The impeachment trial veered deeply into politics Thursday as Democrats said President Trump can’t be trusted to be on the ballot this year. Republicans accused them of trying to remove the president by force because they know voters would return him to the White House.
Senators wrapped up a second day of questions with few new revelations of fact but with sharper barbs between the House Democrats prosecuting the impeachment and the president’s legal team acting as his defense.
“What’s really going on is he’s a threat to them, he’s an immediate, legitimate threat to them, he’s an immediate legitimate threat to their candidate because the election’s only eight months away,” said Eric Herschmann, one of the president’s attorneys.
November’s presidential election looms large as the impeachment trial heads for its denouement.
“President Trump must be removed from office because his ongoing abuse of power threatens the integrity of the next election,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, conductor of the Democrats’ impeachment effort.
He and Mr. Trump’s team are slated to give their closing arguments Friday, and the Senate expects to then move to the key question of whether to extend the trial by calling witnesses and subpoenaing documents from the administration.
Democrats say the Senate must at minimum hear from former National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, who has written a book in which he reportedly asserts Mr. Trump told him military aid to Ukraine was being blocked until that country turned over information on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and on whether Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.
Those arguments are the crux of Democrats’ impeachment case.
Mr. Trump’s team says if witnesses are called, the trial could stretch for months, derailing the Senate for most of that time.
They have signaled they would ask the Senate to seek testimony from a list of witnesses that would include Mr. Biden and his son Hunter, whose job at a Ukrainian company was the focus of Mr. Trump’s queries. Mr. Trump’s team also said it would seek to make a witness out of Mr. Schiff, who led the House impeachment investigation.
Democrats have said the Bidens should be left out.
“No matter how many times we call their name, we have no evidence to point to the fact that either Biden has anything at all to tell us about the president shaking down a foreign power to help him cheat in the next election,” said Rep. Val Demmings, Florida Democrat.
To call witnesses will require a majority vote. All 47 members of the Democratic Caucus are expected to back that motion, and if four Republicans join them it would prevail.
Two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, are believed to be inclined to support the idea. Two others, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Lamar Alexander, are pondering it.
GOP leaders are increasingly confident they will prevail in the vote, which would put the Senate on a path to end the trial and acquit the president by the end of this week.
“We still feel very positive about it. The momentum is on the side of having final vote and final acquittal tomorrow,” Sen. Sen. John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican and a member of the party’s leadership team, told reporters.
Democrats could try to prolong proceedings with parliamentary maneuvers — a tactic they used last week, delaying approval of the impeachment rules for hours while they forced senators to vote on various motions.
With final action looming, both sides intensified their rhetoric.
Mr. Schiff said Mr. Trump’s defense was “a descent into constitutional madness.”
He and fellow House Democrats repeatedly said Mr. Trump can’t be trusted not to “cheat” during the looming campaign, and the only remedy is to remove him. Their articles of impeachment not only call for his ouster, but also ask senators to vote to ban him from office forever, effectively removing him from the 2020 race.
If the Senate were to muster the two-thirds to convict Mr. Trump, it would then hold a separate vote on the motion to bar him from future office. That would only require a majority vote, experts say.
The president’s team said if Democrats are that convinced of their case against Mr. Trump, they should take it to the public, who will have a say in November.
“We trust the American people to decide who should be our president,” said Mr. Herschmann.
He ticked off the president’s agenda of renegotiating trade deals, boosting employment, rebuilding the military and building a border wall — and pointed out the president’s approval ratings are at an all-time high for his three years in office.
He also cited a recent survey that Americans are happier with their situation now than they have been in 15 years.
Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, said if anything, voters should toss out Democrats for the way they ran the impeachment inquiry against the president, which denied him the role presidents are usually allotted.
“If the American people decide, if they’re allowed to vote, if the American people decide that they don’t like what’s happened here, that they don’t like the constitutional violations that happened, that they don’t like the attack on a successful president for purely partisan political purposes, then they can do something about it. They can throw them out,” Mr. Cipollone said.
During a visit to an auto-parts plant in Warren, Michigan, Mr. Trump referred briefly to his impeachment as an unfair reaction to his achievements, including “the biggest tax cut in the history of our country.”
“And why do they do? They impeach you,” he told the factory workers. “Explain that one. But we have great Republicans out there, and they don’t like it any better than you do. A very partisan situation, a disgrace, frankly, a disgrace to our country.”
• Dave Boyer, S.A. Miller and Alex Swoyer contributed to this article.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Gabriella Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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