Closing out their case, US House of Representatives Democrats on Friday in US President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial that the president would persist in abusing his power and endangering American democracy unless Congress intervenes to remove him before this year’s election.
“He is who he is,” said US Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
He told the senators listening as jurors that Trump put the US-Ukraine relationship on the line in a way that benefited Russia just so he could take a political “cheap shot” at former US vice president Joe Biden.
“You cannot leave a man like that in office,” Schiff said. “You know it’s not going to stop ... It’s not going to stop unless the Congress does something about it.”
Trump is being tried in the Senate after the House impeached him last month, accusing him of abusing his office by asking Ukraine for politically motivated probes of Biden and other matters while withholding military aid from a US ally that was at war with bordering Russia.
A second article of impeachment accuses him of obstructing Congress by refusing to turn over documents or allow officials to testify in the House ensuing probe.
As Democrats finished their third day before skeptical Republican senators, Trump’s legal team prepared to start his defense yesterday.
“We’re going to rebut and refute, and we’re going to put on an affirmative case tomorrow,” his attorney Jay Sekulow said.
Republicans are defending Trump’s actions as appropriate and are casting the impeachment trial as a politically motivated effort to weaken him in his re-election campaign.
Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and eventual acquittal is considered likely.
Before that, senators are to make a critical decision next week on Democratic demands to hear testimony from top Trump aides, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton, who refused to appear before the House.
It would take four Republican senators to join the Democratic minority to seek witnesses, and so far the numbers appear lacking.
In related news, Trump can be heard in a taped 2018 conversation saying he wants to get rid of the US ambassador to Ukraine, whose removal a year later emerged as an issue in his impeachment.
The president was talking with a small group that included Lev Parnas, an associate of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, according to a report on Friday about the audio recording.
Trump demanded the removal of then-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch at an April 2018 dinner at his hotel in Washington, according to ABC News, which reported on the recording.
The recording appears to contradict the president’s statements that he did not know Parnas, a key figure in the investigation.
ABC said a speaker who appears to be Trump says on the recording: “Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”
Parnas and associate Igor Fruman worked with Giuliani on a push to get Ukraine to announce it would investigate Biden. On the recording, the two tell Trump that the US ambassador has been insulting him, which leads directly to the apparent remarks by the president.
The White House denied any suggestion of presidential wrongdoing.
“Every president in our history has had the right to place people who support his agenda and his policies within his administration,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said.
Yovanovitch, who was viewed as an obstacle to probes into Biden and his son, Hunter, was not recalled from her position until the following April.
She said the decision was based on “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives” that she was disloyal to Trump.
Parnas appears to say on the recording: “The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She’s still left over from the [former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham] Clinton administration.”
He later can be heard telling Trump: “She’s basically walking around telling everybody: ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.’”
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