WASHINGTON — House managers wrapped up their final arguments Friday, urging senators to clean up a “toxic mess” at the White House by removing President Donald Trump from office.
And in his closing remarks, Rep. Adam Schiff made a final plea for senators to call additional witnesses before rendering a verdict.
“I implore you, give America a fair trial. She’s worth it,” the California Democrat said, ending the prosecution’s case.
But skeptical Republicans who control the Senate say they didn’t hear anything over the past three days that warrants granting Democrats’ demands to subpoena top White House aides, let alone removing a president for the first time in American history.
“They’ve given me no reason to vote for removal and they’ve given me no reason to to vote to hear more witnesses,” said Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. “They just haven’t made their case and it was their burden to do that.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., came away with a different opinion, praising his House colleagues for setting a “high bar” for Trump’s lawyers who “have their work cut out for them.”
The president’s defense team puts on its case beginning Saturday morning in what Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said will be a “sneak preview” during an abbreviated two to three hour session.
“We are going to rebut and refute and put on an affirmative case tomorrow,” he told reporters, dropping hints that they will justify investigating a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, disprove Ukraine felt pressured to do Trump’s bidding and give a constitutional defense for refusing to comply with subpoena requests.
“This idea that you obstruct Congress by exercising constitutional privileges is absurd, absolutely absurd,” Sekulow said.
The House impeached Trump more than a month ago, charging him with abusing his office by asking Ukraine for politically motivated probes of former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son while withholding military aid from the U.S. ally in a territorial war with Russia. The second article of impeachment accuses him of obstructing Congress by refusing to turn over documents or allow officials to testify in the House probe.
House managers dedicated their first two days to detailing how Trump allegedly abused his office by pressuring newly elected Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch investigations into the Bidens and a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election in an attempt to defeat Trump. Managers said the “scheme” to investigate the Bidens amounted to asking a foreign country to interfere in the 2020 election, in which Joe Biden is seeking the Democratic nomination.
Projecting images of text messages and video clips of government officials who testified in House impeachment hearings and of Trump talking to the press, the seven Democrat members of Congress repeatedly drove home a narrative that Trump “cheated,” “got caught” and “covered up” to put his political self-interest before the country’s and will keep doing it until he’s removed.
“You cannot leave a man like that in office,” Schiff said. “You know it’s not going to stop. It’s not going to stop unless the Congress does something about it.”
Throughout their arguments, managers invoked the lofty ideals of Alexander Hamilton and other Founding Fathers and on Friday Schiff invoked the late GOP Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018 and championed U.S. support for Ukraine.
House managers shifted their focus Friday from abuse of power to how Trump participated in an alleged cover-up of his dealings with Ukraine by initially secreting away the transcript of a July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy, initially refusing to hand over a whistleblower complaint about the call to Congress and denying all subpoenas and requests for documents by House impeachment investigators.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Trump eventually released the call transcript because “he got caught.”
“There’s a toxic mess at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and I humbly suggest that it’s our collective job on behalf of the American people to try to clean it up,” Jeffries said. “President Trump tried to cheat, he got caught and then he worked hard to try to cover it up.”
Lee commended Schiff and his team for an organized, comprehensive presentation, but he said too often the House Democrats managed to offend Republican senators with what Lee called “nasty partisan language.”
He cited Schiff referring to a news report in his closing statement that said if senators don’t support Trump they will find their “head on a pike.”
“It made me wonder if he was trying to throw the game,” Lee said of Schiff. “You could hear the groans on the Republican side. There’s no reason for him to stoop to that level and it was offensive and it may matter to some of my colleagues” who are undecided on calling additional witnesses.
After Trump’s lawyers finish presenting their case next week, senators will have 16 hours to ask questions of the prosecution and defense, followed by the highly anticipated decision whether to hear testimony from top Trump aides, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton who refused to appear before the House.
With Republicans holding a 53-47 majority, it would take just four Republican senators joining the Democratic minority to authorize calling witnesses.
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who has said he would like to hear from Bolton, is among a small group of Republicans who pushed for the opportunity to vote on the witness question. But Romney has not commented since Monday on whether the Democrats’ arguments have persuaded him that he needs to hear additional testimony.
But Lee and other Republicans pushing back on additional testimony and documents say Democrats have made their case and it’s time get the trial over with.