JUNEAU,
Alaska (AP) — Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she’s comfortable
waiting to decide if more information is needed as part of the Senate’s
impeachment trial until after hearing arguments from House managers and
attorneys for President Donald Trump and questions from members.
The
Republican said Saturday she wants to make sure there’s a process that
allows senators to “really hear the case” and ask questions “before we
make that determination as to, what more do we need. I don’t know what
more we need until I’ve been given the base case.”
Murkowski spoke to reporters from Anchorage ahead of Senate impeachment trial proceedings expected to begin Tuesday.
If
Democrats try to add certain witnesses to an organizing resolution,
Murkowski said she expects Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would
move to table such a request and that she would support a tabling
motion.
“Because
what I’ve worked hard to do is make sure that we have a process that
will allow for that determination” — whether witnesses or documents are
needed, she said. “But I want to have that at a point where I know
whether or not I’m going to need it.”
She
said there are political pressures “on all of us” but said her
responsibility is “not to focus on the politics of where we are but a
recognition that we are in the midst of an infrequent and in many ways
extraordinary process that the Constitution allows for, and I’m going to
take my constitutional obligations very, very seriously.”
Regardless
of how one views the House’s handling of the impeachment process, the
matter is now before the Senate, she said, adding later she does not
want the proceedings to become a “circus.”
Trump
was impeached by the House on charges he abused his power by pushing
Ukraine to investigate his Democratic political rival Joe Biden and that
he obstructed Congress by blocking witnesses and testimony in the House
investigation. Trump has said he did nothing wrong.
Murkowski
said a recent Government Accountability Office report that concluded
the White House violated federal law by withholding congressionally
approved security aid to Ukraine reminded her of last year’s debate over
Trump’s declaration of a border emergency that he invoked to spend more
for border barriers than Congress had approved.
During
that debate, she said she maintained the president could not take funds
congressionally directed to one area and use them to advance his own
policies. “Whether it was for the wall or for any other thing, I have
been one that has said, ‘Congress has a very specific role when it comes
to appropriation of funding and that needs to be respected,’” she said.
She said she
viewed the GAO report with a “little bit of concern,” in part because of
the need to respect Congress’ appropriation powers.
In
a telephone interview Friday with the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska’s
other Republican U.S. senator, Dan Sullivan, said he supports using the
same rules as the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s,
which Sullivan said would give Trump a “fair and balanced” process.
Under those rules, he said, the determination of whether or not to bring
witnesses would happen in the second phase.
“I
think this is going to be a stark contrast to what happened over in the
House where you literally witnessed the most rushed most partisan and
unprepared impeachment proceedings in the House in U.S. history,”
Sullivan said.
