Republican Lamar Alexander says he will not support witnesses, as Democrats warn of ‘normalization of lawlessness’

This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

An effort to call witnesses at the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump appeared on the verge of failure Thursday night after at least one of four Republican senators that Democrats needed to open the way said he opposed the idea.

The setback for Democrats on the witnesses question meant that Trump could be acquitted by the Senate as early as Friday. He would thereafter be the third president in US history to have been impeached but to have avoided removal at trial.

Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring, announced on Thursday night at the end of a two-day question-and-answer period that although what Trump had done was “inappropriate”, the misconduct did “not meet the US constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense”.

“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did,” Alexander said in a statement.

One wavering Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine, announced on Thursday night that she would support witnesses, while a second, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said she would sleep on it. A third, Mitt Romney of Utah, indicated he would also support witnesses, saying: “I would like to hear from Mr Bolton”.

But it appeared that the best Democrats could hope for was a tie vote on the question.

John Roberts, who is presiding at the trial in his capacity as chief justice of the United States, might break such a tie vote – or he might allow the vote to stand and declare the motion to be unsuccessful, meaning that the push for witnesses would fail.

The lead prosecutor in the case, the House manager Adam Schiff, warned that the Republicans’ unified determination to protect Trump instead of collecting evidence was paving the way toward a presidency unbound by congressional oversight or any other checks and balances.

“What we have seen in the past few days is a descent into constitutional madness, because that way madness lies,” Schiff said, comparing the Republican position to Richard Nixon’s infamous defense of his conduct in the Watergate scandal: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

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“Watergate is now 40, 50 years behind us,” said Schiff. “Have we learned nothing in the last half-century? Have we learned nothing at all? We are right back to where we were a half-century ago, and we may even be in a worse place because this time that argument may succeed.

“That is the normalization of lawlessness.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lamar Alexander in the US Capitol on Thursday. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

In a late-stage gambit for witnesses, Schiff offered to restrict witness depositions to a time window of one week, after the model of the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, when three witnesses were deposed on video outside the Senate chamber.

“Let’s use the Clinton model,” Schiff said. “Let’s take a week. Let’s take a week to have a fair trial.”

Democrats are pushing for the president’s former national security adviser John Bolton to testify, with what could be a damaging account of Trump’s “quid pro quo” strategy with Ukraine that has resulted in his impeachment, while Republicans are signaling they have the numbers necessary to shut down the attempt.

Bolton himself said after a speech in Austin, Texas, on Thursday night that witnesses who appeared during the House impeachment proceedings had done so admirably. At the time – last month – Bolton threatened to respond with a lawsuit to any subpoena to appear.

“All of them acted in the best interest of the country as they saw it and consistent to what they thought our policies were,” said Bolton of the witnesses.

If Republicans successfully block witnesses, that could effectively trigger the beginning of the end of the impeachment trial, with a final vote on whether to remove Trump from office or acquit him coming as early as Friday.

Such a trial would be about half as long as the previous shortest presidential impeachment trial in US history, that of Clinton, which lasted just more than one month.

This week, Trump’s lawyers have shifted their arguments away from the president doing nothing wrong to a position equating to: even if he did withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigating his potential Democratic election rival Joe Biden, that doesn’t meet the standard needed for impeachment.

With the question of whether to bring in potentially explosive new witness testimony hanging over the Senate, the trial has been a tense affair.

Ahead of the resumption of impeachment proceedings on Thursday, McConnell was asked by reporters if he had confidence that he had the votes necessary to block a motion on witnesses.

“I always do,” McConnell said. But the top Senate Republican was more unsure on other aspects of the trial. When asked if he had the votes for acquittal by Friday night, McConnell said: “We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

Privately, Republican Senate staffers expressed confidence that they could block a motion for witnesses.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mitt Romney in Washington DC, on 29 January. Photograph: Mary F Calvert/Reuters

That prospect alarmed legal scholars and other observers.

“I don’t think people fully grasp the constitutional danger of this moment,” tweeted Susan Hennessey, executive editor of the Lawfare web site. “If the Senate were to refuse to call relevant witnesses with direct testimony of grave presidential wrongdoing then we can no longer understand impeachment to be a genuine check on executive overreach.”

Tom Nichols, a professor at the US Naval War College, tweeted: “The constitution wasn’t designed to deal with people who don’t give a shit.”

The rush for witnesses followed a report from a leaked version of Bolton’s upcoming book where he said Trump told Bolton to hold back on congressionally approved national security aid to Ukraine until officials there agreed to help investigate Biden, his family and other matters involving US Democrats.

Bolton’s book has been a persistent topic of discussion throughout the week in Washington. On Monday, the former Trump chief of staff John Kelly was asked about Bolton’s allegation in the book.

“If John Bolton says that in the book, I believe John Bolton,” Kelly said. “John’s an honest guy. He’s a man of integrity and great character, so we’ll see what happens.”

On Thursday, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, refused to fully respond to Kelly’s comments.

“I respect Gen Kelly enormously and like him personally,” Conway said. “I don’t know what he’s referring to so I can’t answer. I’ve not seen the manuscript.”

Thursday’s questioning portion of the hearings follows an eventful day in the impeachment trial. On Wednesday, Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz offered one of the most expansive and stunning arguments in Trump’s defense when he said the president could not be removed from national office over requesting political favors if he believed those favors were in the public interest of the country.

“If the president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz said.