Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) tried to convince the Senate on Wednesday that it had to subpoena more witnesses and documents because it could not “rely on what was investigated in the House.”
Schiff’s odd argument appeared to admit that the House investigation was insufficient, even as fellow House impeachment manager Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) claimed that the impeachment case had already been “proven beyond any doubt at all.”
Schiff claimed that it would be unprecedented to hold a Senate trial without witnesses. However, he denied all Republican requests for new witnesses in the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs — which was also unprecedented.
The House managers faced off against the White House legal team in the first of two day-long marathon question-and-answer sessions, in which Senators from both parties asked questions that exceeded ninety in all.
Schiff and his team repeatedly stressed the need to call former National Security Adviser John Bolton. But Republicans noted that Schiff did not want to have the so-called “whistleblower” testify, and had hidden a key transcript that could reveal details about how the complaint against the president had been launched.
When asked why the Senate should call more witnesses and documents if the House Intelligence Committee would not release the testimony of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, Schiff dodged the query, saying that whatever deficiencies the House may or may not have brought to the Senate were not “sufficient to relieve the Senate of the obligation to have a trial.”
The question-and-answer session will resume in the Senate at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday. A vote on witnesses is expected Friday.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.