Sen. Rand Paul could force a vote on the Senate floor to allow Republicans to call Hunter Biden to testify in President Trump’s impeachment trial.
The Kentucky Republican said Thursday he’s considering forcing votes on motions that would allow the president to bring his own witnesses, according to Politico.
“I believe very strongly the president should be able to call his own witnesses,” Paul said Thursday. “The rules that are put forward will be amendable, so yes, I will consider strongly that the president should get his full due process, which to me means bringing in his own witnesses.”
Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father, Joe Biden, was put in charge of Ukraine policy while vice president.
The vote would need a majority of senators to pass and could be defeated if a few Republicans trying to appeal to independent voters sided with Democrats.
Paul has already called for the alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella to testify. Ciaramella was identified by RealClearInvestigations as the whistleblower, though the whistleblower’s identity has not yet been confirmed.
“I think Eric Ciaramella needs to be pulled in for testimony, and then I think it will be ultimately determined at that point,” Paul said earlier this week. “But I think he is a person of interest in the sense that he was at the Ukraine desk when Joe Biden was there when Hunter Biden was working for the Ukrainian oligarch. So simply for that alone, I think he’s a material witness who needs to be brought in.”
Ciaramella, 33, was Ukraine director on the National Security Council at the end of the Obama administration and was briefly acting senior director for European and Russian affairs in the early months of the Trump administration. He is now a deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia on the National Intelligence Council.
