Some House impeachment managers say calling witnesses wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome of former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial.
The U.S. Senate voted Saturday to acquit Trump of one article of impeachment. All Democrats and seven Republicans voted in favor of conviction in a 57-43 vote that fell short of the required two-thirds majority. Trump's acquittal was expected as convicting him would have required 17 Republicans and all Democrats to vote in favor.
"We could have had a thousand witnesses but that could not have overcome the kinds of silly arguments that people like (Senate Minority Leader Mitch) McConnell and (West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore) Capito were hanging their hats on," Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and lead impeachment manager, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
The vote marked the end of a relatively speedy trial that included arguments and evidence from impeachment managers and Trump's legal team on whether or not the former president was responsible for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when a mob in support of Trump stormed the building as lawmakers were certifying then-President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.
A week after the attack, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump on charges that he incited an insurrection — making him the first president to be impeached more than once. The Senate then held a trial on whether to convict him on those charges.
Before the trial wrapped up Saturday, House impeachment managers unexpectedly called to subpoena Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Republican from Washington state, who released a public statement late Friday confirming a phone call between Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy during the attack.
"When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol," Herrera Beutler wrote in the statement. "McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters.
"That's when, according to McCarthy, the president said: 'Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,'" she wrote.
The Senate voted 55-45 to allow witnesses — signaling the trial could have been drawn out.
But House managers and Trump's legal team agreed to allow Herrera Beutler's statement to be entered into the record as evidence without calling witnesses after Michael van der Veen, a member of Trump's legal team, said he would push to depose Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, if witnesses were called.
Now, some House impeachment managers have explained the decision not to call witnesses.
"I know that people have a lot of angst and they can't believe that the Senate did what they did," Stacey Plaskett, a Democrat from the U.S. Virgin Islands and one of the impeachment managers, told NPR. "But what we needed were senators, more senators with spines, not more witnesses."
She told NPR that managers had "no need" to call witnesses at that point because "as all Americans believed at that moment, the evidence was overwhelming."
Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania were the seven Republicans who voted in favor of convicting Trump.
After the trial, McConnell spoke on the Senate floor and said he believed Trump to be "practically and morally responsible for provoking" the attack but that the Senate did not have jurisdiction to convict Trump because he is no longer president.
Other Republicans and Trump's legal team had argued that trying a former president is unconstitutional, but Democrats maintained that they had precedent to support trying former officeholders. The trial opened Tuesday with debate on whether trying Trump was constitutional, and the majority of senators, including six Republicans, eventually voted that it was — allowing the trial to move forward.
Rep. Joe Neguse, a Democrat from Colorado and a House impeachment manager, told CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that witnesses wouldn't have changed the minds of the Republican senators who voted to acquit Trump based on the jurisdiction argument.
"Whether it was five more witnesses or 5,000 witnesses, it is very clear that the senators who voted to acquit on a technicality, which was the jurisdictional argument, that we had successfully defended early in the trial and actually had convinced a majority of the Senate, including Republicans, that the Senate did have presidential jurisdiction to move forward," he said.
He also told "Face the Nation" that the vote was historic.
"It was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in the history of our republic," he said. "Fifty-seven senators, including seven Republicans that you mentioned, chose country over party, looked at our facts objectively that we presented to them, considered the evidence and reached the same conclusion we did, which was that the president incited insurrection and we shouldn't lose sight of that."
Raskin told "Meet the Press" impeachment managers have "no regrets at all" about the trial.
"We left it totally out there on the floor of the U.S. Senate," he said.
