice in Iran Has Cost US Taxpayers Over $10 Billion in Just 10 Days
The estimated spending on the Iran war in just over a week amounts to over 1% of the 2026 US defense budget.
Mar 11, 2026
The cost of President Donald Trump's unprovoked and unconstitutional war with Iran has already cost US taxpayers billions of dollars, and will cost billions more if the conflict drags on.
Anadolu Ajansı on Monday published an estimate that the Iran war cost $10.35 billion over its first 10 days, or more than 1% of the entire 2026 US defense budget.
The US spent an estimated $779 million in the war's first 24 hours alone, and Anadolu noted that daily costs have gone up since then.
Specifically, Anadolu found that as "the campaign has expanded, operational spending has climbed into the billions, based on estimated flight hours, maintenance costs, and munitions expenditures derived from the US Department of Defense’s 2025 and 2026 budget requests."
In the days since Anadolu published its estimate, the estimated cost of the war has soared past $11 billion, according to a tracker that assumes the assault is costing the US $1 billion per day, based on preliminary figures from the Pentagon.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that the US Department of Defense estimated that it burned through $5.6 billion worth of munitions in the initial strikes on Iran, raising questions about whether the war has seriously eroded US military readiness.
Due to the conflict's rapidly escalating costs, the Trump administration is expected to ask US Congress for a $50 billion supplemental funding bill to keep the war going.
Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, and Damian Murphy, senior vice president of national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, released a memo on Monday explaining why Congress should not agree to any White House requests for supplemental funding.
First, the memo notes that polling shows that the Iran war is unprecedentedly unpopular, being the first US war ever to have a net negative approval rating at the outset of the conflict.
"Lawmakers in Congress have the upper hand both morally and politically in opposing the war in Iran," the memo states. "The public does not want to be drawn into another forever war that threatens American lives, kills children, destabilizes the Middle East, and whose costs could easily balloon to hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars."
The memo then argues that the massive increase in defense spending contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was passed by Republicans in last year and signed into law by Trump, should be more than enough to cover the cost of replacing munitions.
"The 'Big Beautiful Bill' provided an additional $153 billion for defense just eight months ago," the memo explains, "on top of the annual defense budget of around $900 billion. The annual defense appropriations bill, also approved only a few months ago, grants the White House the legal authority and flexibility to move around billions of dollars within the Department of Defense to achieve their goals, known as transfer authority."
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Coalition Demands Schumer, Jeffries Step Down Over Failure to Fight 'War-Crazed' Trump
"Schumer and Jeffries have shown that they cannot be trusted to prevent more wars, more threats of wars, or the transfer of another half a trillion dollars a year into the war machine."
Mar 11, 2026
A coalition of peace groups on Wednesday launched a new national campaign calling for the top Democrats in Congress—Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—to resign from their leadership roles, citing their failure to sufficiently fight back "against a war-crazed Trump administration."
The coalition, which includes Peace Action and RootsAction, launched a petition declaring that it is "time for congressional Democrats to replace Schumer and Jeffries with leaders who are willing and able to challenge the runaway militarism that has dragged our country into launching yet another insanely destructive war," this time against Iran.
"Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries have not acted to prevent war on Venezuela or the current war on Iran," the petition reads. "They worked to delay a vote on Iran until after the war had started, while failing to clearly oppose it before or after the launch of the war. Schumer and Jeffries have shown that they cannot be trusted to prevent more wars, more threats of wars, or the transfer of another half a trillion dollars a year into the war machine."
Kevin Martin, president of Peace Action—the largest grassroots peace network in the US—said in a statement that he doubts "at this point whether many people look to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries for ‘leadership’ in Congress, but we would settle for them getting with the program and representing their base, and the majority of Americans, who want them to stand strongly against Trump’s illegal wars and domestic terror campaigns against the American people."
"They need to speak out loudly and clearly, and get their caucuses in line, to oppose the upcoming $50 billion or more for Trump’s illegal war of aggression on Iran, and to cut off US weapons to Israel," said Martin. "Failing to do so will only increase calls for them to step down or be replaced by colleagues who understand where the American people are on these and other critical issues."
Since the start of the illegal US-Israeli assault on Iran, Schumer and Jeffries have focused largely on procedural objections to the war, the Trump administration's incompetence, and the president's failure to clearly articulate his objectives, rather than explicitly opposing the military onslaught.
In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Jeffries declined to say whether he would oppose the Trump administration's expected push for $50 billion in new funding for the unauthorized war on Iran.
"We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it," Jeffries said, chiding the administration for failing to "make its case as to the rationale or justification for this war of choice in the Middle East."
Sarah Lazare and Adam Johnson wrote for The Nation last week that "it’s not enough to check the box, to do the bare minimum, to reinforce every argument for war only to balk at the process and ask whether there’s a 'plan' for after the myriad war crimes have already been committed."
"The only way to read this half-hearted response from the Democratic Party leadership," they argued, "is de facto support."
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