Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his GOP caucus on Tuesday that he doesn’t have the votes needed to block witnesses from the impeachment trial at the moment, according to multiple reports.
Fox News, the Washington Post, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal reported that McConnell broke the news to his fellow Republican senators during a private meeting.
However, several senators reportedly haven’t made up their minds yet, still leaving open the possibility of McConnell quashing Democrats’ efforts to have key witnesses, such as former National Security Adviser John Bolton, testify.
An unnamed Trump administration official told the Wall Street Journal that the White House is “still in the game” and hasn’t given up on the fight against witnesses.
After the New York Times reported on several of Bolton’s damning accounts in his unpublished manuscript, including one in which President Donald Trump explicitly tied Ukraine military aid to assistance with an investigation into Joe Biden, Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) expressed support for allowing Bolton to testify.
