FILE PHOTO: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to the media after the weekly policy luncheons on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 3, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday appeared to reject a request from the Senate’s top Democrat to call new witnesses in the expected impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.

“It is not the Senate’s job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get to guilty,” McConnell said in remarks prepared for deliver on the Senate floor, saying it was the job of the House of Representatives to build a case.

“If House Democrats’ case is this deficient, this thin, the answer is not for the judge and jury to cure it here in the Senate,” he said.