A key Republican senator defended his decision not to support calling additional witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial, saying Trump’s actions were “a long way from treason.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee conceded that Trump’s decision to delay almost $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to force the country to investigate the Bidens was “wrong” but doesn’t warrant removal from office.
“I think he shouldn’t have done it. I think it was wrong,” Alexander told NBC’s Meet the Press in an interview that aired Sunday.
“I think what he did is a long way from treason, bribery, high crimes, and misdemeanors. I don’t think it’s the kind of inappropriate action that the framers would expect the Senate to substitute its judgment for the people in picking a president,” he added.
Trump has repeatedly said his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect,” but revelations in recent months made it harder for Republicans to argue Trump did not cross the line. Even so, most Republicans said they would not support Trump’s removal.
An unpublished manuscript from former national security adviser John Bolton claimed Trump tied the freeze of aid to Ukraine’s willingness to investigate 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father was vice president. Bolton’s forthcoming book undermines the Trump legal team’s claims that the two were not connected.
Alexander, 79, said he would have made the same decision in Trump’s impeachment trial even if it weren’t an election year.
“You know, it struck me, really for the first time, early last week, that we’re not just being asked to remove the president from office. We’re saying, ‘Tell him he can’t run in the 2020 election, which begins Monday in Iowa,’” the retiring senator said.
