Senate ‘not ruling out’ witnesses
PALM BEACH: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday that he was not ruling out calling witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial — but indicated he was in no hurry to seek new testimony either — as lawmakers remain at an impasse over the form of the trial by the GOPcontrolled Senate.
The House voted last week to impeach Mr Trump, who became only the third president in US history to be formally charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors”. But the Senate trial may be held up until lawmakers can agree on how to proceed. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is demanding witnesses who refused to appear during House committee hearings, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and former national security adviser John Bolton.
Mr McConnell, who has all-but-promised a swift acquittal of the president, has resisted making any guarantees, and has cautioned Mr Trump against seeking the testimony of witnesses he desires for fear of elongating the trial. Instead, he appears to have secured Republican support for his plans to impose a framework drawn from the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.
“We haven’t ruled out witnesses,” Mr McConnell said on Monday in an interview with Fox and Friends. “We’ve said let’s handle this case just like we did with President Clinton. Fair is fair.”
That trial featured a 100-0 vote on arrangements that established two weeks of presentations and argument before a partisan tally in which Republicans, who held the majority, called a limited number of witnesses. But Democrats now would need Republican votes to secure witness testimony — and Republicans believe they have the votes to eventually block those requests.
In a letter to all senators, Mr Schumer argued that the circumstances in Mr
Trump’s impeachment trial are different from that of Mr Clinton, who was impeached after a lengthy independent counsel investigation in which the witnesses had already testified numerous times under oath.
He rejected the Clinton model, saying waiting until after the presentations to decide on witnesses would “foreclose the possibility of obtaining such evidence because it will be too late”.
He also demanded that the Senate, in addition to receiving testimony, also compel the Trump administration to turn over documents and emails relevant to the case, including on the decision to withhold military assistance from Ukraine.
Mr Schumer said on Monday that he stands ready to negotiate with Mr McConnell, and that he hopes questions about witnesses can be settled “right at the beginning”.
Without witnesses, he said, any trial would be “Kafkaesque”.