Journalist Bob Woodward said on Friday that President Trump Donald John TrumpFederal prosecutor speaks out, says Barr 'has brought shame' on Justice Dept. Former Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick MORE’s Senate allies are “choking” in their defenses of his call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which has become the center of an impeachment inquiry, according to the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

“I know Republican senators, and they are choking on this,” Woodward said during a talk in Spokane, Wash. “Whether they say that’s too much, I don’t know.”

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When Whitworth University President Beck Taylor asked Woodward whether Trump soliciting Ukraine and China to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden Joe BidenFormer Pence aide: White House staffers discussed Trump refusing to leave office Progressive group buys domain name of Trump's No. 1 Supreme Court pick Bloomberg rolls out M ad buy to boost Biden in Florida MORE was criminal, Woodward responded: “No, it’s probably not criminal, because no one ever thought to make a law about it,” prompting laughter from the audience.

The journalist also told Taylor that Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s most vocal allies in the upper chamber, had told him “he couldn’t count the money fast enough” referring to donations since the announcement of the impeachment inquiry in September.

In the same talk, Woodward, who rose to fame for his reporting during the Watergate era, described assuming for 25 years that President Gerald Ford’s pardon of former president Richard Nixon had corrupt motivations.

He said it was not until he interviewed Ford a quarter century later that he came to believe the pardon was in fact a necessary, even courageous act to help the nation move on from the Watergate scandal.

“He said, ‘I needed my own presidency,’ ” Woodward said, according to the newspaper.