3 takeaways from the Senate impeachment trial

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s legal team wrapped up its defense on Tuesday in a surprisingly short session after urging senators to reject the articles of impeachment and let the American people decide in the presidential election in November.

In a succinct closing, White House counsel Pat Cipollone rested his case.

“It is time for this to end, here and now,” he said. “So we urge the Senate to reject these articles of impeachment for all of the reasons we have given you.”

And now all eyes are on Friday, when the Senate debates and votes on whether to call witnesses.

That’s a hot topic since the New York Times reported former national security adviser John Bolton’s new book says Trump told him he wanted to withhold security aid until Ukraine announced investigations into his political rival Joe Biden and its role in the 2016 U.S. election.

But first, on Wednesday and Thursday, Republicans and Democrats will take turns asking questions through Chief Justice John G. Roberts to the Democratic House managers and the Trump legal defense team.

Here are highlights from Tuesday’s Senate trial.

Bolton revelations “inadmissible”

Trump’s attorney Jay Sekulow took aim repeatedly, in his summation of the defense team's argument, to diminish the importance and value to the impeachment trial of the reports about Bolton’s book. “You cannot impeach a president on an unsourced allegation,” he said. Sekulow read denials of Bolton’s reported assertions, including Trump’s: “I never told John that the aid to the Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens.” Sekulow described the Times’ report as being an “unpublished manuscript that maybe some reporters have an idea of what it says.” And he added, “I don’t know what you’d call that. I’d call it inadmissible.”

Impeachment a policy disagreement

Sekulow also hammered away at what he called the source of the House Democrats’ decision to impeach Trump — a policy disagreement. House managers said that the evidence they gathered showed that Trump withheld aid to benefit his personal political fortunes by coercing Ukraine to announce an investigation into Joe Biden. “They didn’t like what they heard. They didn’t like there was a pause on foreign aid,” Sekulow said. “Those policy differences cannot be utilized to destroy the separation of powers” and to “remove a duly elected president” from office.

Witness wars heat up

Off the Senate floor, all the talk was about what to do about the Bolton unpublished manuscript. Republican senators met privately after the trial session ended. Democrats went to the microphones to turn up the heat. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) responded to Sekulow’s arguments. “He said we don’t have eyewitness accounts, that all we have is a newspaper article,” Schumer said, then addressed Sekulow: “You can bring Bolton right into this chamber and he can be cross-examined by you.” Republicans scrambled for a way out. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) floated the idea of putting the manuscript in a secure room and allowing senators to read it. Schumer laughed off that idea, saying that “it’s going to be public — what are they hiding?” But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), one of four Republicans who might vote to call witnesses, warmed to Lankford’s idea. “I’ve said that I think that Mr. Bolton probably has some things that would be helpful for us,” she said. “We’ll figure out how we might be able to learn that.”