Fox News anchor Chris Wallace warned President Trump against testifying in the impeachment proceedings against him, comparing the potential move to Prince Andrew testifying about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
On Monday, the president indicated that he would “strongly consider” providing congressional lawmakers with written testimony in the impeachment process after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested he was welcome to tell his side of the story, saying, “I like the idea.”
As the House Intelligence Committee began its third day of public impeachment hearings on Tuesday, Wallace weighed in on the possibility of presidential testimony, calling it “controversial and unwise.”
“This question of President Trump, and he did lay out the possibility that he was going to testify, I would think that would be akin to Prince Andrew testifying about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which one British critic said was like an airplane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami that set off a nuclear explosion,” he said. “It’s an entertaining thing, and it certainly has got us all talking, but my guess is it’s not going to happen.”
He added, “If it did, it would be a very controversial and unwise policy by the president.”
Pelosi was not the first Democrat to invite Trump to testify. Democratic Rep. Peter Welch told Republican Rep. Jim Jordan that Trump was welcome to testify during last week’s impeachment hearings, sparking laughter in the room.
In a BBC interview that aired over the weekend, Andrew discussed his friendship with Epstein. The royal said he was open to testifying under oath about his interactions with the deceased financier as well as allegations that he raped Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre three times.
“I’m like everybody else, and I would have to take all the legal advice that there was before I was to do that sort of thing,” the Duke of York said. “But if push came to shove and the legal advice was to do so, then I would be duty-bound to do so.”
Andrew’s interview was widely panned as a disaster, and his publicist even quit over the ordeal. Although he has not yet been called to testify, the United Kingdom’s Labour Party ordered him to turn over any evidence related to the FBI’s investigation into Epstein.
[Related: Chris Wallace: ‘If you were not moved by’ Yovanovitch’s testimony ‘you don’t have a pulse’]
