Senators move to matter of witnesses
Trump defense, accusers done with queries
WASHINGTON — Senators asked their final questions of the defense team and House impeachment managers late Thursday, ahead of a vote — expected today — on whether to call witnesses in President Donald Trump’s trial.
After another daylong session, some Republicans said they hope the trial will conclude today.
“We still feel very positive about it,” said Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the third-ranking Republican leader. “More and more members are saying, ‘I’m ready to go to a final [vote]. … I’ve heard enough.’”
But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had not locked down the votes Thursday necessary to block calling of witnesses.
And Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor for House Democrats, urged “let’s give the country a trial they can be proud of.” Americans, he said, know what it takes for a fair trial. He offered to take just one week for depositions of new witnesses, sparking new discussions.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have expressed interest in hearing from former national security adviser John Bolton and others.
After the Senate adjourned Thursday night, Collins said she will vote for hearing witnesses. Romney has said he will likely vote for witnesses. Murkowski hasn’t said how she plans to vote.
But even if they decide to call for witnesses, their votes may not be enough to get such testimony.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said in a statement that he will vote against calling new witnesses. He said he believes there is no need for more evidence.
In a Senate split 53-47 with a Republican majority, at least four GOP senators must join all Democrats to reach the 51 votes required to call witnesses, decide whom to call or do nearly anything else in the trial.
“If it’s two [voting for witnesses], deal is over. If it’s three, we don’t know, because we’re in uncharted territory,” said Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind.
Because at least four Republicans would be needed to join all 47 Democrats in allowing more evidence, Alexander’s announcement makes it unlikely that 51 senators will support the motion.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer acknowledged that it’s “an uphill battle” to get four GOP senators to vote for witnesses, but he said, “we’re still hopeful.”
During the day Thursday, Trump attorney Eric Herschmann declared that Democrats are prosecuting the president only because they can’t beat him at the polls in November.
“We trust the American people to decide who should be our president,” Herschmann said. “Enough is enough. Stop all of this.”
McConnell has worked to keep today’s expected vote on schedule, even as the trial unearthed new revelations stemming from Bolton’s forthcoming book.
Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Bolton wrote that Trump told him in August that he wanted to continue freezing military assistance to Ukraine until its leaders launched investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son, Hunter.
Democrats are accusing Trump of pressuring Ukraine’s president into investigating Biden to gain an edge on his possible rival in the November election. Republicans have dismissed this account as being based on second- or third-hand witnesses.
Democrats argued that Bolton’s book cannot be ignored.
The White House has blocked its officials from testifying in the proceedings and objected in a letter to Bolton’s attorney to “significant amounts of classified information” in the book manuscript, including at the top-secret level.
Bolton resigned last September — Trump says he was fired — and he and his attorney have insisted that the book does not contain any classified information.
ATTORNEY’S TWEET
In a tweet Thursday, Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, complained about how his testimony from Wednesday night was portrayed. In that testimony he said a president is essentially immune from impeachment if he believes his actions to be in the “national interest.”
That concept frustrated some people inside the White House, who felt that Dershowitz’s claim was unnecessary and inflammatory. But those officials left it to Dershowitz to back away from the claim.
“I said nothing like that,” Dershowitz tweeted Thursday about the claim.
His words Wednesday night were: “Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest. And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected is in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
“They characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his re-election was in the national interest, he can do anything. I said nothing like that,” the Harvard University law school professor emeritus tweeted before Trump’s impeachment trial resumed without Dershowitz at the defense table.
“Let me be clear once again (as I was in the senate): a president seeking re-election cannot do anything he wants. He is not above the law. He cannot commit crimes. He cannot commit impeachable conduct.”
That was one of the first questions asked of Schiff on Thursday, who said “have we learned nothing in the last half-century?” He drew on the lessons of the Nixon era to warn of a “normalization of lawlessness” in the Trump presidency.
“That argument — if the president says it, it can’t be illegal — failed when Richard Nixon was forced to resign,” Schiff told the senators. “But that argument may succeed here, now.”
Trump was impeached by the House in December — charged with abuse of power and obstructing the House’s investigation.
Democrats played a video showing times when Trump called on Russia or China to intervene in U.S. politics. The president has argued repeatedly that his dealings with Ukraine have been “perfect.”
Chief Justice John Roberts is presiding over the Senate chamber and read aloud senators’ questions during the trial.
The chief justice did exercise his authority Thursday and rejected one question posed by GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky that was designed to expose people familiar with the still anonymous whistleblower whose complaint about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s new president led to the impeachment inquiry.
Roberts had communicated through his staff to McConnell’s office that he did not want to read the whistleblower’s name, according to a Republican who was not authorized to discuss the private conversation.
“The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted,” Roberts said of Paul’s submission.
Later, Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren drew gasps from some of her fellow senators with a question suggesting that the trial may reflect poorly on Roberts.
In a written question submitted to Roberts and read aloud by him to the chamber, the Massachusetts senator asked whether the fact that Roberts is presiding over a trial that many view as unfair will contribute “to the loss of the legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court and the Constitution?”
Schiff said “I would not say it contributes to a loss of confidence in the chief justice,” adding that Roberts has presided admirably.
“I don’t think a trial without witnesses reflects adversely on the chief justice, I think it reflects adversely on us,” Schiff said.
OVER 100 QUESTIONS
Senators have dealt with more than 100 queries over two days. The questions came from the parties’ leaders, senators running for the Democratic nomination against Trump and even bipartisan coalitions from both sides of the aisle.
Trump’s team says the House’s 28,000-page case against the president and the transcripts from 17 witnesses
“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation. If Republican Senators choose a coverup, the American people and history will judge it with the harshness it deserves.”
— House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a Twitter post
— current and former national security officials, ambassadors and others who testified in the House proceedings — are sufficient.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., predicted dire consequences for Republicans if no additional evidence is allowed to be presented.
“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation,” she wrote on Twitter. “If Republican Senators choose a coverup, the American people and history will judge it with the harshness it deserves.”
In the 1999 impeachment trial of former President Bill Clinton, the Senate heard a combined five hours and 28 minutes of closing arguments. Then, the Senate entered four days of closed deliberations totaling nearly 26 hours, before voting to acquit Clinton on two articles of impeachment.
In this case, some Republicans said, they want to skip the closing arguments and the deliberations, and move ahead to the last step.
“If 51 [senators] say we’ve heard enough, we can move to that final vote,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican.
Republican leaders said they want to move quickly toward the vote to acquit if the Senate decides not to hear new testimony today.
Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Eric Tucker, Zeke Miller, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman and Padmananda Rama of The Associated Press; and by Ann E. Marimow, Felicia Sonmez, John Wagner, Mike DeBonis, Seung Min Kim, David A. Fahrenthold, Rachael Bade, Colby Itkowitz and Paul Kane of The Washington Post.