The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
TIMETABLE SET FOR IMPEACHMENT'S END
Senate Republicans reject Democrats’ call for witnesses at Trump’s trial. Final vote on 2 charges scheduled Wednesday after closing arguments.
WASHINGTON — The Senate rejected Democratic demands to summon witnesses for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial late Friday, clearing the way for a final vote next week on the charges against him.
Under an agreement approved Friday night, the trial will resume Monday for final arguments, with time Monday and Tuesday for senators to speak. The final voting will be Wednesday, the day after Trump’s State of the Union speech.
Trump’s acquittal appeared all but set after an effort to allow new witnesses was defeated 51-49 on a near party-line vote. Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah voted with the Democrats.
The decision made this the first presidential impeachment trial without witnesses. Even new revelations Friday from former national security adviser John Bolton did not sway GOP senators, who said they’d heard enough.
That means the expected outcome for Trump will be an acquittal “in name only,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a House prosecu
tor, during the final debate.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called Friday night’s results “a tragedy on a very large scale.”
But Republicans said Trump’s acquittal is justified and inevitable.
“The sooner the better for the country,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump confidant. “Let’s turn the page.”
Trump was impeached by the House last month on charges the he abused power and obstructed Congress as he tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden, and then blocked the congressional probe of his actions.
The Democrats had wanted testimony from Bolton, whose forthcoming book links Trump directly to the charges.
In an unpublished manuscript, Bolton writes that the president asked him during an Oval Office meeting in early May to bolster his effort to get Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to a person who has read the passage. The person, who was not authorized to disclose contents of the book, spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the meeting, Bolton said the president asked him to call new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and persuade him to meet with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was planning to go to Ukraine to coax the Ukrainians to investigate the president’s political rivals. Bolton writes that he never made the call to Zelenskiy after the meeting, which included acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.
The revelation adds more detail to allegations of when and how Trump first sought to influence Ukraine to aid investigations of his rivals that are central to the abuse of power charge in the first article of impeachment.
The story was first reported Friday by The New York Times. Trump issued a quick denial. “I never instructed John Bolton to set up a meeting for Rudy Giuliani, one of the greatest corruption fighters in America and by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, to meet with President Zelenskiy,” Trump said. “That meeting never happened.”
Bolton’s forthcoming book contends he personally heard Trump say he wanted military aid withheld from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate Biden and his son. Trump denies saying such a thing.
The White House has blocked its officials from testifying in the proceedings and objected that there are “significant amounts of classified information” in Bolton’s manuscript. Bolton resigned last September — Trump says he was fired — and he and his attorney have insisted the book does not contain any classified information.
Key Republican senators said even if Trump committed the offenses as charged by the House, they are not impeachable and the partisan proceedings must end.
“I didn’t need any more evidence because I thought it was proved that the president did what he was charged with doing,” retiring GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a late holdout, told reporters Friday at the Capitol. “But that didn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she, too, would oppose more testimony in the charged partisan atmosphere, having “come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate.” She said, “The Congress has failed.”
Trump’s attorneys argued the House had already heard from 17 witnesses and presented its 28,578page report to the Senate. They warned against prolonging it even further after House impeached Trump largely along party lines after less than thee months of formal proceedings.
Trump is almost assured of eventual acquittal, with the Senate nowhere near the 67 votes needed for conviction and removal.
To hear more witnesses, it would have taken four Republicans to break with the 53-seat majority and join with all Democrats in demanding more testimony. But that effort fell short.