Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano suggested in a column on Thursday that Senate Republicans are suppressing the truth by not wanting witnesses to testify in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump.
“If the Senate is faithful to the Constitution, then Trump’s trial will be a search for the truth,” Napolitano wrote in the op-ed published on the conservative news network’s website, adding: “And those offering to tell the truth should be welcomed, not pilloried. How can the Senate be faithful to the Constitution if it suppresses the truth?”
Democrats need four Republicans to join them in voting to call witnesses, such as Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, who reportedly confirms the Democrats’ case against the president in his upcoming book. But Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-Tenn.) announcement Thursday that he will vote against allowing witnesses likely ensures that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will succeed in blocking witnesses.
Elsewhere in Napolitano’s piece, titled “Trump’s impeachment trial should hear from witnesses offering to tell the truth” ― the former New Jersey Superior Court judge called out Trump’s legal team for spurious arguments in defense of the president.
“The president’s lawyers have misrepresented the separation of powers by arguing that when Congress and the president are at loggerheads over congressional demands for documents or testimony, it becomes the duty of the Congress to turn to the courts,” he wrote, adding:
That is a general proposition of law, yet an incomplete one, as it does not apply in cases of presidential impeachment where the House has more than primacy — it alone has power. Stated differently, the president has no legal or constitutional basis to reject House subpoenas when the House is conducting an impeachment inquiry.
Napolitano last week argued there was “ample” evidence to remove Trump from office over his Ukraine misconduct.