The main question of the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump on Thursday is whether centrist Republicans will continue probing the relevance of the President’s motives or fall in line.
Thursday marks the second and final day for senators to submit written questions in the impeachment trial against Donald Trump, before voting, on Friday, on whether to call witnesses to testify before the Senate. On Wednesday, senators questioned the President’s defense team and the House managers prosecuting the case. Each side of the aisle took turns sending forward written queries that were read aloud by Chief Justice John Roberts. The interrogation, which was in excess of eight hours, offered few surprises; most inquiries fell along party lines, with Democrats serving House managers opportunities to reiterate their case against Trump and Republicans giving the President’s lawyers further chances to assert that Trump did no wrong. Alan Dershowitz, the celebrity Harvard law professor serving on Trump’s defense team, grabbed headlines with a creative argument that, if a President believes that his reëlection is in the public interest, then anything he does to bolster his chances of being reëlected are also in the public interest and cannot amount to impeachable behavior.
The issue of whether the President’s personal ambitions can be separated from the national interest was introduced with Wednesday’s first question, which Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, asked on behalf of herself and her centrist Republican colleagues Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, and Mitt Romney, of Utah. All three had previously expressed a willingness to consider calling additional witnesses. Collins’s query raised the possibility that the President may have had “more than one motive for alleged conduct, such as pursuit of political advantage” and “rooting out corruption,” and asked how to consider the case if the President’s actions were motivated by a combination of goals. Patrick Philbin, one of Trump’s lawyers, responded that “it can’t possibly be an offense” in such a situation. Later in the day, Collins and Murkowski raised eyebrows again by asking about the timing of Trump’s interest in having Ukraine investigate the former Vice-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The Trump defense team did not pinpoint a time but suggested that the interest in an investigation predated Biden’s announcement that he would seek the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.
Although Collins, Murkowski, and Romney may still offer some of the more interesting questions on Thursday, the chances that they will ultimately vote with Democrats to usher in new witnesses are slim. One potential swing vote, the Republican Cory Gardner, of Colorado, has already announced that he won’t vote to call witnesses, and the Times reports that even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer thinks winning the vote is unlikely. Most senators are expected to continue lobbing softballs to their respective teammates during Thursday’s proceedings. The main question is whether centrist Republicans will continue probing the relevance of the President’s motives or fall in line.
Watch the live stream above for the latest in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
