On Monday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) stated that while she won’t make a final judgment on which witnesses, if any, she wants to call in the Senate’s impeachment trial, doing “investigative work” is not the Senate’s job, and the House had the opportunity to bring in former National Security Adviser John Bolton as a witness and didn’t.
Ernst began by saying, “I have said time and time again, regardless of who the witness is, what the situation was, we need to get through phase one first.”
She added that the House “had every opportunity to subpoena these witnesses. They could have taken the time to go through the court system. They chose not to do that. They were in such an all-fired hurry to get this impeachment process done by Christmas and move it over to the Senate, you know, whenever they chose the appropriate time, I guess. But you know, they want us to do the investigative work. And that’s not the job of the Senate. It is the job of the House to put together a solid record to send to the Senate for a review. They obviously did not do that, but we’ll, again, determine, after we’ve gone through the next several days what that next step will be, will we bring in witnesses or not.”
Ernst further stated, “I think the opportunity that they had, and I would go back to that, because John Bolton would have been someone working very closely with the president. Why did they choose not to bring him in, have him interviewed? Why did they make that choice in the House? Whether the book is out there or not, they could have asked these same questions. So, that would be my argument, is that they had the opportunity to bring him in, they chose not to do it. Now, why did they choose not to do it? They will have to explain that. But again, I will reserve my judgment until after I’ve heard from, of course, the White House Counsel.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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