WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial lurched into a final day of questions and answers Thursday before a crucial vote on calling witnesses, with U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine asking if it is ever appropriate for a president to ask a foreign country to investigate a political rival.
The vote on witnesses, expected Friday, could lead to an abrupt end of the trial with the expected acquittal. Or, less likely, it could bring weeks more of argument as Democrats press to hear testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton and others.
Thursday’s testimony included soaring pleas to the senators-as-jurors who will decide Trump’s fate, to either stop a president who Democrats say has tried to cheat in the upcoming election and will again, or to shut down impeachment proceedings that Republicans insist were never more than a partisan attack.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opened Thursday’s session bracing for an attempt by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky to expose the name of the still anonymous whistleblower in the public trial. McConnell urged restraint by his colleagues. But to no avail.
Paul quickly rose to put forward one of the first questions of the day, drawing a long pause in the chamber as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts looked over the submission.
Said Roberts: “The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted.”
Democrats have argued Bolton’s forthcoming book cannot be ignored in the Senate trial. It contends he personally heard Trump say he wanted military aid withheld from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden — the abuse-of-power charge that is the first article of impeachment. Trump denies saying such a thing.
Collins is one of at least two Republicans who have signaled openness to voting for witnesses. On Thursday, she asked the trial’s first bipartisan question and joined forces with three more conservative Republicans to ask whether there were “legitimate circumstances” under which a president could ask a foreign country to investigate a U.S. citizen, including a political rival.
Any question from Collins is important because she is among the Republicans whose perspective on both witnesses and acquittal is being closely watched for clues.
In this question, she appeared to be grappling with whether there are instances in which conduct similar to Trump’s — who asked Ukraine’s leader to investigate Democratic rival Biden and his son — might be reasonable.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, the lead House prosecutor, contended that there was no reason for the president specifically to request an investigation, though he said that other agencies, such as the Justice Department, might have legitimate reasons. The White House defense team argued that Trump had not requested such a probe, but a president would have the right to.
Deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin said that Trump didn’t specifically ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a general investigation into the Bidens, but instead to look into the firing of a Ukraine prosecutor at the same time that Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukraine gas company.
He said it could be “perfectly legitimate” to seek an investigation overseas into someone suspected of violating the laws of that country.
With Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, as well as Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Collins asked whether the president’s legal team could assure them that Trump would not ask private citizens to conduct foreign policy.
The lead-up to the question referenced the Logan Act, an obscure and virtually dormant law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating without authorization with foreign powers.
The question also made an oblique but unmistakable reference to Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney and a central figure in the impeachment saga for his efforts to press Ukraine for the investigations the president wanted and for the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
Philbin took exception to the question, saying there was “no conduct of foreign policy being carried on here by a private person.” Giuliani’s outreach to Ukraine was not formal foreign policy, Philbin argued. And in any event, he said, presidents since George Washington have relied on confidants and others outside their administration to carry messages to other countries and to function as a go-between.
Democrats are pressing hard to force the Senate to call more witnesses to testify, but Republicans appear intently focused on bringing the impeachment trial to a vote of acquittal, possibly in a matter of days. New revelations from Bolton are being countered by the president’s lawyers, who used Wednesday’s unusual question-and-answer session to warn off prolonging the proceeding.
Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, expressed frustration on Thursday afternoon with Republican calls to speed up the process, saying there were people in Biddeford working two shifts in their jobs.
“I’ve had it with the idea that we’re tired and we can’t take the time to get this right,” an animated King said in an interview with MSNBC during a break in the trial.
BDN writer Jessica Piper, and Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Matthew Daly, Laurie Kellman and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.