As Senate Republicans appeared poised to dam witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial, Lev Parnas, a former affiliate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who performed a key position within the Ukrainian stress marketing campaign on the middle of the continuing, made a last-ditch bid to testify.
In a letter on Friday to Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the bulk chief, a lawyer for Mr. Parnas outlined an array of proof that he would possibly supply on the trial.
“Mr. Parnas would testify that always he was performing on the course of Mr. Giuliani, on behalf of his consumer the president, and that the president and various the folks in his administration and the G.O.P. have been conscious of the calls for being imposed upon Ukraine,” the lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, wrote within the letter, which was additionally despatched to Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority chief.
Whereas the letter didn’t element main new revelations, Mr. Bondy hinted at essential additions to the timeline of occasions surrounding the stress marketing campaign and the hassle to take away the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch.
The letter additionally highlighted what Mr. Bondy described as Mr. Parnas’s first-hand information of the occasions beneath scrutiny within the impeachment trial. That “private information,” he wrote, was “corroborated by bodily proof together with textual content messages, telephone data, documentary proof and journey data.”
Specifically, Mr. Bondy wrote, Mr. Parnas would testify that he labored alongside a “handful of Republican operatives” to take away Ms. Yovanovitch and unearth damaging details about the Bidens. He then listed various senior officers who he mentioned performed a job “on this plot,” together with the president, Vice President Mike Pence, the previous power secretary Rick Perry, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Legal professional Common William P. Barr and Senator Lindsey Graham.
The letter additionally referred to the stress the president appeared to be placing on John R. Bolton, the previous nationwide safety adviser and the witness most sought by Democrats.
The letter capped Mr. Bondy’s weekslong effort to current Mr. Parnas as a possible witness, at the same time as Mr. Parnas, a Soviet-born businessman from Florida and former Trump donor, faces prison fees in federal courtroom in Manhattan.
Whereas it appeared extremely unlikely that Mr. Parnas, or anybody else can be known as, Mr. Bondy concluded his letter with a ultimate attraction.
“We urge you to endorse voting in favor of calling witnesses and listening to proof, so senators could make a totally knowledgeable alternative within the president’s impeachment inquiry, based mostly upon all of the related info,” he wrote.
Consultant Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead Home supervisor, rose one ultimate time on Friday to attraction to a Senate that had already primarily made up its thoughts in opposition to him.
Vote for extra witnesses and paperwork, he implored them, or threat “lengthy lasting and dangerous penalties lengthy after this impeachment trial is over.”
Mr. Schiff’s warning to senators was threefold: First, he mentioned, it might set a harmful precedent for each future impeachment trial that witnesses and proof weren’t mandatory; second, the info about Mr. Trump’s stress marketing campaign on Ukraine will come out regardless; and third, Individuals will see that for the president, there’s a double commonplace of justice.
“The witnesses the president is concealing will inform their tales,” he mentioned. “And we shall be requested why we didn’t need to hear that info after we had the prospect. What reply lets give if we don’t pursue the reality now?”
Mr. Schiff related the trial to the enforcement of legal guidelines throughout the nation.
“Solely Donald Trump out of any defendant in America can insist on a trial with out witnesses,” he mentioned. “The significance of a good trial right here isn’t lower than in any courtroom in America. It’s higher than in any courtroom in America, as a result of we set the instance for America.”
Because the Senate marched towards the ultimate part of President Trump’s impeachment trial, a handful of Republicans coalesced round a typical place: Mr. Trump did what he was accused of — pressuring Ukraine to research his political rival — however shouldn’t be eliminated for it.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing fallacious with regard to Ukraine, calling his phone name with the nation’s president “excellent” and insisting that the impeachment inquiry was a “hoax.”
However at the same time as they have been poised to acquit him, a number of Republican senators have been rejecting that assertion, saying his actions have been fallacious and inappropriate — simply not grounds for the Senate to oust him.
Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of…