U.S. Senate rejects calling witnesses in Trump impeachment trial, acquittal vote set for next week
WASHINGTON, DC -- The U.S. Senate rejected the idea of calling witnesses in President Trump's impeachment trial late Friday, pushing one step closer to an acquittal vote. But senators pushed off final voting on his fate to next week.
The timing for the final acquittal vote was a subject of debate throughout the day, but senate leaders struck an agreement to hold that vote on the two articles of impeachment at 2 p.m. MT on Wednesday -- after Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday night.
The Senate approved a resolution Friday evening from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laying out the final steps for the trial. The resolution includes closing arguments of two hours each for the House managers and the President’s legal team starting at 9 a.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday’s final vote — and the ability for senators to deliver their own speeches on Tuesday explaining their votes.
The plan allows Democratic presidential candidates to travel to Iowa this weekend ahead of the Iowa caucuses, and give Republicans who wanted to discuss their votes the chance to deliver statements on the Senate floor.
Republican senators said McConnell had no choice but to cut the deal for the Wednesday acquittal vote because Democrats could have used their power under the rules to drag out the process past Tuesday night’s State of the Union. And Democrats had no desire to let Trump be cleared by the time of his address as the White House wanted, according to senators from both parties.
So they decided to cut the deal, spare themselves late nights and a weekend session, and agree to have the vote on Wednesday.
Meantime, Friday's measure on allowing new witnesses was defeated 51-49 on a near party-line vote.
Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah voted along with the Democrats for witnesses, but that was not enough.
Despite the Democrats singular focus on hearing new testimony, the Republican majority brushed past those demands to make this the first Senate impeachment trial without witnesses. Even new revelations Friday from former national security adviser John Bolton did not sway GOP senators, who said they’d heard enough.
That means the eventual outcome for Trump would be an acquittal “in name only,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a House prosecutor, during final debate. Some called it a cover-up.
NEW: Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says the no vote on witnesses is "a grand tragedy, one of the worst tragedies that the Senate has ever overcome."
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) January 31, 2020
"America will remember this day unfortunately, where the Senate did not live up to its responsibilities." https://t.co/y3kw6U7AYQ pic.twitter.com/6Ue3mGmTfA
The impeachment of the president now lands squarely in an election year before a divided nation. Caucus voting begins Monday in Iowa, and Trump gives his State of the Union address the next night.
Trump was impeached by the House last month on charges the he abused power and obstructed Congress like no other president has done as he tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden, and then blocked the congressional probe of his actions.
The Democrats had badly wanted testimony from John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser whose forthcoming book links Trump directly to the charges. But Bolton won’t be summoned, and none of this appeared to affect the trial’s expected outcome.
In an unpublished manuscript, Bolton writes that the president asked him during an Oval Office meeting in early May to bolster his effort to get Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to a person who read the passage and told The Associated Press. The person, who was not authorized to disclose contents of the book, spoke only on condition of anonymity.
In the meeting, Bolton said the president asked him to call new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and persuade him to meet with Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who was planning to go to Ukraine to coax the Ukrainians to investigate the president’s political rivals. Bolton writes that he never made the call to Zelenskiy after the meeting, which included acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.
The revelation adds more detail to allegations of when and how Trump first sought to influence Ukraine to aid investigations of his rivals that are central to the abuse of power charge in the first article of impeachment.
The story was first reported Friday by The New York Times.
Trump issued a quick denial.
“I never instructed John Bolton to set up a meeting for Rudy Giuliani, one of the greatest corruption fighters in America and by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, to meet with President Zelenskiy,” Trump said. “That meeting never happened.”
Key Republican senators said even if Trump committed the offenses as charged by the House, they are not impeachable and the partisan proceedings must end.
“I didn’t need any more evidence because I thought it was proved that the president did what he was charged with doing,” retiring GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, a key hold out, told reporters Friday at the Capitol. “But that didn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she, too, would oppose more testimony in the charged partisan atmosphere, having “come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate.” She said, “The Congress has failed.”
To bring the trial toward a conclusion, Trump’s attorneys argued the House had already heard from 17 witnesses and presented its 28,578-page report to the Senate. They warned against prolonging it even further after House impeached Trump largely along party lines after less than thee months of formal proceedings making it the quickest, most partisan presidential impeachment in U.S. history.
Some senators pointed to the importance of the moment.
“What do you want your place in history to be?” asked one of the House managers, Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a former Army Ranger.
Trump is almost assured of eventual acquittal with the Senate nowhere near the 67 votes needed for conviction and removal.
To hear more witnesses, it would have taken four Republicans to break with the 53-seat majority and join with all Democrats in demanding more testimony. But that effort fell short.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in the rare role presiding over the impeachment trial, could've broken a tie, but he said afterwards that he wouldn't have.
Murkowski noted in announcing her decision that she did not want to drag the chief justice into the partisan fray.
Protesters stood outside the Capitol as senators arrived on Friday, but few visitors have been watching from the Senate galleries.
Bolton’s forthcoming book contends he personally heard Trump say he wanted military aid withheld from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate the Bidens. Trump denies saying such a thing.
The White House has blocked its officials from testifying in the proceedings and objected that there are “significant amounts of classified information” in Bolton’s manuscript. Bolton resigned last September — Trump says he was fired — and he and his attorney have insisted the book does not contain any classified information.
