How Arkansas’ congressional delegation voted
Here is how Arkansas’ U.S. senators and U.S. representatives voted on major roll call votes during the week that ended Friday.
HOUSE
The House was in recess.
SENATE
Setting rules for impeachment trial. Adopted 53-47, a resolution (SRes483) establishing these procedures for its impeachment trial of President Donald Trump:
■ A delegation of House Democrats was allowed 24 hours over no more than three days to argue for conviction on two articles of impeachment that the House approved in December. Trump’s attorneys were granted an equal period to present a defense.
■ The resolution then allocates 16 hours for responses to written questions from senators. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would read the questions aloud and direct them to the House managers, Trump’s defense team or both sides.
■ At that point, the Senate will hear four hours of arguments from the two sides on whether to allow motions to subpoena witnesses and documents. If the Senate eventually votes to issue subpoenas, witnesses would be deposed before subsequent votes on whether to call them before the Senate.
■ After any witness testimony, the Senate is to deliberate and vote on the impeachment articles. Approval of either article by a two-thirds vote of senators present would remove Trump from office.
The first impeachment article charges Trump with abusing the powers of the presidency by withholding military aid to Ukraine and a promised Oval Office meeting in an effort to pressure Ukrainian officials to announce investigations that would denigrate former Vice President Joe Biden, a political rival of the president. The second article charges Trump with obstructing the House’s investigation of his conduct.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the resolution he sponsored “sets up a structure that is fair, evenhanded and tracks closely with past precedents.” Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the resolution “asks the Senate to rush through as fast as possible, and makes getting evidence as hard as possible.”
A yes vote was to adopt the resolution.
✔ John Boozman (R)
✔ Tom Cotton (R)
Rejecting Bolton as trial witness. Killed 53-47, an amendment to SRes483 (above) that sought to call John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Trump, as a witness in the impeachment trial. Bolton said earlier that he would testify if subpoenaed and could, according to his lawyer, provide firsthand accounts of events and conversations, including comments by Trump, on the withholding of security aid to Ukraine.
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said: “The question is whether the Senate will be complicit in the president’s crimes by covering them up. Any senator who votes against Bolton’s testimony or any relevant testimony shows that he or she wants to be part of the cover-up. What other possible reason is there to prohibit a relevant witness?”
Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, replied that House investigators had not sought Bolton’s testimony. “So for them to come here now and demand that before we even start the arguments — they ask you to do something that they refuse to do for themselves and then accuse you of a cover-up when you don’t do it — it is ridiculous.”
A yes vote was in opposition to calling Bolton as a witness.
✔ Boozman (R)
✔ Cotton (R)
Rejecting Mulvaney as trial witness. Killed 53-47, an amendment to SRes483 (above) that sought to call Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, as a witness in the trial. Mulvaney helped Trump use a hold on military aid and denial of an Oval Office visit to solicit political favors from Ukrainian officials. Mulvaney told reporters in October 2019 that it is not unusual for the administration to use foreign aid as a lever to influence the actions of recipients. “We do that all the time with foreign policy. … I have news for everybody. Get over it.” Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Mulvaney “was at the center of every stage of the president’s substantial pressure campaign against Ukraine. Based on the extensive evidence the House did obtain, it is clear that Mulvaney was crucial in planning the scheme, executing its implementation and carrying out the cover-up.”
In their reply, Trump’s defenders did not mention Mulvaney but objected to the Senate’s calling any witnesses. Mike Purpura, a deputy White House counsel, said House managers “had their chance to develop their evidence before they sent the articles of impeachment to this chamber. This chamber’s role is not to do the House’s job for it.”
A yes vote was in opposition to calling Mulvaney as a witness.
✔ Boozman (R)
✔ Cotton (R)
Rejecting Blair and Duffey as trial witnesses. Tabled 5347, an amendment to SRes483 (above) that sought to call Robert B. Blair, an aide to Mulvaney, and Michael P. Duffey, an Office of Management and Budget official, as witnesses in the impeachment trial. Both assisted Trump’s bid to use a freeze on military aid and denial of an Oval Office visit to gain Ukraine’s help in undercutting Biden’s 2020 presidential candidacy. They were subpoenaed by House investigators but refused to comply on due process grounds. Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas, said: “Blair and Duffey are not household names. But they operated the machinery of the executive branch. They implemented President Trump’s instruction to freeze military aid to Ukraine” and “stood at the center of this tangled web.” Attorney Pam Bondi, a Trump defender, told the Senate that House impeachment investigators “took no action on the subpoenas [they] issued to Mr. Duffey and Mr. Blair because they didn’t want a court to tell them that they were trampling on their constitutional rights. Now they want this chamber to do it for them.”
A yes vote was in opposition of calling Blair and Duffey as witnesses.
✔ Boozman (R)
✔ Cotton (R)
Empowering chief justice to rule on witnesses. Killed 5347, an amendment to SRes483 (above) that would empower Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to rule on the relevance of witnesses and documents proposed to be subpoenaed in the impeachment trial. This would change a rule requiring disputes over relevance to be resolved by a majority vote of senators. The Senate, which has 53 Republicans and a Democratic caucus of 47, could vote to overrule the chief justice’s opinion. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told Republicans: “If you can’t trust the chief justice, appointed by a Republican president, to make a fair decision about materiality [of witnesses and documents], I think it betrays the weakness of your case.” Attorney Jay Sekulow of the president’s defense team said: “With no disrespect to the chief justice, this is not an appellate court. This is the U.S. Senate. There is not an arbitration clause in the U.S. Constitution. The Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. We oppose the amendment.”
A yes vote was in opposition to the amendment.
✔ Boozman (R)
✔ Cotton (R)
Tightening impeachment evidence rules. Killed 53-47, an amendment to SRes483 (above) that would govern subpoenaed but thus far withheld documents that the administration might later submit as evidence in the trial. Under the amendment, if the president produced any such material, he would have to also provide Democratic trial managers with all other documents that were demanded by the same subpoena. The requirement was intended to prevent the administration from selectively introducing subpoenaed evidence. Schiff said that without this amendment, the GOP-drafted evidence rule “would enable the president to use his obstruction not only as a shield to his misconduct but also as a sword in his defense. [This] is an amendment based on simple fairness, and it will help the Senate and the American people get to the truth.”
Attorney Patrick Philbin of the White House team called the amendment invalid because House investigators issued most of their subpoenas before the full House voted on Oct. 31 to formally authorize impeachment proceedings. He said the first 23 House subpoenas “were all unauthorized and that is why the Trump administration did not respond to them and did not comply with them.” A yes vote was in opposition to the amendment.
✔ Boozman (R)
✔ Cotton (R)
Streamlining rules for admitting witnesses. Killed 53-47, an amendment to streamline how the Senate will determine whether it will hear testimony during the impeachment trial from witnesses including Bolton and Mulvaney. The GOP-written rules (SRes483) call for four hours of debate and a vote later in the trial on whether any motions to subpoena witnesses or documents will be considered. If any witnesses were eventually subpoenaed, they would be deposed before another vote on whether to call them to testify before the Senate. This amendment would eliminate the first vote on whether to consider calling any witnesses, thus allowing guaranteed up-or-down votes on whether to hear from specific witnesses. The amendment also specified that senators would hear from witnesses in person as opposed to via videotape or by reading a deposition transcript.
Schiff said that without this rules change “there is no guarantee that you are going to get a chance to vote on specific witnesses.” Purpura, a deputy White House counsel, said the amendment would impair the Senate’s “discretion as to whether to hear from the witness live [and] if there are witnesses at some point or not.”
A yes vote was in opposition to the amendment.
✔ Boozman (R)
✔ Cotton (R)
Denying subpoenas for White House documents. Killed 53-47, an amendment that sought to authorize the impeachment trial to subpoena White House documents that are directly relevant to charges leveled against the president. The amendment to SRes483 was in response to the White House’s refusal to comply with subpoenas they received last year from House impeachment investigators. In addition to shunning House requests for thousands of White House documents — including correspondence, emails and text messages related to the impeachment articles — the administration has disregarded House subpoenas issued to the Department of Defense, Department of State, and Office of Management and Budget. Senate Democrats also introduced trial amendments to compel those agencies to respond to a new round of subpoenas, and those measures were also killed by 53-47 party-line votes.
Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said: “As powerful as our evidence is — and make no mistake, it overwhelmingly proves [Trump’s] guilt — we did not receive a single document from the executive branch, including the White House itself.” Philbin, a defender of Trump, said: “It is a stunning admission of the inadequate and broken process that the House Democrats ran in this impeachment inquiry that [they] failed to compile a record to support their charges.”
A yes vote was in opposition to the amendment.
✔ Boozman (R)
✔ Cotton (R)
Extending deadline for filing motions. Killed 52-48, an amendment to SRes483 that sought to increase from two hours to about 24 hours the time allotted both sides for filing responses to initial motions in the impeachment trial. Of the 12 roll calls conducted during the trial’s opening sessions, this was the only one not decided by a 53-47 party-line vote. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted with the Democratic caucus on this amendment.
Schiff said a two-hour window “really doesn’t give anybody enough time to respond to a written motion.”
Trump attorney Sekulow said “we are ready to proceed. We would ask the chamber to reject this amendment.”
A yes vote was to kill the amendment.
✔ Boozman (R)
✔ Cotton (R)