Sen. Lindsey Graham does not believe any senators will vote to compel testimonies from current and former White House officials in President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.
Joining Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures, the South Carolina Republican told host Maria Bartiromo he doesn’t expect to hear from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney or former national security adviser John Bolton during the trial, which is expected to begin in January, because the Trump administration has invoked executive privilege for them and other officials.
“The president is invoking executive privilege around Mick Mulvaney, John Bolton, and others,” Graham said. “They’ve impeached him because he wanted to go to court.”
When asked if he thinks any senators will vote to compel testimony from those witnesses, he said, “No, I don’t.”
“If you call these witnesses who work for the president after he’s invoked executive privilege … if you deny him his day in court, then you’re abusing the constitutional rights of Donald Trump as president, and you’re putting the entire presidency at risk,” Graham explained. “I can’t imagine any senator doing this to the presidency … I hope the senators will not vote to compel witnesses before the court determines whether or not there’s executive privilege.”
Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, have requested that Mulvaney and Bolton be called as witnesses in Trump’s Senate trial. Republican leaders in the upper chamber, however, have signaled that they’d prefer a trial in which no witnesses are called to testify. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also publicly rejected Schumer’s demand.
Mulvaney and Bolton, along with a handful of other White House aides, were both requested by House lawmakers to testify in their impeachment investigation, but the administration blocked them from doing so, citing executive privilege.
