John,
Last week I wrote to you about CREW’s discovery that the Senate called witnesses who had not testified in the House in every completed impeachment trial in the last century. However, impeachment dates back more than 200 years, and some records aren’t online, so we went to the Library of Congress to investigate further. It turns out that that the precedent of calling new witnesses goes back to America’s first completed impeachment trial in 1804. Read more about CREW’s discovery.
In the 1800s, summoning impeachment witnesses was no easy task: contacting witnesses involved handwritten letters, traveling to the trial meant riding there on horseback, and some witnesses even died before they could testify. Nevertheless, in Judge Pickering’s 1804 impeachment trial, the Senate brought in four new witnesses who did not testify in the House. In 1805, during Justice Chase’s trial, 50 new witnesses testified. Yet in 2020, calling even John Bolton seems to be beyond some senators. And they’ve got his phone number.
Senators should not break with more than 200 years of precedent for Trump’s impeachment trial. If the Senate could call new witnesses in the era of handwritten letters and horses, they can in an era where new evidence breaks on Twitter nearly every day.
With the recent news about John Bolton’s book manuscript providing additional evidence about Trump’s abuse of power, some senators have indicated they’re interested in hearing from him—and they need to hear from constituents encouraging them to vote in support of hearing from Bolton and other witnesses.
Sharing and asking your friends to email their senators will help build pressure on senators to support witness testimony—especially if your friends live in states with senators who don’t yet support hearing from witnesses. Share CREW’s Facebook or Twitter posts, or use our share tool to send a personalized email.
Together, we can keep fighting and make sure that President Trump gets a complete and fair trial.
Thank you,
Noah Bookbinder
Executive Director, CREW
