HOT HOT: Rand Paul Says Republicans May Shaft Trump During His Trial in the Senate

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

Will the Senate set President Trump during his trial in the Senate?

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that any witness will have to be approved by a majority of 51 senators and Senator Rand Paul is rasing a major alarm.

Rand explained to Cassandra Fairbanks that if there does end up being a vote for each individual witness, which could potentially be dozens, he believes that only the ones who are antagonistic to the president will get through. This means that “Hunter Biden, Joe Biden and the whistleblower may not pass a majority vote.” He said that if this is how witnesses are decided, the Senate will end up with a situation like the House did — a lopsided witness list that would be mostly people hostile to the president.

When asked by Fairbanks if he had any other specific witnesses in mind that he was looking to hear, besides Hunter Biden and the whistleblower, Rand said that “if they end up approving witnesses like Bolton, who I think are harmful, I will insist on a motion that says the president should get to call all witnesses that he or his team deem to be necessary to his defense.”

“I don’t want to limit it, I’m not his lawyer, I don’t want to tell him who he has to call — I’m just going to say anyone. ‘Anyone’ includes people he has mentioned, like Hunter Biden and Joe Biden,” he added.

Asked about what he believes is the motivation for his Republican colleagues who are defecting on the issue, Rand said that some of them think it would be a “distraction” and an “uncontrollable scenario with a lack of decorum.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “If they think that, then let’s have no witnesses. You can’t just have witnesses for one side and that is the point I am going to keep making both publicly and privately. It’s not fair to the president.”

“I also think there will be a political price to pay for this, even for Republicans running in purple states, there are strong pro-Trump presences in every purple state. It may not be 50% of the vote, but it’s a third of the vote or more. My guess is that those voters will not be too happy with the Republicans who vote to allow witnesses for the Democrats, but sits there and watches as witnesses the president would like to bring get voted down. I keep telling them it isn’t a threat coming from me, it’s me looking at the politics of this and saying look — you will lose your election.”

-RW