IMPEACHMENT BY THE BOOK
Bolton’s claims ramp up pressure to add witnesses, cloud Trump hopes for speedy acquittal
WASHINGTON — Senators faced mounting pressure Monday to summon John Bolton to testify at President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial even as Trump’s lawyers mostly brushed past extraordinary new allegations from the former national security adviser and focused instead on corruption in Ukraine and historical arguments for acquittal.
Outside the Senate chamber, Republicans grappled with claims in a forthcoming book from Bolton that Trump had wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until it committed to helping with investigations into Democratic rival Joe Biden. That assertion could undercut a key defense argument — that Trump never tied the suspension of security aid to political investigations.
The revelation clouded White House hopes for a swift end to the impeachment trial, fueling Democratic demands for witnesses and possibly pushing more Republican lawmakers to agree. It also distracted from hours of arguments from Trump’s lawyers, who declared anew that no witness has testified to direct knowledge that Trump’s delivery of aid was contingent on investigations into Democrats.
Bolton appeared poised to say exactly that if called on by the Senate to appear.
“We deal with transcript evidence, we deal with publicly available information,” attorney Jay Sekulow said. “We do not deal with speculation.”
Trump is charged with abusing his presidential power by asking Ukraine’s leader to help investigate Biden at the same Trump was ordering that millions of dollars in aid be withheld. A second charge accuses Trump of obstructing Congress in its probe.
Trump’s legal team on Monday, including high-profile attorneys Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, launched a wide-ranging historical, legal and political attack on the impeachment process. They said there was no basis to remove him from office, defended his actions as appropriate and assailed Biden, who is campaigning for the Democratic nomination to oppose Trump in November.
Trump has sought, without providing evidence, to implicate Biden and his son Hunter in the kind of corruption that has long plagued Ukraine. Though anti-corruption advocates have raised concerns, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son.
Ken Starr, whose independent counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton resulted in his impeachment — Clinton was acquitted by the Senate — bemoaned what he said was an “age of impeachment.”
Impeachment, he said, requires both an actual crime and a “genuine national consensus” that the president must go. Neither exists here, Starr said.
“It’s filled with acrimony and it divides the country like nothing else,” Starr said of impeachment. “Those of us who lived through the Clinton impeachment understand that in a deep and personal way.”
Dershowitz — the final speaker of the evening — argued that impeachable offenses require criminal-like conduct, a view largely dismissed by legal scholars. He said that even if Bolton’s allegations were true, the president still would not have committed an impeachable offense.
“Purely non-criminal conduct, including abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are outside the range of impeachable offices,” Dershowitz said.