President Donald Trump’s defense team made their final day of arguments on Tuesday, concluding their argument the nation’s 45th president is not guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors as Democrats claim.
The Senate will begin day 9 of the trial on Wednesday at 1 pm, and senators will be able to submit written questions over a period of eight hours for the next two days.
On Tuesday, Trump's legal team argued forcefully against the relevance of testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton as the lawyers neared the end of their defense and the Senate braced for debate on whether to summon Bolton and other witnesses into the impeachment trial.
Attorney Jay Sekulow took a dismissive swipe at an unpublished book by Bolton that is said to contradict a key defense argument about Trump's dealings with Ukraine. Revelations about that book clouded White House hopes for a big finish Tuesday as well as a swift end to the impeachment trial, with Democrats demanding witnesses and some Republicans expressing openness.
“It is not a game of leaks and unsourced manuscripts," Sekulow said, calling the book “inadmissible" and not evidence.
If the Senate votes to call witnesses as Democrats have been demanding, Trump's impeachment trial may have no immediate end in sight. If party lines hold, however, and the GOP-led Senate decides to move forward without further testimony, the nation's third impeachment trial in history could end this week.
A draft of Bolton’s new book may undercut a key defense argument, that Trump never tied withholding of aid to Ukraine to a demand the country investigate Biden.
The book, titled “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” is scheduled to be released on March 17. It appeared for pre-order on sites including Amazon on Sunday night. The New York Times first reported Bolton’s account on Sunday.
In the book, Bolton writes Trump told him that he wanted to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in security aid from Ukraine until it helped him with investigations into Biden. Trump’s legal team has repeatedly insisted otherwise.
The account immediately gave Democrats new fuel in their pursuit of sworn testimony from Bolton and other witnesses, a question that will be taken up this week in the GOP-led Senate.
“We deal with transcript evidence, we deal with publicly available information," attorney Jay Sekulow said. “We do not deal with speculation."
On Monday, Trump's attorneys, including high-profile lawyers Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz, launched a historical, legal and political attack on the entire impeachment process. They said there was no basis to remove Trump from office, defended his actions as appropriate and assailed Biden, who is campaigning for the Democratic nomination to oppose Trump in November.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi devoted her presentation to former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukraine gas company when his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv.
The legal team argued Trump had legitimate reasons to be suspicious of the younger Biden's business dealings and concerned about corruption in Ukraine and that, in any event, he ultimately released the aid without Ukraine committing to investigations the Republican president wanted.
»Read the best lines from President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial
On Monday, House Democratic impeachment managers renewed their demands that senators allow testimony that was not heard during December’s impeachment hearings.
Trump’s lawyers mounted a wide-ranging, aggressive defense asserting an expansive view of presidential powers and portraying Trump as besieged by political opponents determined to ensure he won’t be reelected in November.
“They’re asking you to tear up all the ballots across this country on your own initiative, take that decision away from the American people,” White House Counsel Pat Cipollone told senators Saturday. “And we can’t allow that to happen.”
The president is accused of abusing his office by asking Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter, while allegedly withholding aid from a U.S. ally at war with bordering Russia. The second article of impeachment accuses him of obstructing Congress by refusing to turn over documents or allow officials to testify in the House probe.
»Read the best lines from President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial
Prosecutors on Thursday argued Trump abused power for his own personal political benefit ahead of the 2020 election, even as the nation’s top FBI and national security officials were publicly warning off the theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election.
On Friday, Democrats wrapped their third and final day of arguments that Trump should become the nation’s first president to be removed from office.
The Senate is heading this week toward a pivotal vote on Democratic demands for testimony from top Trump aides, including Bolton and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. It would take four Republican senators to join the Democratic minority to seek witnesses, and party lines appear to be strongly holding.
The U.S. Constitution requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate, or 67 senators, to convict in an impeachment trial.
Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, while Democrats hold 45. However, two Independents — including presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont — regularly caucus with Democrats, giving the nation’s blue party 47 votes.
If the Senate votes along party lines regarding impeachment — as did the House — 20 Republican senators would have to join Democrats in convicting Trump and removing him from office.
The first article of impeachment passed by the House charges Trump with abuse of power.
Democrats allege Trump “solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 U.S. president election to his advantage.”
The “election prospects of a political opponent” refer to Biden, currently a front-runner in a narrowing field of Democratic White House hopefuls.
The president “also sought to pressure the government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official U.S. government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of investigations.”
Democrats argue the president “used the powers of his presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process. He thus ignored and injured the interests of the nation.”
How is your senator likely to vote on impeachment?
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