{"id":365682,"date":"2022-04-05T06:06:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T20:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=365682"},"modified":"2022-04-05T06:06:56","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T20:06:56","slug":"no-to-5-house-prosecutors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/no-to-5-house-prosecutors\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018No to 5 House prosecutors\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senate President Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian) is standing his ground and will be exercising his constitutional authority as presiding officer by appointing a prosecutor in the impeachment trial of Gov. Ralph DLG Torres.<\/p>\n

In response to Saipan Tribune<\/em>\u2019s inquiry whether he will grant the request of House of Representatives Speaker Edmund S. Villagomez (Ind-Saipan) to appoint a team of five House members as prosecutors, Hofschneider said yesterday that the Senate-adopted Impeachment Rules designate the Senate president to appoint a prosecutor.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Hofschneider<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI made that appointment already,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When asked for clarification whether the Senate is not going to amend the Impeachment Rules, he again stated that the appointment of a prosecutor has been made.<\/p>\n

Sen. Karl R. King-Nabors (R-Tinian), as then-Senate Committee on Impeachment Hearing chair, first appointed Villagomez to serve as House impeachment prosecutor but Villagomez declined. This prompted King-Nabors to send House vice speaker Blas Jonathan T. Attao (R-Saipan) a notice to file an appearance as the House impeachment prosecutor, considering that Attao served as chairman of the House Special Impeachment Committee. Attao also declined.<\/p>\n

Hofschneider, as presiding officer of the impeachment trial, then appointed Rep. Corina L. Magofna (D-Saipan) last week to serve as House impeachment prosecutor. Magofna declined.<\/p>\n

Villagomez then filed last Wednesday a notice of appearance for Reps. Magofna, Attao, Celina R. Babauta (D-Saipan), Donald Manglona (Ind-Rota), and Leila Staffler (D-Saipan) to serve as one team to prosecute Torres in his impeachment hearing in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Magofna stated that the House stands ready to prosecute Torres and that they have been preparing as a unit to prosecute the impeachment together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate President Jude U. Hofschneider (R-Tinian) is standing his ground and will be exercising his…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":365675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-365682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}