A lawyer for US president Donald Trump claimed the US president could not be impeached for actions taken to win re-election, as the White House rushed to secure crucial votes to block new witness in the Senate trial to remove him from office.
The comments by Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard professor who is part of the team representing Mr Trump, came ahead of a showdown set for Friday, when lawmakers will decide whether to allow testimony from key officials in the Ukraine scandal, such as John Bolton, the former national security adviser.
If a majority votes against allowing witnesses, the Republican-controlled Senate could move towards a swift acquittal of the president. Mr Trump faces charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for allegedly withholding aid to Ukraine so Kiev would announce an investigation of political rival Joe Biden, and then trying to block congressional scrutiny of the matter.
Speaking on the first of two days in which senators could submit questions in the trial, Mr Dershowitz on Wednesday made a stark claim of broad executive power – that actions to secure re-election were inherently in the public interest and therefore not impeachable.
“If a president does something that he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” he said.
Beyond the substance of the case, the question of testimony from Mr Bolton has been hanging over the trial since the revelation that he had alleged in a forthcoming book that Mr Trump withheld the aide to Ukraine to secure an investigation into Mr Biden.
The White House on Wednesday warned that the Bolton book “may not be published” without the deletion of classified information.
“Under federal law and the nondisclosure agreements your client signed as a condition for gaining access to classified information, the manuscript may not be published or otherwise disclosed without the deletion of this classified information,” a White House official said in a letter to a lawyer for Mr Bolton that was disclosed on Wednesday.
Mr Bolton’s lawyer later disputed the White House claim that the book contained classified information, according to US media reports.
Democrats repeatedly referenced Mr Bolton in the Senate as they sought to pressure Republican senators to support calling him to testify. They also warned that the arguments by Mr Trump’s legal team had set a dangerous precedent.
‘Fringe theory’
Adam Schiff, the House intelligence chairman who is leading the Democratic impeachment effort, said Mr Dershowitz's argument was a "fringe theory" that endorsed the idea that "the president can abuse his power with impunity".
“Where that conclusion leads us is that a president can abuse his power in any kind of way and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said.
Mr Schiff told the Senate if they had any doubt about whether Mr Trump’s motives in asking Ukraine to investigate Mr Biden were corrupt or not, they should call Mr Bolton as a witness.
“There is a witness a subpoena away who can answer that question,” he said.
Mr Trump’s defence team responded that the time to call witnesses was during the House investigation that led to his impeachment, warning senators to stand firm lest they encourage more frequent impeachment probes in the future.
"If you make it way too easy to impeach a president, then this chamber is going to be dealing with that all the time," said Patrick Philbin, the deputy White House counsel.
Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said on Wednesday that his side was facing an "uphill struggle" to secure witnesses in the trial, suggesting White House pressure was working.
Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas, told reporters that if Mr Bolton were called as a witness, his side would call Hunter Biden, the former vice-president's son who held a lucrative seat on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.
Mr Trump took aim at Mr Bolton on Twitter, saying Mr Bolton had “begged” him for a job in the White House and was making “nasty & untrue” allegations in his manuscript. The US president later tweeted a clip of an interview by Mr Bolton on Ukraine, with the words “GAME OVER!”.
The ex-adviser did not respond directly to the president’s accusations on Wednesday but liked a tweet that referred to Mr Trump as “a moron”.
Democrats need 51 of the 100 senators to vote to call more witnesses in a chamber where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority. To convict Mr Trump and remove him from office, Democrats would need 20 Republican votes – a highly unlikely outcome.
Nevertheless, the testimony of Mr Bolton could be potentially damaging to the White House from an optics standpoint. It would also mean that Mr Trump’s impeachment trial would likely still be going on when he delivers his annual State of the Union address next Tuesday. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020