Trump set to be acquitted United States
The US Senate has narrowly rejected Democratic demands to summon witnesses for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, all but ensuring Trump’s acquittal in just the third such trial to face a president in US history.
However, senators considered pushing off final voting on his fate until next week.
The vote yesterday on allowing new witnesses was defeated 51-49 on a near party-line vote. Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah voted with the Democrats for witnesses, but that was not enough.
Despite the Democrats’ singular focus on hearing new testimony, the Republican majority brushed past those demands to make it the first impeachment trial without witnesses. Even new revelations yesterday from former national security adviser John Bolton did not sway GOP senators, who said they had heard enough.
This meant the eventual outcome for Trump would be an acquittal ‘‘in name only’’, said Florida Democrat Val Demings, a House prosecutor, during the final debate. Some called it a cover-up.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called the result ‘‘a tragedy on a very large scale’’. Protesters’ chants reverberated against the walls of the US Capitol.
Republicans said Trump’s acquittal was justified and inevitable. ‘‘The sooner the better for the country,’’ said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump confidant. ‘‘Let’s turn the page.’’
Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives last month on charges that he abused power and obstructed Congress as he tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden, and then blocked the congressional probe of his actions.
The Democrats had badly wanted testimony from Bolton, whose forthcoming book links Trump directly to the charges. But Bolton won’t be summoned, and none of this appeared to affect the trial’s expected outcome.
In an unpublished manuscript, Bolton writes that the president asked him during an Oval Office meeting in early May to bolster his effort to get Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to an Associated Press source.
Bolton said that during the meeting, Trump asked him to call new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and persuade him to meet with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was planning to go to Ukraine to coax the Ukrainians to investigate the president’s political rivals.
Bolton wrote that he never made the call to Zelenskiy after the meeting, which included acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.
The story was first reported yesterday by
Times. Trump denial.
‘‘I never instructed John Bolton to set up a meeting for Rudy Giuliani, one of the greatest corruption fighters in America and by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, to meet with President Zelenskiy,’’ Trump said. ‘‘That meeting never happened.’’
Key Republican senators said that even if Trump committed the offences as charged by the House, they were not impeachable, and that what they called the ‘‘partisan’’ proceedings must end.
Eager for a conclusion, Trump’s allies nevertheless suggested the shift in timing to extend the proceedings into next week, allowing senators to give final speeches. The final vote would be on Thursday.
To bring the trial toward a conclusion, Trump’s lawyers argued that the House had already heard from 17 witnesses and presented its 28,578-page report to the Senate. They warned against prolonging it even further after the House impeached Trump largely along party lines.
Trump is almost assured of eventual acquittal, with the Senate nowhere near the 67 votes needed for conviction and removal.
The White House has blocked its officials from testifying in the proceedings, and says there are ‘‘significant amounts of classified information’’ in Bolton’s manuscript. Bolton and his lawyer have insisted the book does not contain any classified information.
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