Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he wants to follow the model set in President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial, but there's at least one parallel he seems to be overlooking.
Then, as now, senators couldn't agree on whether to call witnesses to the trial, and the issue wasn't settled in the 1999 Clinton impeachment until the trial had already begun, reported Reuters.
“There were people who strongly believed Bill Clinton should be removed from office," said former Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat who retired in 2010. "They wanted Monica Lewinsky to come to the Senate chamber to be questioned as a witness."
The White House feared moderate Democrat Joe Lieberman might vote to convict Clinton, and Democrat Ted Kennedy and Republican Phil Gramm helped hammer out a compromise on the trial procedure.
House Republicans would present their case against Clinton, followed by a rebuttal from the president's attorneys, and then senators could question each side, under the deal forged by Kennedy and Gramm.
They set aside the issue of witness testimony, which wasn't settled until the trial had already begun.
The GOP-controlled Senate eventually decided in partisan votes that Monica Lewinsky and other witnesses would not testify in the chamber, and would instead provide video depositions.
“In my Senate tenure, I have not seen a more contentious issue than the calling of witnesses either live or videotaped,” said longtime Sen. Arlen Specter in a Senate speech.
“I understand why the president’s counsel had fought so strenuously to keep her away from the well of the Senate,” said Specter, who died in 2012. “Had she told her whole story in the well of the Senate, a rapt national TV audience would have been watching and the dynamics of the proceeding might have been dramatically changed.”
Democrats today want former national security adviser John Bolton to testify about Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine into announcing an investigation of Joe Biden, but the retired Gramm sides with Republicans who say that's not necessary.
“Nobody disputes the fact that the president (Trump) made the (telephone) call,” Gramm said.
“Nobody disputes the fact that when a president asks you to do something, there’s some pressure involved.”
