Senate Approves Motion to Call Witness in Trump Impeachment Trial
Democrats want to subpoena GOP Rep. Herrera Beutler to testify about Trump conversation on day of Capitol attack
WASHINGTON—The Senate voted to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, after House Democratic managers said that they wanted to subpoena a Republican lawmaker who has knowledge of a conversation between Mr. Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on the day the angry mob attacked the Capitol.
The request, approved in a 55 to 45 vote, with a handful of Republicans including Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) joining all Democrats, scotched expectations that the trial could wrap up Saturday. It came amid new scrutiny of Mr. Trump’s actions as the riot was proceeding, and just as chances appeared to dim of Democrats winning over significantly more Republican votes. Early Saturday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said in a letter to Senate Republicans that he would vote to acquit Mr. Trump.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.), the lead impeachment manager, made his surprise request at the start of what had previously been expected to be a day on which both sides would present closing arguments in the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump on charges that he incited a Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
The request was made after Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R., Wash.), one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, late Friday described a conversation she had with Mr. McCarthy, who had spoken with Mr. Trump during the riot and urged him to call it off. She said she was told Mr. Trump initially blamed the attack on antifa, referring to the loose network of far-left activists, but Mr. McCarthy told him they were Trump supporters. At that point, Mr. McCarthy told her, Mr. Trump said, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” Spokespeople for Mr. McCarthy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We believe we’ve proven our case,” Mr. Raskin said. But he said that the conversation was “an additional critical piece of corroborating evidence, further confirming the charges before you as well as the president’s willful dereliction of duty and desertion of duty.” Mr. Raskin said that he wanted to subpoena both Ms. Herrera Beutler and any contemporaneous notes she made.
One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers opposed the request, saying that House managers had only themselves to blame for failing to conduct a through investigation before Mr. Trump was impeached. “They didn’t put the work in that was necessary to impeach,” said Michael van der Veen, a defense lawyer. “If they want to have witnesses, I’m going to need at least over 100 depositions, not just one.”
Some senators of both parties had said they didn’t need to hear from witnesses, which would require lengthy depositions, prolonging a trial that both Republicans and Democrats have said they want to wrap up.
The call for witnesses came as the trial appeared to be winding down, with just closing statements set to go had no witnesses been called. Mr. McConnell said that he viewed the verdict handed down by senators at the end of the trial as a vote of conscience, according to text reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
“I have been asked directly by a number of you how I intend to vote, so thought it right to make that known prior to the final vote,” Mr. McConnell wrote. “While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction.” In a vote earlier this week, he and most Republicans had voted that the Senate lacked constitutional authority to move ahead with the trial.
Mr. McConnell had harshly criticized the president’s actions on Jan. 6, saying rioters “were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
Many Republican and Democratic senators sitting as jurors have said they have largely made up their minds, seen as likely ensuring Mr. Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial and the fourth presidential impeachment trial in American history. In a vote Tuesday on the constitutionality of trying a former president on impeachment charges, only six Republicans sided with the chamber’s 50 Democrats. It would take 67 votes to convict Mr. Trump.
With the outcome not in doubt, the question will be how many Republicans join Democrats in voting to convict. Much of the focus was on Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), who on Friday was photographed studying notes that said “the House managers did not connect the dots” between Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 speech and his supporters’ attack on the Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people including a Capitol Police officer. Mr. Cassidy later said that was one of two news releases his staff had prepared—one for each position—and that he still hasn’t made up his mind.
Democrats in their closing are expected to repeat allegations that Mr. Trump primed his angry supporters for weeks by falsely claiming the election had been stolen, and then lighted a match by encouraging a mob to “take back your country” at a protest he set for the day Congress was tallying votes from the Electoral College and certifying President Biden’s victory.
They are expected to repeat that Mr. Trump knew the situation was combustible, and that instead of showing remorse and immediately calling in the National Guard, he said Congress got what it deserved, as reflected by a tweet he posted that night after the attack had been quelled. In the tweet, Mr. Trump said, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away.”
Mr. Trump’s lawyers again will try to paint the Democrats as having a double standard on fiery political rhetoric, using it themselves but condemning its use by Republicans. They are also expected to point once more to the quick House impeachment proceedings as evidence that Mr. Trump was denied a fair process, to repeat that the trial was unconstitutional on the grounds that the Constitution is silent on impeachment trials for former presidents and to say the proceedings have divided the country.
Friday’s proceedings ended after a testy question-and-answer period in which Democratic managers and Mr. Trump’s lawyers clashed over whether Mr. Trump knew that Mike Pence had just been ushered out of the chamber when he sent out a tweet at 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6 criticizing the then-vice president for not having “the courage to do what should have been done.”
Democrats said that Mr. Trump did know and that the tweet points his intention to do Mr. Pence harm. Mr. van der Veen, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, said that the president hadn’t known, and questioned an account from Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R., Ala.), who has told reporters that during the riot he was on the phone with Mr. Trump and told him Mr. Pence had just been escorted from the chamber. Mr. Pence was out by 2:13 p.m., a Wall Street Journal timeline shows.