Carl Bernstein on Thursday pulled no punches as he picked apart the fading possibility that witnesses will be allowed to testify in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, calling it a “really shameful episode” in the country’s history.
The famed Watergate journalist accused Senate Republicans of conducting a “cover-up” of Trump’s Ukraine misconduct after Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said he’d vote against allowing witnesses. Democrats need four Republicans to back their demands for witnesses.
Bernstein told CNN’s Anderson Cooper:
They have covered up what the president of the United States has done in his grievous action when they had the ability to find out more and reach a bipartisan, as it were, decision if we could hear from the witnesses.
In video shared by Mediaite, Bernstein suggested that testimony from witnesses, such as Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, may actually exonerate the president.
“This is a cover-up, plain and simple,” he added, before warning of the long-term consequences:
And there has been no attempt throughout this proceeding by the Republicans in this Senate of the United States, the so-called world’s greatest deliberative body, which we now can see how deliberative it is, that we have seen now a really shameful episode in our history that is going to redound for many, many years.