Dems set up senate trial strategy ahead of impeachment vote

Bloomberg

House Democrats are nearing one of the most important decisions in their effort to impeach Donald Trump: Who will bear the historic duty of prosecuting the president in next year’s Senate trial.
With the House planning to vote Wednesday on two articles of impeachment against the president, Democratic leaders including Speaker Nancy Pelosi must quickly settle on a team of so-called managers to present the case against Trump.
Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, who led the House investigation into Trump’s dealing with Ukraine, and Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, whose committee drew up the articles of impeachment, are expected to be named by Pelosi to the trial managers team, according to people familiar with the deliberations. The makeup of the team will influence the tone of the trial and, ultimately, help set the impression of the Democratic drive toward impeachment for voters as the 2020 election to determine control of the White House and Congress draws closer.
The managers are likely to be formally named on Wednesday, the day the lawmakers will vote on the two articles charging Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Members of the Judiciary Committee have been pushing to draw the impeachment managers exclusively from their panel — as was done by Republicans in the 1998 impeachment of Democratic President Bill Clinton. But multiple House Democratic officials said the group would include members of Schiff’s Intelligence panel.
Those selected will effectively become the faces of Trump’s impeachment for the Democratic Party and prominent targets for the president and his Republican allies.
That is especially true for Schiff. He’s been a particular focus of Trump’s wrath on Twitter and elsewhere.
Trump and some House Republicans have said Schiff should be called as a witness during the Senate trial over his staff’s interaction with the government whistle-blower who raised alarms over Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“The fact that the whistle-blower did have contact with my staff doesn’t make me a fact witness,” Schiff said on the “Fox News Sunday” program. But he added that some Republican members of Congress, having discussed the withholding of aid to Ukraine with Trump, could be considered witnesses, but during the House investigation, “We didn’t seek to call them. We’re not seeking to make a circus out of this.”
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, initially said he might call Schiff as a witness, but more recently has said he isn’t interested in demanding that other lawmakers testify. Fifty-one votes would be needed in the Senate to call any witnesses, and Graham along with other GOP senators have been saying they favor limiting the witness list and bringing the trial to a rapid conclusion.
“This thing will come to the Senate, and it will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly,” Graham told CNN. Among those likely to be named to the trial managers team is California Representative Zoe Lofgren. She served on the Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment hearings and was a member of the panel’s staff during the proceedings against President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 before articles of impeachment advanced to the House floor.