Senate Republicans say they want to hear from former national security adviser John Bolton — but not necessarily at the impeachment trial.
Sen. Lindsey Graham from South Carolina wants Bolton to provide a manuscript for lawmakers to review in a classified setting. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said that Bolton should talk publicly about the claims in the book.
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“Just come forward. Tell the public what you know,” Johnson said Tuesday. “I think that actually would be a good thing. Without involving the trial.”
Bolton’s allegations surfaced Sunday night in the New York Times, which printed them after a source who read the manuscript leaked information to the newspaper.
Bolton claims in the book that Trump said he wanted to block security aid to Ukraine until the government promised to investigate the Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden.
Nobody in the Senate has seen the manuscript.
Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, first proposed the idea of giving senators an opportunity to read the manuscript in a classified setting in the Capitol.
Democrats have rejected the proposal.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, called it “an absurd proposal” and said there is no reason to put the manuscript in a classified setting “unless you want to hide something.”
The report of Bolton’s allegations jarred Senate Republicans, who were feeling more comfortable with the idea of ending the trial with a vote on the articles later this week.
Now, some Republicans feel pressured to find out more about Bolton’s claims.
Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said they want to hear from Bolton.
Romney said the book manuscript won’t be enough for him.
“I’d like to hear from John Bolton,” Romney told reporters Tuesday.
Murkowski said senators will “have to figure out,” how to learn more about Bolton’s charges.
The GOP senators will begin meeting Tuesday to discuss their plan.
The trial resumes on Wednesday with the first eight of the allotted 16 hours of time dedicated to written questions and answers.
By Friday, senators will have to vote on whether to call witnesses or proceed with votes on whether to convict the president of the two impeachment articles.
Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican of South Dakota, said it’s not clear how many of the 53 Senate Republicans will vote for witnesses.
It would require a vote of 51 senators to agree to call new witnesses and documents.
“It could be 50, or it could be 53,” Rounds said. “We really haven’t sat down and asked anybody to do that.”
Graham doesn’t support calling witnesses and warned that if the Senate votes to do so, it will have to include testimony from a long list of people sought by the GOP.
“If you call John Bolton, we are calling everybody. We are not just going to call one witness,” Graham said.
He told the Washington Examiner that the list would include Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, among others.
As for Bolton, Graham said, “They should have called him in the House,” during its portion of the impeachment proceedings.
Graham’s prediction on a big group of witnesses may be an effort to warn the GOP away from voting to have them at all.
Republicans control the majority and can, without any Democrats, vote to end the trial and vote to acquit the president.
A conviction is all but impossible since it would take 67 votes — that’s 20 Republicans, assuming all 45 Democrats and both independents voted to remove the president.
Republicans say they don’t believe there is any way the Senate would simply call Bolton as a witness without calling many others, and the trial would go on indefinitely.
“I just worry once you go down that path of opening the door,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, said. “It’s going to be a floodgate.”
