The hand-wringing and political theater of recent weeks about when U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would deliver two articles of impeachment and how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would manage the trial on those charges is over.

The House has finally delivered the impeachment articles against President Donald Trump. Now the Senate is bound to conduct a trial in which it will “consider evidence” and “hear witnesses,” as that responsibility is acknowledged on its official website.

More than 230 years ago, the founding fathers put considerable thought into creating the process of impeachment and delegating specific powers to both the House and the Senate as they drafted the Constitution in 1787. Alexander Hamilton then took care to explain the founders’ thinking in the Federalist Papers that he wrote to argue for ratification of the nation’s bedrock document.

As the nation looks on in coming weeks, The Dispatch urges all 100 U.S. Senators and especially Ohio’s senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, to live up to the faith placed in them and their institution long ago to deliver fair and impartial justice as Trump becomes the third president to face an impeachment trial.

A fair trial means being open to considering evidence gathered in months of House proceedings as well as hearing from witnesses and even receiving new evidence, especially in light of developments occurring since the House approved two articles of impeachment on Dec. 18.

(…) Some Republican senators have indicated that they are so ingratiated to Trump or too insecure in their own political futures without his support to be impartial jurors for his impeachment trial. McConnell and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have called for a quick acquittal and rejected the need for witnesses — although Graham advocated the opposite view 20 years ago in arguing that the Senate should hear witnesses in the impeachment trial of Democratic President Bill Clinton.

The Dispatch urges all senators to live up to the founders’ faith in their virtue and give the citizens they represent a full, fair and impartial trial on the impeachment charges against Donald John Trump. It is the least they must do to honor their positions of trust.

— The Columbus Dispatch