GOP drives toward acquittal
Lawyer argues anything done to get reelected is ‘in public interest’ and not an impeachable offense
WASHINGTON — The White House and Senate Republicans worked aggressively Wednesday to discount damaging revelations from John Bolton and line up the votes to block new witnesses from testifying in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, in a push to bring the proceeding to a swift close.
As the Senate opened a two-day, 16-hour period of questioning from senators, Trump laced into Bolton, his former national security adviser, whose unpublished manuscript contains an account that contradicts his impeachment defense. The president described Bolton on Twitter as a warmonger who had “begged” for his job, was fired and then wrote “a nasty & untrue book.”
On Capitol Hill, Trump’s aides circulated a letter informing Bolton that the White House was moving to block publication of his forthcoming book, in which he wrote that the president refused to release military aid to Ukraine until its leaders committed to investigating his political rivals. That is a core element of the Democrats’ case, which charges Trump with seeking to enlist a foreign government to help him win reelection this year.
Before the trial convened, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and other Republicans signaled that they were regaining confidence that they would be able to cobble together the 51 votes needed to block new witnesses and documents and bring the trial to an acquittal verdict as soon as
Friday, after the revelations from Bolton had threatened to knock their plans off course.
Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Senate Republican, declared that he had “heard enough” and predicted that the Senate would vote to acquit the president by week’s end.
“I’m ready to vote on final judgment,” Barrasso told reporters. Asked if Republicans planned to move directly to a vote on the two articles of impeachment on Friday, Barrasso said, “Yes, that’s the plan.”
By Wednesday afternoon, Democrats were sounding a note of pessimism about the prospect of witnesses and securing new evidence in the trial, even as they used their questions to make the case that an impeachment trial without additional witnesses and documents amounted to a cover-up.
“We’ve always known it will be an uphill fight on witnesses and documents because the president and Mitch McConnell put huge pressure on these folks,” Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said during a break in the trial.
“Is it more likely than not? Probably no,” Schumer said. “But is it a decent, good chance? Yes.”
For Republicans, it appeared as if they were on the verge of giving Trump what he has wanted all along: an acquittal that he could boast about on the campaign trail — delivered before he goes to the Capitol on Tuesday for his State of the Union address.
Inside the Senate chamber, senators spent more than six hours grilling House managers and White House lawyers about the definition of obstruction; the meaning of executive privilege; the history of security aid to Ukraine; the role of Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, on the board of a Ukrainian energy company; and the whistleblower who first raised concerns about Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine.
In accordance with impeachment protocol, senators wrote their queries on small cards, which were read aloud by Chief Justice John Roberts, who presided over the trial. In their responses, Trump’s lawyers offered their most expansive defense of the president to date, effectively arguing that a president cannot be removed from office for demanding political favors if he believes his reelection is in the national interest.
“Every public official I know believes that his election is in the public interest,” said Alan Dershowitz, the celebrity defense lawyer and constitutional scholar who is part of the Trump’s legal team. “Mostly, you’re right.
“If the president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” he said.
Many of the arguments and much the day was tailored to convincing a few Republicans who remained holdouts on the question of whether to call witnesses. McConnell gave his party’s first question on Wednesday to Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in an effort to allay the concerns of the three lawmakers, Republican moderates who are swing votes on the issue. The trio teamed up to ask Trump’s lawyers how they should judge the president if they conclude he acted in the Ukraine matter with both political and policy motives.
The selection of Collins, who is facing the toughest reelection campaign in her long Senate career, was revealing: It suggested that McConnell was keenly focused on giving her every opportunity to have her voice heard before moving forward. When she rose to announce herself, she became the first senator other than the two leaders to have a speaking role in the trial.
Notably absent from the group was the fourth Republican who had expressed interest in witnesses: Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a close friend of McConnell’s who has said he will not decide whether to support witnesses until after the question period has closed.
On Tuesday, McConnell had privately warned his rank-and-file members that he did not currently have the votes to stop Democrats from summoning witnesses. One after the other on Wednesday, in statements and interviews in the Capitol, they made clear they would side with their leader.
Sen. Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania, who had previously floated the idea of a witness deal, said Wednesday that he was “very, very skeptical” of new witnesses. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, facing a tough reelection in a swing state, issued a statement saying that he had heard enough and would vote against hearing from anyone else.
“We still got some folks who are, like I said, assessing,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican. But the leaders were planning as if the defeat of a bid for witnesses was a certainty; Thune said it was likely that if it did fail, Republicans would move swiftly for an acquittal.
Democrats would need the votes of four Republicans to compel the Senate to subpoena witnesses and new documents. But it seems increasingly likely that Alexander, who is retiring from the Senate and is thus free to do as he chooses, would break from his party.
Fielding friendly questions from Democratic senators, House managers reiterated the heart of their case and accused Trump’s lawyers of falsely stating that there was no evidence that Trump linked security assistance to investigations. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the lead House impeachment manager, responded to Dershowitz’s argument that a president who believed his reelection was in the national interest could demand a quid pro quo to help himself politically without consequence was “very odd.”
“If you say you can’t hold a president accountable in an election year where they’re trying to cheat in that election, then you are giving them carte blanche,” Schiff said. “All quid pro quos are not the same. Some are legitimate and some are corrupt.”
Democrats have argued that Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine was precisely the kind of corrupt scheme that the nation’s founders had in mind when they created impeachment, fearing that an out-ofcontrol president would abuse his power for personal gain. But throughout the day, lawyers for Trump argued that all elected officials make policy decisions to help themselves get reelected.
Answering the question from the three Republican moderates, Patrick Philbin, a deputy White House counsel, said a president could not be removed for a “mixed-motive situation” in which he is acting out of both personal and policy concerns.
“There’s always some personal interest in the electoral outcome of policy decisions and there’s nothing wrong with that,” Philbin told senators. “That’s part of representative democracy.”