Trump Defense Team to Close Arguments Complicated by Bolton Reports - The Wall Street Journal

President Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow, shown waiting to speak to the news media last week,... — President Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow, shown waiting to speak to the news media last week, on Monday sidestepped the allegations detailed in John Bolton’s manuscript. Photo: shawn thew/Shutterstock

Siobhan Hughes and

Siobhan Hughes

The Wall Street Journal

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@siobhanehughes
Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com

Rebecca Ballhaus

The Wall Street Journal

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@rebeccaballhaus
rebecca.ballhaus@wsj.com

Jan. 28, 2020 7:40 am ET

WASHINGTON—The White House legal team plans to close out its defense of President Trump in an abbreviated session Tuesday aimed at persuading the Senate to look past newly potentially incriminating disclosures and end the trial without hearing additional witnesses or evidence.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, the president’s personal lawyer, are each expected to speak for about 45 minutes, according to a person familiar with the plans. In total, the president’s team expects the session to last for only a couple of hours Tuesday, finishing well before the allotted time for opening arguments expires.

The defense team enters the day with the challenge of deciding which arguments to emphasize after reports surfaced that John Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, wrote in a draft book that Mr. Trump told him that he wanted to keep aid to Ukraine frozen until Kyiv had aided investigations into Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. The reports unsettled the Senate Republican conference, where GOP leaders mounted a rear-guard action to stem a growing willingness to subpoena Mr. Bolton to testify.

Democrats, who control 47 seats, need four Republicans to join them to approve motions for fresh testimony or previously unseen documentation. Sens. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) indicated on Monday that they were likely to favor witnesses. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) remained open, with Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) suggesting at a closed-door Senate lunch an arrangement in which the Senate subpoena Mr. Bolton as well as a witness sought by the White House.

The Senate decides whether to end the trial or gather more evidence later this week, after up to 16 hours of questioning the prosecution and defense, and as much as another four hours of debate on whether to subpoena witnesses or documents. If that hurdle is cleared, the Senate would then proceed to vote on whether to hear from Mr. Bolton, subpoena the notes he took during his tenure as national security adviser, and gather other information or hear from other witnesses.

On Saturday, the president’s team made arguments that the leaked manuscript by Mr. Bolton contradicts, namely that Mr. Trump didn’t explicitly condition aid on the announcement of investigations into Democrats. The team had cited a transcript of Mr. Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, noting that Mr. Zelensky repeatedly agreed with Mr. Trump, and showed video of the U.S. ambassador to the European Union saying he had only presumed that the security help for Ukraine depended on the announcement of investigations.