Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead House manager in President Trump’s impeachment trial, said Sunday that the main strategy of the president’s defense team is to argue against calling witnesses to testify before the Senate and to “deprive the public of a fair trial.”
“I think they’re definitely afraid of what witnesses will have to say, and so their whole strategy has been deprive the public of a fair trial,” Schiff, a California Democrat, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “They don’t frame it that way, but that’s in essence, it. They have a very heavy burden, though, with that, because the American people understand what a fair trial is. A fair trial requires witnesses.”
The argument between the House managers and Trump’s defense team over calling witnesses has been a key battle in the impeachment trial.
Democrats want a number of key current and former Trump administration members to come before the Senate, including former National Security Advisor John Bolton, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and other key administration figures. Bolton has already voiced his willingness to testify.
While it seems unlikely that the House managers will get enough Republican support to get the witnesses to testify, Republicans have said that they would want to call Hunter Biden to testify. Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, was a member of the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company that Trump asked leaders in Kiev to investigate. – READ MORE