Trump Impeachment Trial Heads Toward Critical Vote Friday on Witnesses and Possibly Acquittal

By Mike DeBonis, Seung Min Kim and David A. Fahrenthold, The Washington Post

31 January 20

 

he impeachment trial of President Trump is headed for a critical vote Friday that will determine whether the Senate hears from witnesses over allegations that the president pressured Ukraine to launch investigations for his own political benefit.

But Senate Republicans are increasingly confident no new testimony will be heard and they can start on a sprint toward Trump’s acquittal.

On Thursday, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) said she will break with Republican leadership and vote to hear witnesses. But Collins still needs three other Republicans to vote with her if new evidence is to be allowed and it was unclear late Thursday night who, if anyone, in the party would join her.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) was considered a possible supporter of allowing testimony, but he announced Friday that he’s ready to end the trial even though he found Trump’s behavior “inappropriate” and leave the president’s fate in the hands of voters during the upcoming election.

“Let the people decide,” he said in a statement.

Some Republicans said they hope the trial will be completed Friday with a vote to acquit Trump.

“We still feel very positive about it,” said Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), the third-ranking Republican leader. “More and more members are saying, ‘I’m ready to go to a final [vote]. . . . I’ve heard enough.’ ”

One outside possibility is that the Senate will deadlock on the question of calling witnesses. That would put Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in the position of breaking the tie — a role Democrats are urging him to play. But there is little expectation Roberts would weigh in on such a politically thorny question and instead would allow the tie to result in no witness being subpoenaed.

Trump will almost certainly revel in a vote to acquit him on the impeachment charges, but House Democrats have said they will continue to investigate the president and are hoping the allegations they have made against him will resonate with voters and help make him a one-term president.

Trump was impeached by the House in December — charged with abuse of power after being accused of soliciting the Ukrainian government’s help in undermining his political rivals and obstructing the House’s investigation into his actions.

The final outcome of Trump’s Senate trial has never been in doubt. It takes only 34 votes to acquit. The GOP has 53 seats. And with Republican primary voters strongly supportive of Trump, these senators have shown little interest in crossing him.

Instead, the main drama has been about how much more Republican senators want to learn about what Trump may have done before deciding whether he should be convicted.

On Thursday, the answer appeared to be: not much.

“Even if you take everything else that is levied on him by others … is it an impeachable offense?” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who said she would not vote to call witnesses. “I don’t see that it rises to the level of being an impeachable offense.”

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, wrote in a forthcoming book that Trump told him in August that he wanted to continue freezing military assistance to Ukraine until its leaders launched investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

That revelation provided a key firsthand witness to an alleged pressure campaign at the heart of the impeachment trial. Democrats accused Trump of pressuring Ukraine’s president into investigating Biden to gain an edge on his possible 2020 rival. Republicans have dismissed this account as being based on second- or third-hand witnesses.

But Bolton said he was told directly by the president about his reason for holding the aid in a book that will be titled “The Room Where It Happened.”

If all Democrats agreed, it would take four Republican votes to call Bolton, or anyone else, as a witness. Earlier this week, that seemed possible: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told other Republicans the vote was in doubt.

But since then, several Republicans seen as possible swing votes — Ernst, Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Martha McSally (Ariz.), all facing competitive election contests — rejected the idea of hearing more testimony.

Along with Collins, Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) is still viewed as the likeliest Republican contender to side with Democrats for more testimony, while Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) could join as well. She said late Thursday night that she is going to review her notes and reflect on the decision. It’s unclear who would be the fourth vote — Alexander was considered the most likely to join the other three before he said he was against subpoenaing witnesses.

While Alexander’s announcement was cheered by Republicans, he took a swipe at Trump and contradicted the president’s claim that his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect.”

“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation,” he said. “When elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. But the Constitution does not give the Senate the power to remove the president from office and ban him from this year’s ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate.”

Republicans on Thursday mused about Roberts’s potential role in breaking a tie on witnesses, but appeared unconcerned he would to take any decisive action.

“If it’s two [voting for witnesses], deal is over. If it’s three, we don’t know, because we’re in uncharted territory,” said Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.).

That’s because three yes votes would create a 50-50 tie. Normally, tie votes are broken by the vice president. But in an impeachment trial, the presiding officer of the Senate is Roberts, not the vice president.

Could Roberts vote to break the tie? Would he?

“There’s no real certainty what the power of the presiding officer is,” said Braun, who added that Republicans consider it “unlikely” that Roberts would intervene.

Democrats have mostly been solicitous of Roberts during the trial, but on Thursday Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tried to put the chief justice on the spot.

The presidential contender asked whether Americans would lose faith in the chief justice, the Supreme Court and the Constitution if Roberts presided over a trial where no new witnesses or evidence was allowed.

Roberts performed his duty and read the question aloud, after which House Democrats’ lead impeachment lawyer came to his defense.

“It reflects adversely on us,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-
Calif.) told lawmakers concerning the lack of witnesses and new evidence being allowed. He added that Roberts has performed “admirably.”

Republican leaders said they want to move quickly toward the vote to acquit if the Senate decides not to hear new testimony Friday.

In the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, the Senate heard a combined five hours and 28 minutes of closing arguments. Then, the Senate entered four days of closed-door jury deliberations totaling nearly 26 hours, before voting to acquit Clinton on two articles of impeachment.

In this case, some Republicans said, they want to skip the closing arguments and the deliberations and move ahead to the last step.

“If 51 [senators] say we’ve heard enough, we can move to that final vote,” said Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the second-ranking Republican.

That would leave Senate Democrats with few cards to play. They could not stop an acquittal vote.

But they could delay it — and force Republican senators to take uncomfortable votes against hearing more evidence or allowing more debate.

One idea proposed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is a motion to require Roberts to issue a subpoena for additional documents and witnesses if he thinks they are relevant to the trial.

It would probably fail, but the vote could be used against Gardner, Ernst and other Republicans facing reelection.

“The minority has rights, and we will exercise those rights,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday.

Schiff on Thursday proposed allowing for one week for deposing witnesses, a time during which the Senate could conduct legislative business, but Republicans are unlikely to agree to that.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has remained relatively quiet throughout the proceedings, previewed an attack on Republicans to come if no additional evidence is allowed to be presented.

“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial. You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation,” she wrote on Twitter. “If Republican Senators choose a coverup, the American people and history will judge it with the harshness it deserves.”

Still, delays eventually end — even in the Senate. Even if Democrats force extra votes, the final vote to acquit Trump could come as early as Friday night or Saturday, unless leaders decide to move it to Monday, just one day before Trump’s State of the Union address.

On Thursday — on the last day of questions and answers in the Senate — the day was mostly devoted to softballs, lobbed by senators at their own side. At one point, Republican senators asked Trump’s lawyers to, in effect, recount Trump’s accomplishments in office.

Trump attorney Eric Hershmann said that, if Trump’s actions are “for his personal and political gain and not in the best interests of the American people then I say, ‘God bless him. Keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it.’ ”

Democratic senators asked Schiff who was paying the legal bills of Trump’s private attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani — who served as an intermediary to Ukraine.

“I don’t know who’s directly paying the freight for it, but I can tell you the whole country is paying the freight for it because there are leaders around the world who are watching this, and they’re saying the American presidency is open for business,” Schiff said.

At the start of the day’s session, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) submitted a question for Roberts to read aloud. The question contained the name of a person who conservative media have alleged is the intelligence community whistleblower whose complaint last year about Trump’s actions toward Ukraine sparked the impeachment inquiry.

Roberts didn’t read it.

“The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted,” Roberts said.

After that, Paul stood up, gathered his papers and walked out of the Senate chamber to address reporters. He then said the name that Roberts would not.

Trump traveled Thursday night to a rally in Iowa, where he criticized House Democrats for impeaching him but said he was unfazed by the trial.

He said he was enjoying a “happy period” unlike the “dark” impeachment cases of his predecessors Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson.

“This is a happy period for us,” he said. “It’s a happy period because they call it ‘impeachment light.’ ”