President Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly criticized the Senate’s likely decision not to call any additional witnesses in the impeachment trial, calling it “a job only half done.”
“In my view, they kind of leave themselves open to a lot of criticism,” Kelly, 69, said in an interview with NJ Advance Media.
“It seems it was half a trial,” he added.
The retired Marine Corps general cited polling to back his stance. A Quinnipiac University poll released this week found three-quarters of U.S. voters supported calling witnesses.
“If I was advising the United States Senate, I would say, ‘If you don’t respond to 75% of the American voters and have witnesses, it’s a job only half done,” he said. “You open yourself up forever as a Senate that shirks its responsibilities.”
Kelly said earlier this week he believed former national security adviser John Bolton’s allegations that Trump withheld security aid to Ukraine to pressure the country into investigating 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden.
Bolton, 71, made the allegations in his forthcoming book, which the White House asserted contains classified information. Kelly said Bolton was “a copious note-taker” and “an honest guy and an honorable guy.”
Kelly was Trump’s chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019. His time in the White House overlapped with Bolton’s for about nine months.
Kelly also recommended that Trump invite leaders of both parties to the White House once the impeachment trial concludes.
“If I was there, I’d recommend the president have leadership over and say, ‘OK, now that this is behind us, let’s talk,’” Kelly said. “We can maybe take a breath over the weekend and make a commitment to each other. It would be such a wonderful outreach.”
He acknowledged, however, that such outreach was “unlikely to happen” given the proximity of the presidential election.
