CNN host Jake Tapper pressed Rep. Eric Swalwell over House Democrats’ expectations for a Senate impeachment trial.
Swalwell, 39, appeared on CNN on Tuesday to discuss House Democrats’ attempts to force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the GOP majority in the upper chamber to call witnesses during an impeachment trial. Republicans such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio have slammed Democrats for trying to get witnesses that they refused to push for during the House investigation.
The congressman said that United States Chief Justice John Roberts, who will preside over the impeachment trial in the Senate, may rule that some witnesses’ testimony is relevant or essential. Democrats are pushing for former White House national security adviser John Bolton to testify in the Senate after they backed down from a court fight to force him to testify in the House.
“I guess I wonder just like what world you guys live in if you think that the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is going to get his robe dirty with the political tenor of this,” Tapper, 50, said, “or Mitch McConnell is going to feel in any way pressured to do the trial the way that House Democrats want to do it.”
“I understand you live in a world where you think things should be in a certain way, but that’s not the world that I live in,” Tapper said.
Swalwell responded that he hoped that each senator’s constituents would call the lawmakers and demand that the Senate assent to House Democrats’ demands.
“My hope is that they will be calling their senators and saying, in any trial when you have a witness who comes forward who has seen a lot, who called this Ukraine scheme a ‘drug deal,’ you should allow that person to testify,” Swalwell said.
