U.S. President Donald Trump continued to lash out at Democratic lawmakers over his impeachment Thursday as a legislative standoff continues over a Senate impeachment trial.
“The Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats said they wanted to RUSH everything through to the Senate because ‘President Trump is a threat to National Security’ (they are vicious, will say anything!), but now they don’t want to go fast anymore, they want to go very slowly. Liars!,” Trump write on Twitter.
The Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats said they wanted to RUSH everything through to the Senate because “President Trump is a threat to National Security” (they are vicious, will say anything!), but now they don’t want to go fast anymore, they want to go very slowly. Liars!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Dec. 19, 2019.On Monday, however, McConnell softened his position, saying Republicans have not ruled out calling witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial.
“We haven’t ruled out witnesses,” McConnell told “Fox & Friends.” on Monday. “We’ve said, ‘Let’s handle this case just like we did with President Clinton.’ Fair is fair.”
In addition to testimony from key witnesses, Schumer said Monday he also wants relevant emails and other documents that “will shed additional light on the administration’s decision-making regarding the delay in security funding to Ukraine.”
“It’s hard to imagine a trial not having documents and witnesses,” Schumer said, “If it does’nt have documents and witnesses, it’s going to seem to most of the American people that it is a sham trial. Not to get at the facts.”
Trump’s impeachment stems from a July call with Ukraine’s president in which Trump asked for an investigation into Joe Biden, a former vice president and a leading Democratic rival to Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has insisted he did nothing wrong in his push to get Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s lucrative work for a Ukrainian natural gas company. Trump had also called for a probe into a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.
Trump made the appeal for the Biden investigations at a time when he was temporarily withholding $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The U.S. president eventually released the money in September without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations, proof, Republicans have said, that Trump had not engaged in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal, the military aid in exchange for the Biden probe.
Trump has on countless occasions described his late July call with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” when he asked him to “do us a favor,” to investigate the Bidens and Ukraine’s purported role in the 2016 election. As the impeachment controversy mounted, Trump has subsequently claimed the “us” in his request to Zelenskiy referred not to him personally but to the United States.