Murkowski: Why are House managers pushing us into a legal battle they refused?

[mystery-ak]

Murkowski: Why are House managers pushing us into a legal battle they refused?

Ed Morrissey Posted at 9:21 am on January 24, 2020

Will executive privilege confound House prerogative? As the impeachment presentment rolls into its third day on the Senate floor, the one message that gets beaten into the ground by each House manager is the need to call witnesses who didn’t testify before the House. Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler declined to pursue witnesses like John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney because they didn’t want to get slowed down by a court fight over executive privilege.


Senate Republicans are asking themselves why they shouldn’t make the same choice the House did:

    A growing number of Republicans are pointing to President Donald Trump’s threat to invoke executive privilege in order to make their case against subpoenas sought by Democrats for key witnesses and documents, a development that could bolster Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s goal of a swift end to the impeachment trial.

    GOP senators are privately and publicly raising concerns that issuing subpoenas — to top officials like acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton and for documents blocked by the White House — will only serve to drag out the proceedings. Plus, many say there’s little appetite for such a time-consuming fight, given that legal battles may ultimately not be successful and could force the courts to rule on hugely consequential constitutional issues about the separation of powers between the branches of government.

    McConnell has little margin for error since it would take just four Republican defections to join with 47 Democrats in order to issue a subpoena. But his increased warnings that subpoenas could prompt an “indefinite” delay in the trial and get tied up in the courts have been gaining traction within his conference, GOP senators and aides told CNN.

more
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/01/24/murkowski-house-managers-pushing-us-legal-battle-refused/

[skeeter]

That’s encouraging.

[PeteS in CA]

Further down in the linked article:

In any configuration, Schumer would have to get Lisa Murkowski to vote for a subpoena, being the most independent-minded Republican senator in the caucus. Murkowski had kept her cards close to the vest on this question, but after two days of the House managers’ arguments, she’s sounding a very skeptical note on their demands:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has been seen as a swing vote, appeared wary of a legal fight, characterizing House Democrats as trying to get the Senate to go through a legal battle they bypassed.

“It’s kind of like the House made a decision that they didn’t want to slow things down by having to go through the courts,” she said. “And yet now they’re basically saying you guys need to go through the courts. We didn’t but we need you to. That’s kind of where we are.”

If Murkowski was the Dems' best hope, the others R Senators they were hoping for are probably even less likely to give life to the House's shampeachment charade.