Inside the managers’ room, as Swalwell tried to call Greg Pence, Berke phoned [conservative lawyer and ally Charles]Cooper to see if he’d had any luck finagling permission for Marc Short to testify. Raskin, standing next to him, watched on tenterhooks — and saw his counsel’s face sink. Berke then passed the phone over so Raskin could hear the bad news for himself. Cooper had spoken to Pence’s attorney Richard Cullen: They were not going to cooperate voluntarily. In fact, Pence’s team planned to fight the subpoenas if they were summoned, Cooper said, and had refused to give a preview of what Short might say if called. That meant the managers would have little indication of whether his story was even worth pursuing.
“Don’t fuck this up by calling witnesses you might not get,” Cooper told Raskin candidly. “You have a good case right now…If I were you, I don’t think I’d want to risk the record you have… How does it get better? It sure as hell can get worse.”
Cooper’s words gave Raskin pause. The influential conservative lawyer was a partisan, but in that moment he was also their ally — and to date, he had been straight with them. If he thought they should drop this effort, maybe they should listen.
“Well, that came up . . . Short,” Raskin joked awkwardly, making the obvious pun with the elusive witness’s surname.
A few minutes later, Swalwell came back relaying his own deadend: Greg Pence hadn’t even answered his phone.
In the midst of the commotion, Senator Chris Coons walked through the door. The stocky lawyer from Delaware with a purposeful demeanor was a committed Democratic moderate known around the building as Biden’s closest ally in the Senate. Though he had just voted for witnesses, Coons couldn’t understand the logic of the managers’ gambit. And he was worried about the trial dragging out and hurting the new president. In fact, Trump’s defense lawyers, furious and blindsided by Raskin’s witness move, had vowed just before the vote that if Raskin called even one witness, they would seek to depose at least one hundred of their own, including Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris. That meant possibly hours of floor debate about which witnesses were relevant — and possibly days or weeks of testimony that could overshadow Biden’s presidency until late February or March. It was a threat that met its mark, as senators on the floor, including other Democrats who had just backed Raskin’s witness strategy, fretted about having to endure elongated proceedings. What’s more, Several Republicans had indicated to Coons that they were ready to convict the president — but if the trial spun out of control, there was no telling what might happen.
With those frustrations in mind, Coons had marched into Schumer’s office and demanded to know what the hell was going on. Schumer had permitted the vote, but he also was befuddled by Raskin’s move. He told Coons he didn’t know what Raskin’s game plan was. The Democratic leader was skeptical the ploy would work anyway. If running for their lives on Jan. 6 wasn’t enough to persuade Republicans to convict Trump, then it was hard to believe any other witness would, Schumer reasoned. Coons, who held a similar mindset, offered to go talk to Raskin’s team himself to shut the entire thing down. When Schumer gave him the nod, the senator headed to find the managers.
“I know when a jury is ready to vote, and this jury is ready to vote,” Coons declared when he entered the managers’ room.
As the team gathered around him, Coons argued that Republicans had already made up their minds and that calling witnesses was a waste of time. Democrats, he argued, had bigger fish to fry: Biden still needed the Senate to confirm most of his Cabinet, and he had a legislative agenda to get onto the floor.
“Dragging this out will not be good for the American project or for the American people. We’re trying to do a lot,” he said, choosing terms that sounded to the managers like they came straight from the White House. Coons floated a possible compromise: Have Herrera Beutler make a written affidavit detailing her story, Coons instructed. Then, let the defense get a statement from McCarthy and be done with it.
“I’m not taking that deal,” Raskin said flatly, stunned that Coons, as a fellow lawyer, would expect any prosecutor to entertain such unsavory terms. “No way are we allowing McCarthy to deny Herrera Beutler’s story without cross-examining him.”
But Coons was adamant. “You’re going to lose Republican votes,” he warned them. “Everyone here wants to go home. They have flights for Valentine’s Day. Some of them are already missing their flights.”
Berke jumped in, telling Coons the managers hoped to depose Herrera Beutler and McCarthy by video conference that very day. “Listen, Senator, we hear you on the delay,” he said. “But I have to tell you this is going to go quickly … And we can do closing arguments tomorrow.”
Coons was incredulous at Berke’s naïveté. “That’s nuts!” he shot back. McCarthy would never agree to testify before retaining counsel, he retorted. If they were lucky — and that was a big if — it would take days to depose the GOP leader, not hours.
“I encourage you all to just do affidavits,” Coons said sternly. “Do it today and reach a swift resolution.”
As he turned to leave, Coons added one more thing. “And just to be clear,” he said over his shoulder, “I’m here speaking only for myself.”
When the door closed behind him, the room broke into collective outrage.
“You have a good case right now . . . If I were you, I don’t think I’d want to risk the record you have . . . How does it get better? It sure as hell can get worse.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Cicilline said, turning to Neguse. “We are impeaching a president of the United States for inciting a violent insurrection against the government, and these motherfuckers want to go home for Valentine’s Day? Really?”
He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. The managers viewed their jobs as one of the most serious things they would ever do in their lives. And yet their own party was pressuring them so they could go enjoy the long weekend. How shortsighted. How repugnant. And how disrespectful.
It’s always “we don’t want to look in the rear view mirror.” Disrespectful indeed. Here we are still dealing with the fallout of that one.
