GOP Accused of 'Greatest Cover-Up Since Watergate' as Senate Set to End First Witness-Less Impeachment Trial in US History

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday accused the Republican Party of orchestrating the “greatest cover-up since Watergate” as the Senate prepared to debate and vote on whether to allow witnesses to testify in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.

“This is much bigger than President Trump. Preventing witnesses, evidence, and transparency in President Trump’s impeachment trial potentially undermines the Constitution for generations.”
—Karen Hobert Flynn, Common Cause

The Senate is widely expected as early as Friday evening to oppose permitting witnesses, given swing vote Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) announcement late Thursday that he will vote no. Alexander’s decision sparked widespread anger and the trending Twitter hashtag #LamarAlexanderIsACoward.

Schumer said during a press conference Friday that if the Senate votes against allowing witnesses, “the president’s acquittal will be meaningless.”

“This is about truth, and today the Senate will vote on whether witnesses and documents are allowed in this trial,” said Schumer. “The importance of this vote is self-evident.”

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The Senate at 1pm ET is scheduled to begin four hours of debate on whether to approve witnesses, followed by a vote. If the Republican-controlled chamber decides against allowing witnesses, it will be the first time in U.S. history the Senate has held an impeachment trial without witness testimony, according to PolitiFact.

An analysis put out this week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) detailed how in each of the 15 impeachment cases completed by the Senate over its 231 year history, “witnesses who were not heard during the House of Representatives’ impeachment investigations testified in front of the Senate.”

“Throughout this impeachment trial, we have heard the unsupported claim that Senators cannot, and should not, consider testimony from witnesses the House had not already heard from. History certainly proves otherwise,” said CREW executive director Noah Bookbinder earlier this week. “In the light of the huge new revelations that have come to the public’s attention since the start of the trial and the President’s efforts to keep witnesses and documents out of the House process, the Senate must now do its constitutional duty and call forward any and all appropriate witnesses to ensure a fair, thorough and impartial trial.”

A final vote on whether to acquit or remove Trump could come as early as Friday evening, but anonymous Republican senators and aides told Politico the trial could extend until next week if House Democratic impeachment managers push for more time to make closing arguments.

Just ahead of the Senate debate on witnesses, the New York Times reported that former national security adviser John Bolton—one of the potential witnesses in the trial—alleges in an unpublished book manuscript that Trump instructed him in May of 2019 to help with the “pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials.”