WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th January, 2020) Senator Lindsay Graham gave a strong indication that he plans to vote against calling any witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
"It is my opinion, based on the law and facts, that additional testimony is unnecessary in this case," Graham said in a press release on Wednesday. "For the sake of argument, one could assume everything attributable to John Bolton is accurate and still the House case would fall well below the standards to remove a president from office."
Graham was referring to a forthcoming book by Bolton, a former National Security Adviser, which reportedly details a conversation in which Trump linked US military aid for Ukraine to an agreement by Kiev to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's involvement in a corruption investigation involving his son, Hunter Biden, during the Obama administration.
The narrative that Trump traded aid for an investigation serves as the basis for Democratic attempts to remove the president from office.
Trump has denied doing anything wrong and has repeatedly said the impeachment is a hoax intending to remove him from office in order to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election.
Reports of the Bolton book have reinforced the narrative by energizing demands by Senate Democrats for witness testimony in the Senate impeachment trial, which Republicans had hoped to conclude without any new witness testimony
On Tuesday, Graham said he would support a subpoena to get a copy of Bolton's manuscript, adding that if the book is added as evidence, then the Bidens must be called upon as witnesses in the impeachment trial.
In Wednesday's release, Graham doubled down on the importance of Biden testimony, which Democrats have called irrelevant.
"It is clear to me that there is ample evidence for the President to be concerned about conflicts of interest on behalf of Hunter Biden and that Vice President Joe Biden's failure to take appropriate action was unacceptable," Graham said. "There is a mountain of evidence to suggest the Bidens' behavior was harmful to the United States."
Biden has admitted that as Vice President he threatened to withhold about $1 billion in US military aid to Ukraine unless the nation dismissed a prosecutor who was investigating a company that employed his son Hunter.
