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Impeachment Trial Highlights: Pressure Mounts as Monday’s Session Gets Underway Impeachment Trial Highlights: Trump’s Lawyers Avoid Bolton, Giuliani Surfaces and a History Lesson
(about 5 hours later)
House impeachment managers and Senate Democrats have been clamoring to persuade Republicans to allow new evidence and witnesses into President Trump’s Senate trial. In particular, they want John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, who has already said he would be willing to appear if subpoenaed. President Trump’s lawyers avoided on Monday any mention of a newly disclosed firsthand account from his former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, that directly undercuts one of the defense’s main arguments.
Those calls intensified on Sunday night when The New York Times reported details from Mr. Bolton’s upcoming book, including Mr. Bolton’s assertion that Mr. Trump said he wanted to continue a freeze on military aid to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Mr. Trump’s political rivals. The revelation could undercut a key element of Mr. Trump’s impeachment defense: that the hold was separate from the investigations Mr. Trump wanted. The New York Times first reported details from drafts of Mr. Bolton’s upcoming book Sunday night, including Mr. Bolton’s assertion that Mr. Trump said he wanted to continue a freeze on military aid to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Mr. Trump’s political rivals.
Calls for witnesses intensified as a result, and three Republican senators — Mitt Romney of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — indicated they might vote with Democrats to allow new witnesses to testify at the trial. Democrats need four Republicans for such a measure to pass.
Mr. Romney told reporters on Monday, “I think it’s increasingly likely that other Republicans will join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton.”
The decision not to address Mr. Bolton’s explosive account hung over the lawyers’ first round of arguments as they repeated many of the same assertions offered over the past six months from Mr. Trump and the White House about why a hold was placed on military aid to Ukraine.
Mr. Trump denied Mr. Bolton’s account on Monday.Mr. Trump denied Mr. Bolton’s account on Monday.
It was not yet clear whether the details from Mr. Bolton would be enough to persuade the handful of Senate Republicans needed to join Democrats voting in favor of calling witnesses. But one of the Republicans who has been open to hearing new witnesses, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, said late Monday morning that he expected other Senate Republicans to come around. Mr. Bolton said weeks ago that he would testify at the Senate trial if he was subpoenaed to do so. Democrats have said Republican attempts to prevent new witnesses like Mr. Bolton from coming forward suggests they are covering up for Mr. Trump.
It’s rare to see a defendant attack the lead prosecutor in the middle of a trial. But that’s what Mr. Trump did a day after his defense team began their opening arguments, making the case that the president should not be removed from office. One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Michael Purpura, said the president’s decisions regarding Ukraine were rooted in his desire to get European countries to pitch in more with aid.
Mr. Trump on Sunday lashed out at Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who led the House impeachment inquiry and is serving as the lead prosecutor in the Senate trial. “Scrutinizing, and in some cases curtailing, foreign aid was a central plank of his campaign platform,” Mr. Purpura said. “President Trump is especially wary of sending American taxpayer dollars abroad when other countries refuse to pitch in.”
Mr. Schiff is “a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter post, followed by a warning: “He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!” Mr. Purpura left out details about Trump administration officials scrambling to find legal justification for freezing the military aid. An independent government watchdog concluded that Mr. Trump’s decision to withhold the funds was against the law.
Asked if he took that to be a threat, Mr. Schiff on Sunday, appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said, “I think it’s intended to be.” Jane Raskin, a member of the president’s defense team, raised the topic of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, and his role in the Ukraine affair.
Mr. Trump’s defense team used just two hours on Saturday out of their 24-hour allotment in their first opportunity in the Senate to respond to the case made by House impeachment managers last week during the trial. Ms. Raskin listed Mr. Giuliani’s accomplishments and called him a “colorful distraction.” She said the central role Democrats have affixed to him is undercut by their decision not to subpoena him to testify in the impeachment inquiry last year. (Democrats subpoenaed Mr. Giuliani to provide documents, but he did not comply).
The president’s team went straight to offense, accusing the Democrats of levying a partisan witch hunt against Mr. Trump to help gain an advantage in the 2020 presidential election. As part of that, they offered a diametrically different interpretation of the Constitution than the Democrats presented a week earlier, and argued that nothing that Mr. Trump did warranted removing a president from office. In the midst of the White House efforts to pressure Ukraine, Mr. Bolton last summer described Mr. Giuliani as “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” according to testimony from one of Mr. Bolton’s aides. And it was in part the involvement of Mr. Giuliani, who was not a government official, in American foreign policy that prompted an intelligence officer to file a whistle-blower complaint that ultimately led to the impeachment of Mr. Trump.
The length of the arguments on Saturday — just two hours compared with the Democrats’ eight hours on their first day — was notable, as some Republican senators had complained about the repetition of the House managers’ arguments over the course of their three days. Ken Starr, the dogged independent counsel during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, resumed Mr. Trump’s defense on Monday afternoon with a discursive and at times academic overview of the history of impeachment.
Mr. Trump has also complained that the Saturday television viewership was less than ideal and previously said it “is called Death Valley in T.V.” in the world of television ratings. “Like war, impeachment is hell. Or at least presidential impeachment is hell,” said Mr. Starr, who has been a regular guest on Fox News during the Trump administration.
Mr. Trump added Mr. Starr to his legal team shortly before his trial began.
“Those of us who lived through the Clinton impeachment, including members of this body, full well understand that a presidential impeachment is tantamount to domestic war, but thankfully protected by our beloved First Amendment, a war of words and a war of ideas,” said Mr. Starr, who resigned as independent counsel in 1999 over the “intense politicization” of the investigation.
Mr. Starr’s choice to dwell on history appeared to ignore criticism from some Republican senators that the House managers spent too much time last week on the rehashing of historical references and past legal precedents to justify removing Mr. Trump from office. Mr. Trump’s other lawyers have steered clear of any suggestion that the proceedings will leave an indelible mark on the nation’s history.