Bitter words, belated changes
Republicans block subpoenas for new evidence
WASHINGTON >> A divided Senate began the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump on Tuesday in utter acrimony, as Republicans blocked Democrats’ efforts to subpoena documents related to the pressure campaign on Ukraine and moderate Republicans forced last-minute changes to rules that had been tailored to the pres
ident’s wishes.
In a series of party-line votes punctuated by hours of contentious debate by the House impeachment managers and the president’s legal team, Senate Republicans turned back repeated attempts by Democrats to subpoena documents from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon that could shed light on the core charges against Trump.
Democrats were laying the groundwork to argue that the trial was a coverup rigged on Trump’s behalf and to denounce Republicans — including the most vulnerable senators seeking reelection in politically competitive states — for acquiescing. Republicans, for their part, insisted that the Senate must move swiftly and decisively to remedy what they characterized as an illegitimate impeachment inquiry that amounted to a miscarriage of justice.
Standing in the well of the Senate, the Democratic House impeachment managers urged senators to reject proposed rules from the majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, that would delay a debate over witnesses and documents until the middle of the trial, with no guarantee that they would ever be called.
If adopted, the resolution would pave the way for the trial to move forward today with oral arguments from the House managers presenting their case for removing Trump.
At the heart of the trial are charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress against the president approved last month by the Democratic-led House.
Trump’s legal team argues that the charges are baseless and amount to criminalizing a president’s prerogative to make foreign policy decisions as he sees fit and then shield from Congress documents relating to his duties. They also claim — in a break with most constitutional scholars — that because the articles of impeachment do not outline a specific violation of a law, the impeachment was invalid.
But on Tuesday, the debate focused on whether his trial would be fair or not.
McConnell received a sharp reminder on Tuesday about the limits of his power to control an inherently unpredictable proceeding with few precedents. Under pressure from Republican moderates, he was forced to make some last-minute changes to the set of rules he unveiled on Monday, which would have squeezed opening arguments by both sides into two 12-hour marathon days and refused to admit the findings of the House impeachment inquiry into evidence without a separate vote later in the trial.
The compressed timetable was in line with a White House request to quickly dispense with opening arguments so that Trump’s team could more speedily take to the floor before the weekend and begin presenting a defense of his actions. And McConnell’s proposal hewed to the broader argument made by the president and his legal team that the House inquiry was so fatally flawed that it lacked any legitimacy.
But Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rob Portman of Ohio and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, among others, objected privately to those provisions, which they believed departed too much from procedures adopted unanimously by the Senate for the 1999 trial of President Bill Clinton. At a closed-door luncheon with Republican senators in the Capitol just before the trial was to begin, the senators raised objections, according to aides familiar with the conversation, and McConnell rushed to submit a revised copy of the resolution — with lines crossed out and changes scrawled in pen in the margins — when it was time for the debate.
When his resolution was read aloud on the Senate floor, two days had been extended to three and the House’s records would be automatically admitted into evidence, although McConnell inserted a new provision that would allow Trump’s team to move to throw out parts of the House case.
The last-minute reversal underscored the outsized influence of a small group of moderate Republicans in the narrowly divided Senate whose interests and demands could prove decisive to shaping the impeachment trial, beginning next week in a more formal debate over witnesses and documents.
Trump, in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, sought to use the global stage to project confidence about his standing at home. He swatted away questions from reporters about the impeachment trial, instead bragging about the strength of the American economy under his leadership.
But in the Senate chamber, his lawyers replayed for senators many of his most frequent and personal grievances, accusing Democrats in only slightly more lawyerly terms of conducting a political search-and-destroy mission that Trump’s rails about daily on Twitter.
“It’s long past time that we start this so we can put an end to this ridiculous charade and go have an election,” said Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel.
Democrats, who came armed with digital slides and video clips to drive home their arguments, spent hours detailing the factual record compiled by the House investigation and cataloging the witnesses and documents Trump had succeeded in withholding. Senators facing such a grave decision as removing a president, they argued, have a responsibility to try to push all the facts to light.
“With the backing of a subpoena authorized by the chief justice of the United States, you can end President Trump’s obstruction,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the first woman in history to speak on the Senate floor as a House impeachment manager. “If the Senate fails to take this step, you won’t even ask for the evidence. This trial and your verdict will be questioned.”