Pelosi to Initiate Trump Trial Next Week; Witness Fight Heats Up

(Bloomberg) -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will prepare to send articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate next week, triggering a new, more serious phase of the battle over witnesses at the trial.

Shortly after Pelosi’s announcement on Friday, Republican Senator Susan Collins said she’s talking with her GOP colleagues about agreeing to hear testimony, and Trump vowed to invoke executive privilege to limit his former national security adviser, John Bolton, if he appears as a witness.

Pelosi ended a three-week standoff with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over rules for what would be only the third impeachment trial of a U.S. president in the country’s history.

“I have asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to be prepared to bring to the floor next week a resolution to appoint managers and transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to House Democrats. “I will be consulting with you at our Tuesday House Democratic Caucus meeting on how we proceed further.”

Naming the House impeachment managers, who will serve as the prosecutors in the Senate proceedings, and transmitting the two articles will trigger the start of a trial that may take several weeks.

Witness Battle

One of the main points of contention between Democrats and McConnell has been the introduction of witnesses and new testimony. The trial rules will be set by a simple majority in the 100-member Senate where Republicans control 53 seats. McConnell has said he has enough Republican votes to begin the trial and defer a decision on witnesses until later, the same procedures used for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999.

Democrats would need only four GOP senators to side with them to call witnesses or present evidence. They’ve been focusing efforts on several GOP senators who are either facing tough re-election fights this year or have shown willingness to act independently in the past, including Maine’s Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Utah’s Mitt Romney.

Collins on Friday said she’s been working with some of her fellow Republicans on closely following the precedent of the Clinton trial “which included as a third stage the decision on whether to call witnesses.” Collins didn’t say with whom she has discussed the issue, but Romney has expressed some interest in hearing from witnesses.

“I am hopeful that we can reach an agreement on how to proceed with the trial that will allow the opportunity for witnesses for both the House managers and the President’s counsel if they choose to do so,” Collins said in a statement.

Bolton Testimony

One of the key witnesses sought by Democrats is Bolton, who had a first-hand view of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, which are at the center of the impeachment articles adopted by the House last month.

Bolton has said he’s willing to testify if subpoenaed, but Trump said Friday he would seek to restrict the testimony of his former adviser. Trump said in a Fox News interview he would invoke executive privilege “for the sake of the office” of president.

Democrats also want to hear from other administration officials, including acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Calling witnesses or engaging in a court battle over testimony would inevitably lengthen the trial, halting any other action by the Senate while it’s going on.

Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said Trump is ready for the trial with a defense team led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

“Finally the president will be allowed to have attorneys present and present witnesses if they so choose, present evidence, challenge witnesses, challenge evidence,” she told reporters.

Pelosi’s Strategy

While some Democrats have expressed frustration over Pelosi delaying the trial by withholding the articles of impeachment, the speaker and her closest allies said the emergence of emails among administration officials they consider crucial to the case and Bolton’s offer to testify justified the strategy. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, among others, used both new developments to put pressure on GOP senators who might be sympathetic to their arguments.

In her “Dear Colleague” letter Friday, Pelosi wrote: “In an impeachment trial, every senator takes an oath to ‘do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.’ Every senator now faces a choice: to be loyal to the president or the Constitution.”

Representative Dan Kildee of Michigan, a member of Pelosi’s leadership team, said that McConnell “doesn’t bend well to pressure.” But he said Pelosi withholding the articles of impeachment helped the Democrats’ cause even if the move didn’t win any compromises from McConnell.

“I certainly think it’s has changed the perception of what the Senate trial will result in if he does not allow witnesses,” Kildee said. While there is no guarantee that at least a few Republicans would join with Democrats to force the issue of witnesses at trial, “it would not have been a possibility at all if it had not been for the very wise decision that the speaker made.”

Republican Critics

McConnell has scoffed at the suggestion that House Democrats have any leverage to make demands. He accused Democrats, essentially the case’s prosecutors, of “getting cold feet” and being ashamed of their “shoddy” work product.

He has also all but guaranteed that there won’t be the 67 votes necessary to convict Trump and remove him from office.

Republicans derided Pelosi for delaying the trial.

“Speaker Pelosi threw the United States Congress into unnecessary chaos with this pointless delay,” Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley said in a statement. “From the beginning, it’s been unclear what the goal of this hurry-up-and-wait tactic was or what the country stood to gain. We now know the answer was nothing. We’ve had three needless weeks of uncertainty and confusion, causing even more division.”

Louisiana Republican Representative Steve Scalise said on Twitter that Pelosi was “caving” because even Democrats were weary of the delay.

Trump was impeached on Dec. 18 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and Democrats justified the relatively speedy investigation by arguing that Trump’s continued actions threaten the 2020 election.

Only two other U.S. president have been impeached and tried in Senate -- Clinton and Andrew Johnson in 1868. Both were acquitted. In the case of Clinton, a Democrat, both the House and Senate had Republican majorities. House trial managers were approved quickly after the House voted to impeach him, and the articles were delivered to the secretary of the Senate almost immediately after being approved by the House.

--With assistance from Jordan Fabian and Mario Parker.

To contact the reporters on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net;Steven T. Dennis in Washington at sdennis17@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Anna Edgerton

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