Trump team: Overlapping interests OK
Politicians link personal, public good, lawyers argue
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s defenders asserted Wednesday at his Senate trial that a trade of U.S. military aid for political favors — even if proved — could not be grounds for his impeachment.
Trump’s defense spotlighted retired professor Alan Dershowitz, a member of the team who said that every politician conflates his own interest with the public interest. Therefore, he declared, “it cannot be impeachable.”
Republicans are still hoping to wind up the impeachment trial with a rapid acquittal. Democrats are pressing for the Senate to call additional witnesses, especially Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton. Bolton’s forthcoming book contends he personally heard Trump say that he wanted military aid withheld from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
Trump faces charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
A new phase of Trump’s impeachment trial began Wednesday, with senators posing questions to the House managers and the president’s attorneys about Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine.
As Chief Justice John Roberts fielded queries, Republican Ted Cruz of Texas asked whether it matters if there was a quid pro quo.
Dershowitz declared that it didn’t, saying that many politicians equate their reelection with the public good.
“That’s why it’s so danger
ous to try to psychoanalyze a president,” he said.
Every public official, Dershowitz said, “believes that his election is in the public interest. If a 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.”
Dershowitz said it shouldn’t be impeachable for a president to think, “I’m a great president; I think I’m the greatest president there ever was; if I’m not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly,” and to act accordingly.
He told reporters before the Senate proceedings that his view on witnesses flows from the larger argument he advanced earlier in the trial — which has been embraced by a number of GOP senators — that the allegations against Trump do not constitute impeachable offenses. “If there’s no impeachable charges, then it follows that you don’t have witnesses,” Dershowitz said. “It would be as if somebody were indicted for something that weren’t a crime. You don’t call witnesses; you get it dismissed.”
With Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, looking on, lead House manager Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., offered this hypothetical: What would Republicans have done if former President Barack Obama had said to Dmitry Medvedev, then the prime minister of Russia, that he would withhold aid to Ukraine if Russia launched an investigation of Romney and announced it?
Romney was the GOP nominee for president in 2012 against Obama.
“Do any of us have any question that Barack Obama would be impeached for that kind of misconduct?” Schiff asked.
“All quid pros are not the same. Some are legitimate, and some are corrupt, and you don’t need to be a mind reader to figure out which is which,” Schiff said. “For one thing, you can ask John Bolton.”
Earlier Wednesday, Romney told reporters what he wanted to hear from witnesses such as Bolton.
“For instance, I’d like to know at the time the president decided not to immediately provide military aid to Ukraine, what was the reason he explained at that point?” Romney said. “In addition, I’d like to know a little later on, was there any effort on the part of the president to communicate to Ukraine that aid was being held up, and for what reason? Or was that something they just learned from the media?”
SENATORS’ QUESTIONS
The day’s first Senate question came from GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Romney, the three most likely Republicans to vote to allow witnesses.
They wanted Trump’s counsel to explain how they should consider abuse of power if the president had “had more than one motive for his alleged conduct, such as the pursuit of personal political advantage, rooting out corruption and the promotion of national interests.”
White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin argued that if there were a motive “of the public interest, but also some personal interest,” then it “cannot possibly be the basis for an impeachable offense.”
He continued by arguing that as soon as there’s any evidence of public interest motive, the case fails because every politician is going to have some personal political interest in mind.
“All elected officials to some extent have in mind how their conduct, how their decisions, their policy decisions will affect the next election. There’s always some personal interest in the electoral outcome of policy,” Philbin said.
In a follow-up to Philbin’s initial argument, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., submitted a question about witnesses, asking House managers whether there is “any way to render a verdict in this case” without hearing from Bolton, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and others.
Schiff said that the “short answer to that question is: No.”
“There’s no way to have a fair trial without witnesses, and when you have a witness who is as plainly relevant as John Bolton, who goes to the heart of the most serious and egregious of the president’s misconduct, who has volunteered to come and testify — to turn him away, to look the other way, I think is deeply at odds with being an impartial juror,” Schiff said.
Philbin fielded the third question, which invited Trump’s team to respond to what the House managers had just said.
“It’s not just a question of, ‘Well, should we just hear one witness?’ That’s not what the real question is going to be,” he said. “For this institution, the question is: What is the precedent that is going to be set for what is the acceptable way for the House of Representatives to bring an impeachment of a president of the United States to this chamber, and can it be done in a hurried, half-baked partisan fashion?”
U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., also submitted one of the first questions that was asked, teaming up with fellow Arkansas Republican John Boozman.
Boozman, a lawmaker from Rogers, said he has other questions ready and might submit one if it covers new ground.
“I think we’re at the point now, it won’t be too long, and I think every possible question will be asked,” he said.
Senators have been attentive, he said.
“I think people are listening and soaking up information,” he said. “Because of the preceding testimony and things, I don’t know that it’s changing a lot of minds.”
Boozman said he doesn’t know if witnesses will be called.
“There’s been a strong case made for [them], a strong case made against,” he said.
CALLING WITNESSES
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, noted that impeachment proceedings “largely prevent other work” by the Senate and asked Trump’s legal team to address “the implications … of [requesting] the Senate seek testimony from additional witnesses.”
The question suggested that the House had made an “incomplete case,” which has emerged as a central GOP talking point over the past several days.
Philbin called this “one of the most important issues that this body faces.”
“There would be a long list of witnesses if the body were to go in that direction,” he said. “It would mean this would drag on for months and prevent this chamber from getting its business done.”
Earlier, House managers noted that depositions of three witnesses during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial were completed in one day each.
“This can be done in an expeditious fashion,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., a House impeachment manager.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Wednesday that Hunter Biden is a relevant witness, a view at odds with fellow Democrats.
“You know, I think so. I really do,” Manchin said during an appearance on MSNBC. “I don’t have a problem there because this is why we are where we are. Now I think that he can clear himself, [from] what I know and what I’ve heard. But being afraid to put anybody that might have pertinent information is wrong no matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican.”
Other Democrats have argued that Hunter Biden has no direct knowledge of Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine and that his appearance would be designed to hurt Joe Biden politically as he seeks the presidency.
In the first question requesting an answer from both the House managers and Trump’s legal team, Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., asked both sides why the House did not challenge claims of executive privilege and immunity during the impeachment proceedings.
Speaking for the managers, Jeffries said Trump never raised the question of executive privilege and instead relied on a “notion of blanket defiance” or “absolute immunity” without case law or jurisprudence cited to justify it.
Philbin said Trump had “specific rationales” for defying subpoenas and other requests from House investigators. Philbin denied that the president engaged in “blanket defiance.”
BOLTON’S ROLE
Also on Wednesday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said Bolton told him to look into the removal of former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during a phone conversation less than a week after Bolton’s departure from the White House.
In a statement, Engel described the conversation publicly for the first time, saying it shows the importance of calling Bolton as a witness during the Senate trial.
Engel also said his phone conversation with Bolton directly contradicts Trump’s claim that Bolton did not say anything about the scandal at the time of his departure. Yovanovitch’s removal is a pivotal event in the story of Trump’s foreign policy toward Ukraine and was considered a victory by his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Engel said he alerted colleagues on the foreign affairs, intelligence and oversight panels that led the House inquiry into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. He said Bolton’s remark was “one of the reasons we wished to hear from [him], under oath, in a formal setting.”
“Ambassador Bolton has made clear over the last few months that he has more to say on this issue. And now that the president has called his credibility into question, it’s important to set the record straight,” Engel said, urging the Senate to call Bolton as a witness.
The White House moved last week to block the publication of Bolton’s book, saying it contained “top secret” and classified material that would endanger national security.
The Jan. 23 letter to Charles Cooper, Bolton’s lawyer, said that Bolton’s book contained “significant amounts of classified information” and that Bolton would be breaking his
nondisclosure agreement if he published it.
Several days later, The New York Times reported some aspects of Bolton’s book, including his allegations that Trump told him in August that he was tying Ukrainian investigations to foreign aid.
Ellen Knight, the senior director for records, access and information security management for the National Security Council, said the administration would work with Bolton to “revise the manuscript” so he can “tell his story in a manner that protects U.S. national security.”
The letter indicates that Knight and Cooper had also spoken on the phone the day before.
“The manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” it said.
Murkowski, who met privately Wednesday with McConnell, said, “I think Bolton probably has something to offer us.”
Trump disagreed in a tweet Wednesday in which he complained that Bolton, after he left the White House, “goes out and IMMEDIATELY writes a nasty & untrue book. All Classified National Security.” Information for this article was contributed by John Wagner, Elise Viebeck, Colby Itkowitz, Erica Werner, Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post; by Lisa Mascaro, Eric Tucker, Zeke Miller Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman and Padmananda Rama of The Associated Press; and by Billy House, Laura Davison, Laura Litvan, Erik Wasson, Daniel Flatley, Mike Dorning, Laura Curtis, Jordan Fabian, Josh Wingrove and Steven T. Dennis of Bloomberg News.