The Senate has taken the first formal step toward putting an end to Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Friday by voting 51-49 against examining any additional documents or taking testimony from witnesses beyond those examined during the House’s impeachment inquiry.
Only two Republican senators — Maine’s Susan Collins and Utah’s Mitt Romney — voted in favor of allowing the Senate to debate whether to consider evidence beyond that which was submitted as part of the 28,578 page trial record compiled by the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Judiciary, and Oversight Committees.
The outcome of the procedural vote means the Senate will have no opportunity to hear testimony from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, whose forthcoming book reportedly reveals the extent to which Trump worked to exert pressure on Ukraine’s government in order to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory which posits that Ukraine — not Russia — interfered in the 2016 election.
The as-of-yet unpublished tome has loomed large over the upper chamber’s proceedings since Sunday, when the New York Times first reported that Bolton had written of a conversation between himself and Trump in which the president explicitly linked the hold he’d ordered placed on $391 million in aid to Ukraine to his desire to see Zelensky take actions to damage Biden.
As he addressed senators in the hours leading up to the vote on witnesses, lead House manager Rep. Adam Schiff drew their attention to yet another report alleging that Trump’s attempts to exert pressure on Ukraine began as early as May 2019, when, during an Oval Office meeting with Bolton, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, and Trump’s personal attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, the president reportedly asked Bolton to arrange a meeting between Giuliani and Zelensky, who’d just become his country’s president-elect.
After noting that Trump had denied having asked Bolton to arrange the meeting between Giuliani and Zelensky, Schiff offered a solution for resolving the differences between the president’s account and that of his national security adviser.
“Let’s put John Bolton under oath — let’s find out who’s telling the truth,” Schiff said. “Trial is supposed to be a quest for the truth. Let’s not fear what we will learn.”
Schiff’s words, however, failed to convince senators of the need to conduct any further investigation into the allegations against Trump.
Shortly after senators had finished voting, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters the decision to reject any new documents or testimony as a “perfidy” and a “grand tragedy.”
“America will remember this day…when the Senate did not live up to its responsibilities, when the Senate turned away from the truth and went along with a sham trial,” Schumer said.
“If the president is acquitted with no witnesses, no documents, the acquittal will have no value because Americans will know that this trial was not a real trial.”
In a statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Senate Republicans’ vote to reject further testimony “makes them accomplices to the President’s cover-up.”
“The President was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He is impeached forever. There can be no acquittal without a trial. And there is no trial without witnesses, documents and evidence,” she said.
“It is a sad day for America to see Senator McConnell require the Chief Justice of the United States to preside over a vote which rejected our nation’s judicial norms, precedents and institutions to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.”
While some Republicans had hoped that dispensing with any additional testimony or documentary evidence would allow the Senate to proceed rapidly a final vote so Trump could be acquitted before he delivers his third State of the Union speech on Tuesday, he will instead become the second president to address a joint session of Congress during his own impeachment trial.
A procedural resolution approved by the Senate late Friday evening will instead provide for a break in the trial schedule to allow several Democratic senators to travel to Iowa to campaign before for Monday’s presidential caucus. Although both Schumer and Senator Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., offered several further amendments to compel documents and testimony from Bolton and other White House officials, each of them was rejected by the same 51 Republicans before the Senate adjourned for the weekend.
Trial proceedings will resume at 11:00 am on Monday, when Chief Justice Roberts returns to preside over four hours of closing arguments, which will be split evenly between House Democrats and the president’s attorneys.
Following closing arguments, the court of impeachment will recess for two days so the Senate can resume normal proceedings, during which senators may give speeches about the trial before Roberts returns to preside over a final vote at 4:00 pm on Wednesday.