VOA – WASHINGTON – U.S. President Donald Trump‘s impeachment trial quickly turned into a debate Wednesday over whether his former national security adviser John Bolton should be called as a witness. “There’s no way to have a fair trial without witnesses,” Congressman Adam Schiff, the lead House of Representatives manager prosecuting Trump, told the 100 members of the Senate acting as jurors. He said there was “no question about the president’s motivation” in asking Ukraine to investigate a key 2020 Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, to benefit himself politically, at the same time blocking release of $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted. But with Trump’s repeated denial of a quid pro quo with Ukraine — military aid for the politically tinged investigation — Schiff said it “makes it all the more sense to call a witness who knows what happened.”
Bolton, who often met with Trump until the president ousted him from his security post last September, claims in the new book “The Room Where It Happened” that Trump told him directly last August he wanted the Biden investigation before he would release the defense assistance Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
“Don’t wait for the book to find out what (Trump’s) motivation was,” Schiff said.
But a Trump lawyer, deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin, accused the Democratic-controlled House of approving two articles of impeachment against Trump in a “hurried, half-baked, partisan fashion” and that to call witnesses now “could drag (the Senate trial) on for months.”
“This institution gets derailed,” Philbin said, preventing the Senate from normal legislative work.
Philbin said that if impeachment of U.S. presidents “becomes that easy, (the House will) do it all the time. It’s a very dangerous precedent.”
The Senate is voting Friday on whether to subpoena witnesses, including Bolton and other key Trump aides, which could significantly extend the length of the trial.
But Republican leaders are hoping to reject Democrats’ bid for their testimony and then move quickly to acquit Trump by week’s end. Trump’s case is only the third presidential impeachment trial in the country’s history.
Senate Republicans and Democrats alternated submitting written questions to the House managers and Trump lawyers that were read by Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial. The questioning is planned to last for 16 hours over two days, before the crucial Friday debate on whether to call Bolton as a witness.
At the outset, the Republican and the Democratic lawmakers directed their questions almost entirely to their side of the political aisle.
Bolton’s possible testimony looms large after details from his upcoming book surfaced this week. The issue of Trump’s request to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for the Biden investigation is at the center of the two articles of impeachment Trump faces — whether he abused the presidency by seeking the investigation to benefit himself politically, and obstructed congressional efforts to investigate his Ukraine-related actions.
Trump, however, released the military assistance in September without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigation, proof, Republicans say, that Trump had not engaged in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal with Kyiv.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a staunch Trump supporter, conceded Tuesday that he does not yet have the firm votes needed to block Democrats from calling witnesses and extending the trial.