Senate rejects witnesses in Trump trial, ensuring acquittal
WASHINGTON — The Senate rejected the idea of summoning witnesses for President Trump’s impeachment trial late Friday, all but ensuring his acquittal. But senators considered pushing off final voting on his fate to next week.
The vote on allowing new witnesses was defeated 51-49 on a near party-line vote.
Republicans Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine voted along with the Democrats for witnesses, but that was not enough.
Despite the Democrats’ push for new testimony, the Republican majority brushed past those demands to make this the first Senate impeachment trial without witnesses. New revelations Friday from former national security adviser John Bolton did not sway GOP senators, who said they’d heard enough.
Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a House prosecutor, claimed in final debate that means the eventual outcome for Trump would be an acquittal “in name only.”
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 the House impeached Trump largely along party lines after less than thee months of formal proceedings making it the hastiest, most partisan presidential impeachment in U.S. history.
The issue of impeachment ultimately will go before the voters, as critics who called it a politically motivated effort said it should. 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 he abused power when he pressed Ukraine to investigate alleged corruption involving Democratic rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and then obstructed the congressional probe of his actions. Democrats who insisted that former National Security Adviser Bolton be allowed to testify against Trump refused a deal that would have had one or both of the Bidens called to the stand.
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.”
Eager for a conclusion, Trump’s allies nevertheless suggested the shift in timing to extend the proceedings into next week and it shows the significance of the moment for senators in casting votes in only the third presidential impeachment trial in American history.
Senate leaders were discussing a plan to resume Monday for final arguments, with time Monday and Tuesday for senators to speak. The final voting would be Wednesday.
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.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2RNwwaA
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