‘I need to hear his defense.’ NC Senate candidate calls for witnesses at impeachment trial
North Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham said President Donald Trump abused his power and wants to see a Senate impeachment trial with witnesses and documents.
“The evidence right now is very grave and very serious that he used the powers of his office to advance his personal campaign interests. That’s an abuse of power,” Cunningham told McClatchy in a phone interview Monday. “I need to hear his defense.”
Cunningham, a former state senator, an Army veteran and a lawyer who is now general counsel for waste reduction company WasteZero, is one of five candidates competing for the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat now held by Sen. Thom Tillis. Tillis is running for re-election in 2020.
Tillis has demanded that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi send the two articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial. He has repeatedly called on her to send them to the Senate or end the impeachment process.
The Democratic-controlled House passed two articles of impeachment accusing Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress on Dec. 19, more than three weeks ago. Pelosi indicated last week she would send the articles of impeachment to the Senate this week.
“Speaker Pelosi knows that House Democrats deliberately rushed through their impeachment process and produced a weak case against President Trump, which is why she is embarrassed to present their evidence to the Senate,” Tillis said in a statement last week.
On Monday, he sent a series of tweets about the delay, saying Pelosi “has held the Articles of Impeachment hostage.”
Some congressional Democrats have begun to publicly voice concerns with Pelosi’s strategy, but Cunningham did not, saying that “she shares my concern that we have a fair trial in the Senate.”
“North Carolinians know what a fair trial looks like. It includes witnesses. It includes documents. The president has said he would like to bring a defense, and I’d like to hear it. I can’t fathom how that happens without witnesses and documents,” Cunningham said.
Trump was impeached for allegedly pressuring Ukraine’s government to open an investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son and into the 2016 election by witholding congressionally approved aid for the nation, which is at war with Russia. He also blocked those in his administration from complying with House requests for documents and testimony.
Cunningham said he’s “deeply troubled” by the testimony in the House but wouldn’t say if he would vote to convict Trump if he were a senator.
Democratic state Sen. Erica Smith, who led Cunningham in a Fox News poll in November, said that she would vote to convict Trump. “If it were me, I would certainly vote for that,” she said in December, adding that she hoped Trump would resign before a divisive trial.
Cunningham mentioned former National Security Advisor John Bolton and current White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney as first-hand witnesses that he would like to hear from during the Senate trial.
Tillis said in early December that the whole process was “flawed” and that his position was a “definite no” on impeachment conviction. Asked if anything could change that, Tillis said, “It would have to be evidence that we have not seen or even heard of.”
The Senate could vote to convict or acquit Trump, or it could move to dismiss the charges against him. Trump previously said he wanted to mount a full defense, even saying he wanted to call the Bidens as witnesses. But on Monday, Trump pushed for a dismissal. He tweeted that holding a trial would give “the partisan Democrat Witch Hunt credibility that it otherwise does not have.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said last week that the Senate trial would begin without votes on witnesses or new evidence, indicating he had enough support within his Republican caucus to proceed.
Tillis told reporters on Capitol Hill that he supports starting the trial under the same rules as the 1999 trial for Bill Clinton. A vote to call witnesses came after opening arguments and written questions from senators.
Tillis said the House should have called the witnesses it wanted and taken the president and executive branch members to court to enforce subpoenas instead of rushing its impeachment process.
“I want to take the articles they’re about to send forth, and view it on the merits,” Tillis said in a Fox News interview on Friday. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time doing what I expected the House to do before they ever took the vote on the articles back in December.”
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This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 6:23 PM.
