White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney (R) and former National Security Advisor John Bolton — Witnesses in Trump’s impachment trial?
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is seeking the testimony of top White House officials in the imminent impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
On Sunday, Schumer presented a detailed proposal to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, three days after McConnell set aside the Constitutional requirement of impartiality and said he is “taking [his] cues” from the White House.
The Minority Leader proposed a trial from January 7 giving each side a fixed amount of time for arguments. He included a call for testimony from four White House officials — Trump’s Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney; former National Security Advisor John Bolton; Mulvaney’s senior advisor Robert Blair; and Michael Duffey, the top political appointee at the Office of Management and Budget — and for the provision of documents over Trump’s pressure on Kiev to undermine his political rivals.
Trump has ordered officials, including Mulvaney, Blair, and Duffey, to defy subpoenas for testimony and documents. The command has led to an obstruction of Congress article of impeachment, as well as that of abusing power in the Trump-Ukraine affair, from the House Judiciary Committee.
The two articles will be voted on by the full House this week. With a Democratic majority, the chamber is almost certain to adopt them, setting up the trial in the Senate.
Schumer wrote McConnell:
Senate Democrats believe strongly, and I trust Senate Republicans agree, that this trial must be one that is fair, that considers all of the relevant facts, and that exercises the Senate’s ‘sole power of impeachment’ under the Constitution with integrity and dignity.
The trial must be one that not only hears all of the evidence and adjudicates the case fairly; it must also pass the fairness test with the American people.
He proposed up to eight hours of testimony per witness. Documents would attest to whether Trump held up almost $400 million in military aid to Ukraine and refused a White House visit by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to get Ukraine’s statement of investigations to tarnish Presidential candidate Joe Biden and to cover up Russia’s involvement in the 2016 US election.
McConnell said after his Thursday meeting with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone: “Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with the White House counsel. There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.”
The Majority Leader is pressing for a short trial, but may be challenged by the desire of Trump, a former reality TV star, for a longer event to defy the evidence from 17 current and former US officials.
The impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999 lasted five weeks.
