WASHINGTON — After days of listening to the House lawyers and the president’s defense team argue their cases, uninterrupted, senators on Wednesday finally had their turn.
Up to 16 hours is allotted for the question and answer phase of the Senate trial, and lawyers spent the first five of them on Wednesday addressing a steady stream of queries from the senators. The answers showed off the strikingly divergent views of presidential power that have dominated the entire trial.
Here are some of the other main takeaways from the first day.
Alan Dershowitz argues new standards for presidential power.
Asked about what is considered standard practice for a president when conducting foreign policy, Alan Dershowitz, one of President Trump’s lawyers, appeared to make a new argument for broad presidential powers — so broad that anything a president does to help himself get re-elected, he said, is inherently in the public’s interest, including a “quid pro quo.”
“If the president does something that he thinks will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Mr. Dershowitz said.
The lead house manager, Representative Adam B. Schiff, called the theory “very odd.”
Mr. Dershowitz was answering a question from Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who has been a staunch defender of the president throughout the impeachment process.
Mr. Trump’s defense has also argued that there was no “quid pro quo” in his dealings with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
Later, when answering another question, Mr. Schiff pushed back against Mr. Dershowitz’s view on the extent of the president’s power.
Mr. Schiff said Mr. Trump is “a president who identifies the state as being himself.”
Addressing Mr. Trump directly, Mr. Schiff said, “You are not a king.”
Democrats stick with a familiar argument: Trump acted in self-interest.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, asked House impeachment managers a question that set them up to cross-examine a claim from the defense: “There is simply no evidence anywhere that President Trump ever linked security assistance to any investigations.”
Ms. Feinstein asked, “Is that true?”
It was a softball, but a strategic one.
“There is in fact overwhelming evidence that the president withheld the military aid directly to get a personal political benefit to help his individual political campaign,” said Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, one of the House managers.
Throughout the day, Democrats repeatedly asked about whether senators could reach a verdict without hearing testimony from the president’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, and other presidential aides involved in Ukraine foreign policy.
This was not a hard one for the House managers, either.
“There is no way to have a fair trial without witnesses," Mr. Schiff said. “And when you have a witness who is as plainly relevant as John Bolton — who goes to the heart of the most serious and egregious of the president’s misconduct, who has volunteered to come and testify — to turn him away, to look the other way, I think is deeply at odds with being an impartial juror.”
Trump defense says Bolton has ‘all the nation’s secrets.’
In what did not appear to be an intentional taunt to the Democrats, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Patrick Philbin, said what most in the Senate chamber already knew: “John Bolton was the national security adviser to the president. He has all the nation’s secrets.”
Democrats want Mr. Bolton to testify about what he knew of Mr. Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine. And almost all the Republicans want to make sure that Mr. Bolton does not have the opportunity to do so.
Once the question-and-answer portion of the trial is complete, senators are expected to vote Friday on whether to hear new witnesses.
Mr. Philbin argued that if the Senate subpoenaed Mr. Bolton to testify, he would likely be unable to comply because Mr. Trump could claim executive privilege, but Democrats disagree.
Democrats raise prospect of a loss of Senate power.
Senator Kamala Harris, Democratic of California, asked the House managers what would happen if the Senate “fails to hold the president accountable for misconduct,” and what that would mean for the integrity of the justice system.
It has long been expected that the Republican-led Senate would not convict Mr. Trump. But Mr. Schiff responded with a sobering prediction, directed at every senator in the room: The Senate as an institution will lose its power and erase the oversight authority given to it in the Constitution.
“There will be no force behind any Senate subpoena in the future,” Mr. Schiff warned, reminding senators that the White House also ignored congressional subpoenas before the impeachment proceedings. “If you allow a president to obstruct Congress so completely — in a way that Nixon could never have contemplated, nor would the Congress of that day have allowed — you will eviscerate your own oversight capability.”
Trump defense creates a standard of proof for impeachment.
To convict Mr. Trump, one of the president’s lawyers, Mr. Philbin said, the Senate needs to find the president “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
It was a surprising argument, given that the Constitution offers no such direction.
Mr. Philbin was responding to a question from a group of Republican senators who asked whether the standard for impeachment in the House had a lower threshold than the standard for conviction in the Senate.
Mr. Philbin explained that the House impeachment managers did not do their job. They “are held to a standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said, adding, “Here they have failed in their burden of proof.”
Frank O. Bowman III, a University of Missouri law professor and an expert on impeachment whose work on the topic was even cited in a Trump defense brief, called the claim “a complete fantasy.”
A written standard of proof in either the House or the Senate does not exist, he said.
McConnell shows his cards early.
As the Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, had the advantage of selecting the first question from his party. And it was a strategic choice. He turned to Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, who is facing one of the toughest re-election races in the country. She is a moderate whose support Republicans cannot afford to lose.
Ms. Collins asked the question on behalf of herself and senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah: “How should the Senate consider more than one motive in its assessment” of the first article of impeachment from the House, that Mr. Trump abused the power of his office?
That those three senators asked a question jointly was not surprising. Even before the trial started in earnest, they have signaled that they are open to hearing from new witnesses, specifically Mr. Bolton, whose recent accounts from an upcoming book have rattled the Republicans’ plans for a fast trial and an even faster acquittal.
The Democrats need the support of every senator in their caucus and at least four Republicans to pass a measure that would allow witnesses.
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January 30, 2020 at 07:10AM
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6 Takeaways From Senators’ Questions to Impeachment Lawyers - The New York Times
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