Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Friday picked apart the increasingly common argument among Republicans against calling witnesses in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
Some Republican senators, after delaying a vote on whether to call witnesses in the trial until after the week of opening arguments, now say that calling witnesses would result in a months-long court battle and is therefore impractical, given Trump’s threat to invoke executive privilege to prevent administration officials from testifying.
“They said ‘Let’s not do it now, let’s hear the arguments and then do it.’ And now they’re saying ‘We don’t have enough time to do it,’” Schumer said at a press conference Friday.
“Talk about talking out of both sides of your mouth.”
House Democrats opted not to pursue a court battle to force documents and testimony from key administration witnesses after many complied with Trump’s order not to cooperate with the chamber’s impeachment probe. Instead, they added a second impeachment charge, Obstruction of Congress.
In the Senate, Schumer reiterated Friday, subpoenas for testimony would be different than those issued by the House: They would necessarily be bi-partisan — four Republican votes are needed to supplement the Democratic caucus for a majority in the Senate — and signed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial.
“Those who are subject of those subpoenas are expected to comply,” Schumer said. And if they don’t, he added later, “they would be given very prompt judicial review given the urgency and the stakes of an impeachment trial.”
Schumer also pointed to John Bolton, the former national security adviser, who is no longer a member of the Trump administration.
“He’s not in the Executive Branch, so executive privilege cannot be used against him,” Schumer said.
There’s also a simple route, Schumer said. Republicans should “go tell the President not to invoke executive privilege. He’s the one delaying it.”
Moscow Mitch and his co-conspirators want a kangaroo court and sham trial. Witnesses and documents aren’t part of that goal to ignore facts and the law.
It’s all a joke and a disgrace to our country and a torching of the Constitution.
I feel like the GOP is starting to feel the tide turning against them. Many of their base are tuning in for the first time to see Shiff and the house managers juxtaposed against the Trump defence and finding the its not quite what they were led to believe. Maybe I am just being optimistic and this isn’t a general trend. But I hope.
I think Schumer is wrong on that point. Bolton was in the Executive Branch and any communication he had with Trump that would legitimately be privileged doesn’t lose privilege after he leaves. Otherwise, a good zing on GOP hypocrisy.
Can everybody please notice what a milquetoast John Roberts is? He is letting Midnight Moscow Mitch rope him into this debacle and so make him go down in history as a likely co-conspirator.
Get him some Ethics, STAT!
In a related story, the Senate has just been handed a gun that was used to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue.
They voted 53-47 to dump it in the river at midnight.