Key Republicans could tip Trump trial toward witnesses
■ Today’s expected vote on witnesses could lead to an abrupt acquittal — or bring days of more argument as Democrats press to hear from former national-security adviser John Bolton and others.
Key Republican senators who could tip President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial toward summoning more witnesses played an oversized role in the final hours of debate Thursday night with pointed questions ahead of crucial votes.
A vote on witnesses, expected today, could lead to an abrupt end of the trial with the expected acquittal. Or it could bring days, if not weeks more argument as Democrats press to hear testimony from former nationalsecurity adviser John Bolton and others.
Any four Republicans could join with Democrats to force taking more time for testimony.
Sen. Lisa Murkowksi of Alaska drew a reaction when she asked simply: “Why should this body not call Ambassador Bolton?“
GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee captured attention just before the dinner break when he questioned partisanship in
the proceedings. A spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that Alexander would announce his decision on the witness vote shortly after the end of Thursday’s questions, which continued late into Thursday night.
Sen. Susan Collins, the Maine Republican whose vote on witnesses was considered in the balance, wanted to know why House Democrats withdrew a subpoena for a deputy national-security adviser whom they wanted to hear from in the impeachment inquiry.
In response to Alexander and others, Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, a congressional staffer during Watergate and now a House prosecutor, told the senators that the Nixon impeachment also started as a partisan inquiry. A bipartisan consensus emerged only after Republicans — including staunch Nixon supporters — saw enough evidence to change their minds, she said.
“They couldn’t turn away from the evidence that their president had committed abuse of power and they had to vote to impeach him,” Lofgren said. Richard Nixon resigned before he was impeached.
Alexander, after his question Thursday night, consulted with a key staff aide to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. As the senators broke for dinner Alexander and Murkowski met privately.
Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah is also among those being closely watched.
Trump was impeached by the House last month on charges that he abused his power, jeopardizing Ukraine and U.S.-Ukraine relations. Democrats say Trump asked he vulnerable ally to investigate political foe and former Vice Presdient Joe Biden and debunked theories of 2016 election interference, temporarily halting American security aid to the country as it battled Russia at its border. The second article of impeachment says Trump then obstructed the House probe in a way that threatened the nation’s three-branch system of checks and balances.
Thursday’s testimony included soaring pleas to the senators-as-jurors who will decide Trump’s fate, to either stop a president who Democrats say has tried to cheat in the upcoming election and will again, or to shut down impeachment proceedings that Republicans insist were never more than a partisan attack.
“Let’s give the country a trial they can be proud of,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead prosecutor for House Democrats. Americans, he said, know what it takes for a fair trial. He offered to take just one week for depositions of new witnesses, sparking new discussions.
Trump attorney Eric Herschmann declared the Democrats are only prosecuting the president because they can’t beat him in 2020.
“We trust the American people to decide who should be our president,” Herschmann said. “Enough is enough. Stop all of this.”
McConnell was toiling to keep today’s vote on schedule even as the trial was unearthing fresh evidence from Bolton’s new book and raising alarms among Democrats and some Republicans about a Trump attorney’s controversial defense.
In a day-after tweet, Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz, complained about the portrayal of his Wednesday night testimony when he said a president is essentially immune from impeachment if he believes his actions to be in the “national interest.”
That idea frustrated some inside the White House, who felt Dershowitz’s claim was unnecessary and inflammatory — irking senators with a controversial claim of vast executive powers. But those officials left it to Dershowitz to back away, wary that any public White House retreat would be viewed poorly by the president.
“I said nothing like that,” the retired professor tweeted Thursday.
His words Wednesday night: “Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest. And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected is in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”
Asked about it in one of the first questions Thursday, Democrat Schiff, said, “Have we learned nothing in the last half century?”
Schiff drew on the lessons of the Nixon era to warn of a “normalization of lawlessness” in the Trump presidency.
“That argument — if the president says it, it can’t be illegal — failed when Richard Nixon was forced to resign,” Schiff told the senators. “But that argument may succeed here, now.”
“This is not a banana republic,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., rejecting the White House counsel’s suggestion there was nothing wrong with seeking foreign election interference.
Republicans Collins, Romney, and Murkowski all have expressed interest in hearing from Bolton and the others.
In a Senate split 53-47 with a Republican majority, at least four GOP senators must join all Democrats to reach the 51 votes required to call witnesses, decide whom to call, or do nearly anything else in the trial.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, presiding over the chamber and fielding senators’ questions for the trial, could break a tie, but that seems unlikely.
The chief justice did exercise authority Thursday with a stunning rebuttal to a question posed by Sen.
Rand Paul of Kentucky designed to expose those familiar with the still anonymous whistleblower whose complaint about Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s new president led to the impeachment inquiry.
Roberts had communicated through his staff to McConnell’s office that he did not want to read the whistleblower’s name, according to a Republican unauthorized to discuss the private conversation and granted anonymity.
“The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted,” he said.