As the House of Representatives prepares to vote on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, Republicans are still divided about their strategy during the Senate trial that is expected to begin in January.
"President Trump wanted Ukraine to help legitimize his 2016 election, show that his predecessors abused political power and raise doubts about a rival in the 2020 election," The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. "Now, he wants Senate Republicans to do the same, according to people who have discussed plans with him."
"On the verge this week of becoming just the third U.S. president to be impeached by the House, Mr. Trump doesn’t just want to be acquitted in the Senate trial that would follow, these people say. He hopes to be vindicated," the newspaper explained.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could choose two paths for the Senate trial. He could hold a quick trial with no witnesses, or choose a long trial that would allow Trump to call witnesses pushing his Ukraine conspiracy theories.
"Once articles of impeachment arrive in the Senate, Republicans will take control of the impeachment process for the first time. A growing number, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, want a quick trial without witnesses, which they view as the easiest path to acquittal," The Journal explained.
"Mr. Trump has publicly signaled his openness to a short trial, and White House aides are pitching him on the idea that a quick acquittal would be its own form of vindication. Privately, though, he has said he wants not just a quick process, but also the ability to call a list of witnesses. It isn’t clear how Mr. McConnell could deliver both of those things," the newspaper explained.
The newspaper interviewed Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), who frequently speaks with the president.
Perdue said Trump “wants his day in court. He feels like he has not been able to have any defense over in the House. He has not. He’s been denied the No. 1 right all of us have, which is to face his accuser and have our defense represented.”
However, even if Trump succeeds in a longer trial with witnesses, public vindication may not be possible after the efforts of Sen. McConnell to defend Trump.
That perspective has been put forward by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert advising House Democrats.
“The reason it may backfire is that an exoneration — if that’s what emerges by a Senate that is essentially rigged and fixed so that it’s coordinated in this way with the defense really doesn’t clear the name of the accused so that the president will go down in history as having been essentially found guilty by the House in a proceeding where he had a chance to defend himself, but didn’t take advantage of it and then in a kind of rubber stamp sort of toss off, not really given a meaningful trial so that he will have been adjudicated fundamentally by the House of Representatives to have abused his office, abused his oath, and endangered the national security and then blockaded in the inquiry as though he were a dictator,” Tribe explained.
