GOP said short on no-witness votes
Trump lawyers wrap up; senators huddle
WASHINGTON — Republican leaders do not yet have the votes to block Democrats’ demand for more witnesses at President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded to fellow GOP senators late Tuesday, a possible hurdle for hopes to end the trial with a quick acquittal.
McConnell gave the news to senators, according to a Republican familiar with a closed meeting of GOP senators and granted anonymity to discuss it.
McConnell convened the meeting shortly after Trump’s legal team made its closing arguments in the trial.
There are still several days before any potential witness vote would be taken. A decision to call more witnesses would require 51 votes to pass. With a 53-47 majority, Republicans can afford to lose only three.
If senators agree they want more witnesses, they would then have to vote again on which ones to call.
Democrats are demanding several witnesses, especially John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who writes in a forthcoming book that Trump told him he wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until it helped with investigations into Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
That’s the crux of the case for Trump’s impeachment.
Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, while his father was vice president. Trump’s attorneys have argued that he was justified in seeking investigations because of a history of corruption involving the
company.
A second charge accuses Trump of obstructing Congress in its investigation.
Trump’s legal team argued forcefully against the relevance of testimony from Bolton and concluded its defense as the Senate braced for debate on witnesses.
While scoffing at Bolton’s manuscript, Trump and the Republicans have resisted summoning Bolton to testify in person about what he saw and heard as Trump’s top national security adviser.
Senate Republicans spent two days privately discussing ideas to satisfy those who want to hear more testimony without prolonging the proceedings — or jeopardizing the president’s expected acquittal.
Those lost steam, and Democrats showed no interest.
Charles Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, called a proposal for senators to be shown the manuscript in private, keeping Bolton out of public testimony, “absurd.”
“We’re not bargaining with them. We want four witnesses, and four sets of documents, then the truth will come out,” Schumer said.
DEMOCRATS PUSH
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said the arguments against witnesses are weak.
Asked whether he thinks Democrats will be able to get four Republicans to support calling witnesses, Wyden said: “My sense is that Republicans are clearly moving.”
Wyden, who went to college on a basketball scholarship, used a sports metaphor to make his point.
“The Republican lawyers, on Saturday, thought that they were shooting layups. They thought it was a done deal. They had won. The end,” he said. “They don’t think they’re shooting layups now.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the facts won’t stay hidden and predicted misconduct unrelated to the articles of impeachment will eventually be discovered.
“This isn’t the beginning, nor will it be the end, of the ways that the president has abused his office,” he said. “We’re going to find over the next year and over the next decades all sorts of ways in which the president used the Oval Office to benefit himself or his political interests.”
Murphy stressed the importance of Bolton’s testimony.
“You have to be able to put John Bolton under oath and question him. They are so scared of his testimony because they know it blows a giant hole in the president’s case and they’re doing everything they can to not allow John Bolton to go under oath and allow him to be questioned.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., accused Republicans of trying to shift attention from close Trump associates.
“It was striking to me that the names we didn’t hear were Giuliani and Bolton. We did hear Biden, Biden, Biden,” he said.
“I don’t know that the [Bolton] manuscript would make any difference in the outcome of the trial,” said Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of GOP leadership. And some Republicans said they simply don’t trust Bolton’s word. Rand Paul of Kentucky called Bolton “disgruntled” and seeking to make money off his time at the White house.
John Kelly, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, told an audience in Sarasota, Fla., that he believes Bolton.
White House officials privately acknowledge that they are essentially powerless to block the book’s publication, but could sue after the fact if they believe it violated the confidentiality agreement Bolton signed against disclosing classified information.
Senators are being warned that if they agree to call Bolton to testify or try to access his book manuscript, the White House will block him, beginning a weekslong court battle over executive privilege and national security. That had seemed to leave the few senators — including Sen. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — who have expressed a desire to hear new testimony without strong backing.
Also, other Republicans, including Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, want reciprocity — bring in Bolton or another Democratic witness in exchange for one from the GOP side. Some Republicans want to hear from the Bidens.
A day after the defense team largely brushed past Bolton, attorney Jay Sekulow addressed the controversy head-on by dismissing his manuscript — said to contradict a key defense argument about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine — as “inadmissible.”
The argument built on a separate one Monday night from Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, who said that nothing in the manuscript — even if true — rises to the level of an impeachable offense. Sekulow also sought to undermine the credibility of Bolton’s book by noting that Attorney General William Barr has disputed comments attributed to him by Bolton.
TRUMP DEFENSE
The legal team Tuesday also delved into areas that Democrats see as outside the scope of impeachment, chastising former FBI Director James Comey and seizing on surveillance errors the FBI has acknowledged making in its Russian election interference probe.
Trump’s attorneys argued that the Founding Fathers took care to make sure that impeachment was narrowly defined, with offenses clearly enumerated.
This is “the trial of the leader of the free world and the duly elected president of the United States,” Sekulow said. “It is not a game of leaks and unsourced manuscripts. That’s politics, unfortunately, and [founder Alexander] Hamilton put impeachment in the hands of this body, the Senate, precisely and specifically to be above that fray. This is the greatest deliberative body on Earth.”
“The bar for impeachment cannot be set this low,” Sekulow said. “Danger. Danger. Danger. These articles must be rejected. The Constitution requires it. Justice demands it.”
Patrick Philbin, a deputy White House counsel, pushed back on several points made last week by House managers, including their definition of “abuse of power” — one of the two articles of impeachment — and their allegation of a White House cover-up of Trump’s July call with the Ukrainian president.
During their opening arguments, the House managers said moving the rough transcript of the call to a special server was evidence of a cover-up.
“Everyone who knew something about it and who testified agreed there was no malicious intent,” Philbin said. “The call was still available to everyone who needed it as part of their job. And it certainly wasn’t covered up or deep-sixed in some way. The president declassified it and made it public. So why we’re even here talking about these accusations about a cover-up when it’s a transcript that was preserved and made public is somewhat absurd.”
WHAT’S NEXT
Trump and his lawyers have argued repeatedly that Democrats are using impeachment to try to undo the results of the last presidential election and drive Trump from office.
On Tuesday, as he was resting his case, White House counsel Pat Cipollone played video clips from House Democrats during the presidential impeachment of Bill Clinton — including several who are now managers of the Trump impeachment trial — in an attempt to depict them as hypocritical for sounding the alarm then about the partisan dangers of impeachment.
“What they are asking you do is to throw out a successful president on the eve of an election, with no basis, and in violation of the Constitution,” Cipollone said. “Why not trust the American people with this decision? Why tear up their ballots?”
Democrats, meanwhile, say Trump’s refusal to allow administration officials to testify only reinforces that the White House is hiding evidence. The White House has had Bolton’s manuscript for about a month, according to a letter from Bolton’s attorney.
Before consideration of witnesses, the case now moves toward written questions, with senators on both sides getting 16 hours to pose queries. By late in the week, they are expected to hold a vote on whether to hear from any witnesses.
No matter the vote on witness, acquittal still seems likely given that Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and conviction would require a two-thirds majority.
According to data compiled by C-SPAN, the House managers used just under 22 of their 24 hours over three days, while members of the White House team used almost 12 hours, or half their time.
Senators are being warned that if they agree to call Bolton to testify or try to access his book manuscript, the White House will block him, beginning a weekslong court battle over executive privilege and national security.
Information for this article was contributed by Eric Tucker, Zeke Miller, Lisa Mascaro, Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman and Padmananda Rama of The Associated Press; by John Wagner and Colby Itkowitz of The Washington Post; and by Frank E. Lockwood of The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.