Hunter Biden must be called by Senate Republicans to testify in an impeachment trial of Donald Trump if House Democrats pass articles of impeachment against the president, said Tony Sayegh, White House senior adviser for strategy, in a Monday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
Sayegh spoke of the White House’s preparations for a possible Senate impeachment trial of the president.
“We’ve made clear, if the Democrats are foolish enough to vote on articles of impeachment out of the House, we are prepared for a Senate trial,” Sayegh said. “We welcome a Senate trial, and the White House has also made clear that you have to call, certainly, the whistleblower. What were his dealings with Adam Schiff and Adam Schiff’s office? Was there witness tampering there?”
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Sayegh recalled how Mark S. Zaid, the attorney representing “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, tweeted in 2017 that the “coup has started,” adding that “impeachment will follow ultimately.”
“We have to remember, the whistleblower’s attorney, soon after the president’s inauguration, declared that he was going to start a coup, so is this part of a larger orchestrated event that his attorney suggested?” asked Sayegh.
Marlow asked who the White House wishes to subpoena for testimony in the event of a Senate impeachment trial of the president.
Sayegh replied, “We need to make sure we talk to Hunter Biden, who’s at the center of, obviously, the conflict with Burisma, and that’s an important part. We can talk to Adam Schiff, who’s appointed himself judge, jury, and executioner in this endeavor.”
Democrats and their political allies are framing challenges to the status quo of U.S. foreign aid as an impeachable offense on the part of the president, observed Sayegh.
“It’s very routine for us to evaluate our foreign aid commitments, and it’s especially critical and in fact an obligation of the president to make sure countries who are receiving [U.S. foreign aid] are meeting certain standards,” noted Sayegh. “In the case of Ukraine, even their biggest advocates and enthusiasts who’ve testified these last two weeks have admitted this is a country with a serious history of corruption and that there was very legitimate concerns about corruption on the part of the president.”
The president has a duty to prevent taxpayer dollars from being lost to corruption abroad via foreign aid, explained Sayegh.
“So for [Donald Trump] to tie … not just aid, [but] military assistance — $400 million of military assistance that had never been given to them by prior administration — he wanted some satisfaction that they were taking important steps to curb and combat corruption,” Sayegh remarked.
Sayegh went on, “The other piece of this that doesn’t get any real coverage is the fact that the president has been very consistent that he wants to see our European allies [share the burden] when it comes to aiding other countries that they have a vested interest in securing, like Ukraine.”
U.S. foreign aid must not be an unconditional “blank check,” noted Sayegh.
“Another perfect example of the president’s thinking [on U.S. foreign aid] is [his approach to] the commitment of our NATO allies in giving part of their resources to supporting NATO. Now, [Donald Trump] is the first American president to really challenge [NATO] member countries, and he got over $100 billion in extra NATO funding from European allies because he challenged this idea that the United States keep signing a blank check.”
Sayegh added, “We have to really put aside this ridiculous idea that questioning our aid and reevaluating our foreign aid is in any way, manner, or form something the president deserves impeachment over.”
The “establishment bureaucracy” and “foreign policy establishment” have coalesced in opposition “against a very disruptive president who’s going to put America First and not just continue giving blank checks to foreign nations,” concluded Sayegh.
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