DAY 1 A CLASH ACT
GOP foils dem 'amend' bids in all-nighter
President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial began in earnest Tuesday — and well into Wednesday morning — with House Democrats and administration lawyers sparring for hours while senators voted along party lines to kill a series of amendments to subpoena more documents and witnesses.
The amendments, introduced separately by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, would have compelled the Senate to subpoena former National Security Adviser John Bolton, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and others linked to the president’s dealings with Ukraine.
At 1:40 a.m., all 11 Democratic amendments had been shot down.
“The witnesses I’ve requested have gotten a lot of attention — and rightfully so,” Schumer (D-NY) said, explaining they could shed light on Trump’s decision to withhold $391 million in military aid to Ukraine at a time he was asking that country to announce probes into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
Attorney Patrick Philbin, a member of the president’s legal team, countered that the House should have gathered that evidence before voting Dec. 18 to impeach Trump.
“It is not the role of the Senate to be doing an investigation and to be doing discovery in a matter like the impeachment of the president of the United States,” Philbin said.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the lead House impeachment managers, argued in response that Trump had blocked witnesses from testifying and refused to turn over documents, thus the charge of obstruction of Congress.
Despite Schumer’s amendments
being voted down, the Democrats were still able to go on at length about the content of the evidence in question, including detailed summaries of Trump’s interactions with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and evidence from other administration officials about Trump’s desire for the probes and his withholding of the aid.
“If this body is truly committed to a fair trial, it cannot allow the president to play a game of keep away. It cannot permit him to hide all of the evidence,” said Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), another House impeachment manager and a former Orlando police chief.
“As a career law-enforcement officer, I have never seen anyone take such extreme steps to hide evidence allegedly proving his innocence.
“The president didn’t even care if an investigation was actually conducted, just that it was announced,”
Demings said. “Why? Because this was for his own personal and political benefit.”
Democrats would have needed four GOP senators to reach the 51-vote threshold to get the information they wanted, but Republicans remained unified.
Earlier, Trump’s lead lawyer, Pat Cipollone, told senators that after they hear the House’s case against the president and the White House’s defense, they would have no choice but to acquit Trump.
“We believe that once you hear those initial presentations, the only conclusion will be that the president has done absolutely nothing wrong, and that these articles of impeachment do not begin to approach the standard required by the Constitution,” Cipollone said.
The White House counsel then urged the 100 senators to approve trial rules proposed by Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell, which were tweaked Tuesday to allow each party a third day to present their 24 hours of opening testimony.
Schiff, in his rebuttal, argued that Trump was guilty of abuse of power for pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations into the Bidens while holding up the aid.
“The first article, abuse of power, charges the president with soliciting a foreign power to help him cheat in the next election. President Trump illegally withheld almost $400 million in taxpayer-assisted funding to Ukraine, at war with a Russian adversary, to ask Ukraine to help cheat in the election,” he said.
Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal lawyer, accused Democrats of trying to reverse the 2016 election.
“Why are we here? Are we here because of a phone call? Or are we here, before this great body, because since the president was sworn into office there was a desire to see him removed?” Sekulow charged. Cipollone echoed that allegation. “They’re asking the Senate to attack one of the most sacred rights we have as Americans — the right to choose our president — in an election year,” Cipollone said.
“A partisan impeachment is like stealing an election, and that’s exactly what we have. Talk about the framers’ worst nightmare. It’s a partisan impeachment that they’ve delivered to your doorstep in an election year,” he continued.
“It’s outrageous, and the American people won’t stand for it, I’ll tell you that right now. My point is very simple. It’s long past time that we start this so we can end this ridiculous charade and go have an election.”
NEAR the end of his inflammatory opening remarks Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer tried his best to scale the rhetorical heights. He declared the moment “deep and solemn” and said, “The eyes of the Founding Fathers are upon us.”
If they’re watching, they’re probably rolling over in their graves. Day One of the Trump impeachment trial couldn’t possibly be what they had in mind.
Yes, it was that bad, as history gave way to histrionics.
It is said that Schumer has brought the raw partisan sensibility of the House to the Senate, and that’s not a compliment. His gratuitously nasty speech illustrated the point and set the tone for the dispiriting day.
He called the rules approved by the GOP majority a “national disgrace” and said of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s claim that the rules create a level playing field, “I’m amazed he could say it with a straight face.”
Schumer was just getting warmed up. He next accused President Trump of “blackmail of a foreign country” and of committing a “crime against democracy itself,” insisting, “I can’t imagine any other president doing this.”
Schumer’s bare-knuckle approach immediately dashed the faintest hope that the proceedings would reflect the gravity of the moment and explain the unprecedented effort to remove a president in an election year.
Instead, Schumer picked up exactly where the House left off, injecting venom into every sentence and inflating his accusations far beyond what is contained in the actual articles of impeachment.
Blackmail? A crime against democracy? His words constitute false advertising because the House charged the president only with “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.”
In truth, the only crime against democracy is the Dems’ endless effort to overturn the 2016 election and use the impeachment process to help defeat Trump this year. If Schumer gets his way, he and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have more power than the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump three years ago.
Thankfully, the chances of that happening — of Trump being convicted and removed from office — are remote.
The day’s other big development was equally unfortunate and in keeping with the Dems’ incoherent conduct in the House. After rushing through the case in warp speed and saying they had no time to fight contested subpenas, Pelosi then sat on the approved articles for 33 days before sending them to the Senate.
Even on Tuesday, rather than get on with the actual trial and deal with the question of additional witness and documents later, as Republicans decided, Democrats wanted to have that argument right away. Their effort once again amounted to a stall of the trial they’ve hungered after since Trump’s election.
Rep. Adam Schiff led the witness push — and ran directly into a contradiction of his own making. Saying there was “already overwhelming proof ” of Trump’s guilt, he demanded more testimony that he claimed would
“flesh out” the case.
As Trump’s attorneys noted, if his guilt is already proven, why is more evidence needed? And why, if you needed more evidence, did you rush in the House to meet an artificial deadline of finishing before Christmas?
Schiff nonetheless demanded the Senate call former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Lev Parnas, the Sovietborn associate of Rudy Giuliani. Parnas, indicted on a slew of federal charges, has been talking to Dems and their media handmaidens in a bid to cut a deal in exchange for testimony that presumably would damage Trump.
Schumer played his role by submitting proposals for voluminous
White House and State Department documents. The first ones were “tabled” by straight partyline votes, as McConnell had warned they would be. They could be reconsidered only after both sides make their presentations.
In Trump’s corner, White House counsel Pat Cipollone, making his first major public appearance, proved he was no shrinking violet. He said the demand for more testimony and documents proved the Dems “are not ready to defend” their case as it is.
At one point, he grew increasingly animated, saying, “It’s too much to listen to almost, the hypocrisy of the whole thing.”
He, too, invoked the Founders, saying the case represented “their worst nightmare, an impeachment in an election year.”
To that end, he made the most sensible suggestion of the day, saying: “We should end this ridiculous charade and go have an election.”
America should be so lucky.