“Before proceeding to the consideration of the articles of impeachment,” according to the standing rules of Senate impeachment trials, “the Presiding Officer shall administer the oath hereinafter provided to the members of the Senate then present and to the other members of the Senate as they shall appear, whose duty it shall be to take the same.”

The oath “hereinafter provided” does not oblige senators to act “in total coordination with the White House counsel and attorneys for the accused”; nor does it commit them to doing “everything I can to make this trial die quickly” and to not “pretend to be a fair juror here.” Rather, the oath that both Graham and McConnell will swear reads as follows: “I solemnly swear (or affirm, as the case may be) that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.’’

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If reconciling either Graham’s or McConnell’s comments with the text of this oath seems tricky, that’s because there is nothing impartial about what either man said about his role. A trier of fact is not impartial when he declares publicly that he is coordinating positions with the defendant and that there will be no daylight between their stances. There is also nothing impartial about declaring oneself to be, well, not impartial.

So what are we to make of it when two senior senators, one of whom is the Senate majority leader and purports to speak for his party’s caucus, have publicly precommitted themselves to violating the oath they are both constitutionally obliged to take?

To be fair, a number of senators have commented extensively on the evidence and said publicly whether they think the president has committed impeachable offenses. Among McConnell and Graham’s colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, Senator Ted Cruz flatly declared that the impeachment effort is “going to go nowhere” in the Senate. Meanwhile, Senator Ron Johnson has written that the impeachment inquiry is “a continuation of a concerted, and possibly coordinated, effort to sabotage the Trump administration that began in earnest the day after the 2016 presidential election”—a statement that leaves little doubt as to which way Johnson will be voting in the Senate. And Cruz and Johnson are far from alone among Senate Republicans, many of whom have slammed the upcoming trial in similar language.

Democrats have been commenting, too. Senator Elizabeth Warren has been among the most outspoken: “Of course I will,” she answered when asked during the November Democratic presidential debate whether she would vote to convict Trump. Among her fellow presidential candidates, other serving senators are somewhat more circumspect but have nevertheless left little doubt about which way they will vote. Senator Cory Booker, for example, said after the House Judiciary Committee vote on articles of impeachment that “this president violated his oath and eroded the trust of the American people—it’s our moral obligation as jurors in the Senate to proceed in this solemn process in an honorable and deliberate way.”