Senator Doug Jones of Alabama Calls for Deescalation on Iran and a ‘Fair and Complete’ Impeachment Trial Showing the American People the Full Picture –

By Glynn Wilson –

It’s time to take down those Christmas decorations and for Congress to get back to work in Washington, and there’s significant work to be done.

It looks like we are on the verge of a full blown war with Iran, and the Trump administration is moving forward without involving Congress, as required by law. The president is already trying to call his ill-conceived assassination of Iran’s Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani a “victory” on television, Twitter and the campaign trail in Ohio — in spite of retaliatory strikes on an American military base in Iraq and more retaliation to come, according to reporting by the New York Times and other news outlets, links I shared on Facebook and Twitter.

The House and Senate are working on resolutions to require the president to consult with Congress, which holds the ultimate power to declare war according to the Constitution, along with the duty to allocate the money for any such war.

Then there is the coming impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump, an affair which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell still seems hell-bent on turning into a partisan fast-track acquittal for Trump, so this president can run another victory lap into the 2020 presidential election.

Much of the partisan, tit-for-tat debate in Washington has been focused on whether new witnesses and documents should be included in the trial, which would seem like a no-brainer to any first year law student. But this is Washington we are talking about, and Trump, who clearly doesn’t understand or respect the law, at least according to his rhetoric.

His first political instinct to threaten Iran was to vow an attack on Iran’s “cultural sites,” which of course would constitute a war crime under international law. He did walk back on that position, but the damage had been done. It not only fired up his radical right-wing base, who also seem to have no respect for the law or long-standing, mainstream American values and cultural norms, according to their comments on social media. It also worked to inflame tensions with Iran even more, further driving moderates in that country sympathetic to the West to join forces with the Muslim regime in denouncing the U.S. president and calling for revenge.

In his opening statement in a press call on Thursday, U.S. Senator Doug Jones of Alabama said the top priority with the turmoil now going on in the Middle East “should be the safety of American troops and our citizens.”

Jones said Republicans are wrong when criticizing Democrats for mourning the killing of Suleimani.

“That is absolutely not true, period,” he said. “He is responsible for the murder of untold numbers of people including Americans and the world is a safer place without him.”

But with tensions increased by the way, place and timing of the Trump administration’s action of using a drone strike at Baghdad International Airport to take him out, and Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, the Senator called for calm.

“I was encouraged by the president’s speech (on Wednesday) in that he did not make an effort to escalate tensions with Iran, and seemed to do his best to deescalate (the conflict),” Senator Jones, the Democrat from Alabama, said.

He wants to hear more about the administration’s long-term goals in dealing with Iran and the Middle East, he said, to the extent that the administration has a plan other than bellicose comments on Twitter.

According to a column by former Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry in the New York Times on Thursday, it is obvious and clear that this administration doesn’t have a strategy or a plan, other than to try to weaken Iran and use it as a whipping post to appease Israel, Saudi Arabia and appear “tough” to the world and Trump’s base.

John Kerry: Trump Played Into Suleimani’s Hard-Line Strategy

Senator Jones said he will give the administration “the benefit of the doubt” that they have a plan and a strategy, but he wants to hear more about what that might be. Jones advocated House and Senate efforts to urge the administration to consult with Congress “before initiating any further military action.”

The House passed a resolution to that effect on Thursday, and a similar proposal is working its way through the Senate.

On Impeachment

There would seem to be a simple solution to conducting “a fair and complete trial with all relevant evidence” on impeachment, as some Senators have called for, including Senator Jones.

Any senator could introduce an amendment at the outset of debate on approving the rules for the trial to require calling witnesses and introducing documents, and it would only take a simple majority of 51 votes to approve the amendment to the proposed rules.

But when I asked Senator Jones about this in the press conference call on Thursday, he said McConnell has indicated he already has the votes to quash such a move.

“Senator McConnell has announced that he has the votes, without sitting down with Senator (Chuck) Schumer, (Democratic Minority Leader), to talk about this … to proceed with rules that will allow the presentation of evidence, questions from the Senate, and then taking up the question of witnesses,” Jones said. “I hope that will not be too late.”

He said the Senate needs to hear from witnesses like John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser who recently announced that if subpoenaed, he would be willing to testify “and everyone else who has first hand information.”

That would include Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who we learned after the fact was in on the phone call to the president of Ukraine after he denied knowledge of it. It would also include Trump’s acting chief of staff Michael “Mick” Mulvaney, who was also in on the call and the plan to withhold military aid to Ukraine in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into former Vice President Joe Bidon’s son.

When I asked Senator Jones about this in the call, he confirmed that it could be done.

“Yes … and I’m sure that will be done,” he said. “But based on what I’m hearing from the Republican caucus right now that’s going to be defeated. Senator McConnell has spent the last couple of weeks whipping his votes. So the initial one will be defeated, but I’m certainly not going to give up.”

All it would take is four Republican Senators to join the 45 Democrats and two independents to get a majority of 51 votes. And according to reporting even by the Associated Press, there are a few Republicans who have expressed dismay with the process as pitched by McConnell, including Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Martha McSally of Arizona.

That’s not to mention Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, who has so far kept his powder dry on impeachment, and not said a word on how he will vote one way or another.

Most people in Alabama and national pundits assume Shelby will side with Trump, but he told me as the only reporter to ask him about it: “I’ve been through that before,” he said. “I’ll be sitting on the jury on that.”

His defiant tone didn’t sound to me like someone who has already made up his mind in a partisan way to vote to acquit Trump without a full and complete trial. He is a lawyer, after all, and perhaps if enough constituents contacted him about this he might vote on an amendment to the rules to allow witnesses and documents.

Romney, a freshman senator who is popular in a conservative state where Trump is not so popular, still has presidential ambitions after winning the Republican nomination in 2012 but losing to President Barack Obama. He could benefit from Trump’s removal from office and might have a chance at stepping in as the Republican nomineee in 2020. He has openly criticized Trump for his comments urging Ukraine and China to investigate Biden.

On Monday evening he did say he wants Bolton to testify, but stopped short of calling for him to be subpoenaed, according to previous reporting.

“I would like to be able to hear from John Bolton,” Romney told reporters on Capitol Hill. “What the process is to make that happen, I don’t have an answer for you.”

Romney is the first Republican senator to openly call for Bolton’s testimony, something Democrats have sought for days.

Perhaps with enough constituent pressure, Romney and others could be convinced to vote for the amendment.

Collins is a four-term senator who has indicated she is open to calling witnesses as part of the impeachment trial but calls it “premature” to decide who should be called until evidence is presented.

“It is inappropriate, in my judgment, for senators on either side of the aisle to prejudge the evidence before they have heard what is presented to us,” Collins told Maine Public Radio.

Senators must swear a separate oath to render “impartial justice” during an impeachment trial, she said, which is an oath that “should be taken seriously.”

She is running for reelection in 2020 to another six year term, and is considered one of the most vulnerable Republican senators. She has faulted Democrats and Republicans for prejudging Trump’s guilt or innocence.

“There are senators on both sides of the aisle, who, to me, are not giving the appearance of and the reality of judging (this) in an impartial way,” she said.

Murkowski is a key Senate moderate in her fourth term who has voted against the Republican leadership on several occasions, including opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018. She told an Alaska television news station recently that there should be distance between the White House and the Republican-controlled Senate in how the trial is conducted.

“To me it means that we have to take that step back from being hand in glove with the defense, and so I heard what leader McConnell had said (about consulting with the White House on the rules), (and) I happened to think that that has further confused the process,” she said.

She has said the Senate is being asked to cure “deficiencies” in the House impeachment process, especially when it comes to whether key witnesses should testify, including Mulvaney and Bolton.

“How we will deal with witnesses remains to be seen,” she said, adding that House leaders should have gone to court if witnesses refused to appear before Congress.

The House decided not to take that step, since it could have taken many months for those issues to be resolved in court.

McSally is another vulnerable Republican seeking election this fall after being appointed to the seat after Senator John McCain died. She has called impeachment “a serious matter” and said she hopes her constituents would want her to examine the facts without partisanship. The people “want us to take a serious look at this and not have it be just partisan bickering going on,” she told The Arizona Republic.

Gardner, like Collins, is a vulnerable senator up for reelection in a state where Trump is not popular. Gardner has criticized the House impeachment effort as overly partisan and fretted that it will sharply divide the country.

Senator Jones, who every pundit in the land is calling “the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate” in his 2020 reelection bid, has been quoted extensively on the issue by many news organizations.

While not taking a stand on impeachment until he hears all the evidence, his comments on ABC News about possibly voting to find Trump not guilty “if all the dots are not connected” were reported far and wide. We reported them here.

In Thursday’s conference call, Senator Jones said those words were taken out of context and might not be the best way to describe the situation and accurately report what he means.

In a video posted this week on Twitter, the former U.S. attorney, prosecutor and defense attorney describes a trial as putting together a puzzle to produce a picture. At the end of a trial there might be pieces of the puzzle missing, he said, but “you still see the picture. If enough of those pieces are put there together, you can see the picture. If there are not enough of those pieces, and you don’t see the picture, then the verdict has to be according to that.”

In other words, if there are missing key witnesses and documents, he might vote to find Trump not guilty in this trial, since the picture is incomplete.

One of the reasons the House apparently decided to keep this set of impeachment articles tightly focused on the Ukraine episode, as opposed to throwing the entire kitchen sink of abuses at Trump — something I have not seen discussed in any other news outlet — is a legal concept known as double jeopardy. If this trial doesn’t work to remove Trump, the House would not be able to impeach him again on these charges related to Ukraine, but could later bring up other charges to try to remove Trump from power, such as violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, even if he wins reelection.

In the Twitter video, Jones called a comparison to the Clinton impeachment “a red herring,” which according to William Safire’s political dictionary and other sources is something that is “misleading or distracting.”

“Republicans on the one hand criticize Democrats for not being complete and not being fair,” he said. “They say the president didn’t have an opportunity to participate.

“But in a Senate trial, we’re going to be very fair to the president,” he said. “He will have lawyers there. He will have the ability to question witnesses. And so therefore, these witnesses need to come forward and testify. We know that their testimony is needed. We know there are gaps in the evidence. (But) that doesn’t mean evidence is insufficient.”

For the public to have confidence in the outcome he said, “The American people need to see the full picture. They need to see a picture that has as many pieces of that puzzle as possible.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “that’s not what Republicans and Mitch McConnell seem to want to do at this point. They seem to want to barrel on through and simply accept an incomplete trial. And that’s incomplete truth.”

Folks, prior impeachment trials set no precedents regarding rules and procedure. Unlike during the Clinton investigation, Pres. Trump has blocked witnesses and documents. We shouldn't compare the two or adopt the same rules. pic.twitter.com/shxjjVqZg9

— Archived: Senator Doug Jones (@SenDougJones) January 8, 2020

In the conference call, Jones said Senators generally know what the evidence is already.

“I think all the senators have been reviewing evidence from the House. We know there are people with first-hand information that have been blocked from testifying. If we hear evidence from the (House impeachment) managers and the president’s defense, I’m still going to be pushing for witnesses at some point,” he said. “So I think there will be a second opportunity once we get into this trial with the Chief Justice presiding, and it will require a (simple) majority vote.”

Story updated Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.