McConnell rejects 'desperate' request for impeachment witnesses in Senate trial

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected calls by Democrats to summon new witnesses in the upcoming impeachment trial.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, requested McConnell subpoena top Trump administration officials who had refused to testify before weekslong House impeachment proceedings. The list of requests includes former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

But McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said the Senate trial should weigh the evidence produced by the House and should not summon new witnesses. The witnesses are challenging House subpoenas in federal court, and those cases could take months to resolve. House Democrats decided to move ahead with impeachment rather than wait for the court to decide whether the witnesses should be compelled to testify.

“It is not the Senate’s job to leap into the breach and search desperately for ways to get to guilty,” McConnell said. “That would hardly be impartial justice. The fact that my colleague is already desperate to sign up the Senate for new fact-finding, which House Democrats themselves were too impatient to see through, well, that suggests that even Democrats who do not like this president are beginning to realize how dramatically insufficient the House’s rushed process has been.”

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