Trump defense heard amid calls for Bolton
WASHINGTON — Senators faced mounting pressure Monday to summon John Bolton to testify at President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, even as Trump’s lawyers focused instead on corruption in Ukraine and on historical arguments for his acquittal.
Outside the Senate chamber, Republicans grappled with allegations in a forthcoming book from Bolton, a former national security adviser, that Trump had wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until it committed to helping with investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. That assertion could undercut a key defense argument — that Trump never tied the suspension of security aid to political investigations.
Two key GOP senators — Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah — said they expect other Republicans to back a push for new evidence as part of the trial.
“I think it’s increasingly likely that other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton,” Romney said Monday. He said the question of calling other wit
nesses was another matter, but he added, “John Bolton’s relevance to our decision has become increasingly clear.”
Collins said reports about Bolton’s unpublished manuscript “strengthen the case for witnesses and have prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues.”
Trump’s defense team is expected to wrap up its initial arguments today, and senators will then have 16 hours for questions to both sides. By late in the week, they are expected to hold a vote on whether to hear from any witnesses.
Democrats say that calling witnesses is necessary for a complete trial, especially since Republicans have accused Democrats of relying on hearsay. In addition to Bolton, Democrats would like to hear from acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and several other officials.
“We want Bolton. We want Mulvaney. They heard from the president,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
Some Republican senators dismissed Bolton’s allegations as nothing new, and nothing that would change Trump’s expected acquittal by the GOP-controlled Senate.
Some, however, have called the White House, asking who knew what about Bolton’s manuscript, according to a senior administration official.
“This sort of caught everybody by surprise,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared unmoved by news of the Bolton book. His message, according to Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., was to “take a deep breath, and let’s take one step at a time.”
Braun and John Barrasso of Wyoming, in a news conference Monday, disagreed over the effect of the Bolton news. While Barrasso dismissed it as a “so-called blockbuster report” that contained “selective leaks,” Braun said the report had “taken an already hot topic and added some fuel to the fire.”
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., questioned the credibility and motives of Bolton — a longtime figure in GOP national security circles.
“You’ve got to keep in mind, for the first time in his life, he was fired,” Inhofe said. “That does have an effect on people.”
Bolton has said he resigned.
TRIAL DEFENSE
Downplaying the news about Bolton, Trump’s lawyers declared again Monday that no witness has testified to direct knowledge that Trump’s delivery of aid was contingent on investigations into Democrats.
“We deal with transcript evidence; we deal with publicly available information,” attorney Jay Sekulow said. “We do not deal with speculation.”
Trump’s legal team on Monday launched a wide-ranging historical, legal and political critique on the entire impeachment process. They said there was no basis to remove Trump from office; defended his actions as appropriate; and assailed Biden, who is campaigning for the Democratic nomination to oppose Trump in November.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi focused attention on the Bidens, particularly Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv.
Bondi laid out a detailed chronology of Hunter Biden’s five years on the board and how they dovetailed with the official actions of his father in Ukraine, as well as the campaign to oust then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin over corruption allegations.
She argued that Trump had legitimate reasons to be suspicious of the younger Biden’s business dealings and was concerned about corruption in Ukraine — and she added that, in any event, Trump ultimately
released the aid without Ukraine committing to the investigations the president wanted.
Democrats say Trump did so only after a whistleblower submitted a complaint about the situation.
Though anti-corruption advocates have raised concerns, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son. Joe Biden’s actions with regard to Shokin were in line with official U.S. and European policy objectives.
However, Bondi said, “All we are saying is that there was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue.”
Ken Starr, whose independent counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton resulted in his impeachment, bemoaned what he said was an “age of impeachment.” Clinton was acquitted by the Senate.
Impeachment, Starr said, requires both an actual crime and a “genuine national consensus” that the president must go. Neither exists here, Starr said.
“It’s filled with acrimony, and it divides the country like nothing else,” Starr said of impeachment. “Those of us who lived through the Clinton impeachment understand that in a deep and personal way.”
Attorney Alan Dershowitz — the final speaker of the evening — agreed that impeachable offenses require criminal-like conduct. He said that even if Bolton’s allegations were true, the president still would not have committed an impeachable offense.
“Purely noncriminal conduct, including abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, are outside the range of impeachable offices,” Dershowitz said.
MANUSCRIPT REVIEW
Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, is scheduled for publication March 17. Although the White House could attempt to delay its publication or block some of its contents, legal experts argued that Trump had essentially waived executive privilege by making his conversations with Bolton public in a tweet.
“I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into
Democrats, including the Bidens,” Trump wrote just early Monday.
Stephanie Grisham, the White House press secretary, said Bolton’s manuscript was provided to the National Security Council, and edits to it have not been seen or made by anyone else in the White House.
“That is something that we have kept walled off for obvious reasons,” Grisham said Monday on Fox News. “Just could be a conflict with the trial going on, so it’s nothing that I’ve seen and nothing that I know about in terms of what they would remove for national security.”
A National Security Council spokesman said Monday that no White House official outside the council has reviewed the manuscript.
In an opinion piece for Fox News, Fred Fleitz, Bolton’s former chief of staff, called on him to immediately withdraw the book from the publisher.
A close Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he wanted to see the unpublished manuscript of Bolton’s book or at least be briefed on it — though he added that if senators do look at Bolton’s manuscript, they must also investigate the Bidens. Graham has also said that if Democrats push to hear from Bolton, then Republicans must be allowed to call the Bidens to testify.
Joe Biden, campaigning in Iowa, said he sees no reason for testimony by him or his son.
“I have nothing to defend. This is all a game, even if they bring me up,” the former vice president told reporters. “What is there to defend? This is all — the reason he’s being impeached is because he tried to get a government to smear me and they wouldn’t. Come on.”
Information for this article was contributed by Eric Tucker, Zeke Miller, Lisa Mascaro, Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman and Padmananda Rama of The Associated Press; by Eileen Sullivan of The New York Times; and by Erica Werner, Paul Kane, Seung Min Kim, Rachael Bade, Mike DeBonis, Karoun Demirjian, Robert Costa, John Wagner and Elise Viebeck of The Washington Post.