Senate to hear witnesses in Trump impeachment trial after Capitol riot call between Trump and McCarthy resurfaces
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The Senate will hear from witnesses in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump after House Democratic impeachment managers are requested testimony on Saturday from Congresswoman Jaime Herrera-Beutler of Washington regarding her knowledge of a phone conversation between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Donald Trump on the day of the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol.
Five Republicans — Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — voted with all 50 Democrats to allow the impeachment managers and Mr Trump’s defence counsel to call witnesses.
Mr Trump’s lawyer Michael van der Veen responded to the development on Saturday by threatening to call dozens of witnesses of his own to the witness stand in order to delay the proceedings and potentially drag Democratic politicians through the mud.
“I’m going to need 100 witnesses. Not just one,” Mr Van der Veen said.
“The only thing that I ask, if you vote for witnesses, do not handcuff me by limiting the number of witnesses that I can have. I need to do a thorough investigation that they did not do,” he said of the impeachment managers. “I need to do the 9/11-style investigation that Nancy Pelosi called for. It should have been done already. It is a dereliction of the House managers’ duty that they didn’t.”
The 9/11 Commission, which was established more than a year after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, took nearly two more years to complete. It was not published until 26 July 2004.
Mr Raskin responded by pointing out that this was the time set aside at the beginning of the impeachment trial for each side to call witnesses should they make that request.
The Senate voted 89-11 in favour of the rules package governing the trial, with both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saying it set out a “fair” process for Mr Trump.
“This is the proper time that we were assigned to talk about witnesses,” Mr Raskin said on Saturday.
“This is completely within the course of the rules set forth by the Senate.”
He added that while the president’s counsel “now says he wants to interview hundreds of people, there’s only one person” they really need to interview to get the answers everyone wants: Mr Trump.
“Bring him forward as we suggested last week because a lot of this is matters that are in his head, what — why did he not act to defend the country after he learned of the attack. Why was he continuing to press the political case. This piece of evidence is relevant,” Mr Raskin said.
Despite Mr Raskin’s explanation that the request for witnesses was well within the bounds of the rules set out at the commencement of the trial, Mr van der Veen said on Saturday that the request was “inappropriate and improper.”
“We should close this case out today,” he said. “We have each prepared our closing arguments. ... The House managers need to live with the case that they brought.”
Mr Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, initially voted with most of his GOP colleagues against calling witnesses, but switched his vote after it became apparent the measure would pass.
He has been threatening for weeks that if Democrats vote to call witnesses, that will open the floodgates for Mr Trump’s lawyers to call witnesses of their own to show the attack on the Capitol was pre-planned and that there’s no way Mr Trump’s speech on 6 January could have incited the riotous behaviour that ensued.
“If you open up that can of worms, we’ll want the FBI to come in and tell us about how people preplanned this attack and what happened with the security footprint of the Capitol. You open up Pandora’s box if you call one witness,” Mr Graham said in an interview with Fox News earlier this month.
Mr Graham’s argument, though, is a straw man because Mr Trump’s speech on 6 January was the culmination of a months-long effort by the president to undermine his supporters’ faith in the 2020 election results and whip up their fury against Congress’ certification of that vote.
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