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Editorial: Senate witnesses key to serious conduct of impeachment trial

In remarks bringing to a close the Republicans' defense of President Donald Trump against impeachment, President Donald Trump's attoreny Jay Sekulow offered this telling question: "Are you going to allow proceedings on impeachment to go from a New York Times report about someone that says what they hear is in a manuscript?"

Of course, no serious, consequential inquiry into the behavior of a president or any other person should be based on such a loose framework. That's precisely why the Senate ought to be calling witnesses as part of its impeachment inquiry, beginning with former national security adviser John Bolton, whose forthcoming book "The Room Where It Happened" was the subject of Sekulow's question.

Nor is Bolton the only witness the Senate should be putting under oath and cross examining. Throughout their defense of the president, Sekulow and other members of the White House legal team, have repeatedly referred to statements of witnesses from the House impeachment hearings as well as other venues to make their case that the complaints about the president's actions in his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy amount to policy differences, not executive wrongdoing. But the Senate, the forum that Trump co-counsel Kenneth Starr said has "a special responsibility" as "the world's greatest deliberative body" to act as "a court," has not heard from those witnesses, nor had the opportunity to question or challenge them.

That is an unfortunate abdication of the body's responsibilities.

No one can doubt that presidential impeachment, embedded though it is in the United States Constitution, is as much a political as a legal process. It has been so during each of the previous impeachments, including that of the openly abusive Andrew Johnson and the near-impeachment of Richard Nixon. But it is nonetheless a process with tremendous consequences. It ought to be taken seriously and cannot be taken seriously if the "evidence" on which it is based comes entirely from from documents - official or otherwise - social media posts, news reports and disputed interpretations of people's words.

Indeed, in his remarks, Sekulow specifically described the role of the House managers as to present "selective" evidence supporting their claim. Then, he said, it is the defense team's responsibility to present "a fuller view" to fill in "what we thought were the glaring omissions" in the House case. And yet, in the Senate impeachment trial, the most glaring omission of all - the one that offers the best hope of determining whether the issue at stake is, as the president's team would characterize it, a policy dispute or, as the House managers claim, presidential abuse of power - is the appearance of witnesses who were "in the room" when certain decisions were made.

The president's defenders have warned against the frivolous initiation of efforts to remove a president, and we share their concern. But it's also true that once undertaken, an impeachment is serious business, and to dismiss it as otherwise threatens to assure that no future impeachment will ever be taken seriously, however justifiable, as long as the subject of the proceedings can build a strong and loyal coalition.

That, too, is an ominous consideration for our democracy. The Senate should not be dawdling over whether to call witnesses, but hastening to get them scheduled.

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