Rep. John Ratcliffe, on Trump impeachment defense team: ‘Short trial. No witnesses’

Rep. John Ratcliffe — a member of President Donald Trump’s impeachment team who said he has spent weeks working behind the scenes with White House lawyers — said Tuesday that while “it’s going to get ugly,” he expects a short Senate trial ending in a bipartisan acquittal for the president.

“The House Democrats had a weak case even on a slanted playing field where they made the rules, changed the rules and broke the rules to their advantage. On a level playing field it’s going to get ugly. I expect a short trial. No witnesses. An early acquittal for President Trump,” the Dallas Republican said in a Tuesday morning interview on “Fox and Friends.”

Republicans control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats. No Democrat has expressed support for acquittal. Sixty-seven votes would be required for removal.

President Donald Trump officially added the former interim U.S. attorney to his Senate impeachment trial defense team Monday night ahead of the presentation of arguments for and against removal from office, which begin this week.

“This impeachment fails. It fails factually. It fails legally. It fails constitutionally. This is going to be like killing a fly with a sledgehammer,” Ratcliffe said. “I think early on there’s going to be a motion to acquit president Trump, and I think that’s going to be supported on a bipartisan basis.”

Ratcliffe, 54, was a leading defender of Trump throughout the impeachment process, so much so that several Republican colleagues ceded their witness questioning time to Ratcliffe so he could ask his own questions.

“I was one of a few members involved in both phases of the impeachment inquiry before the House intelligence committee and House Judiciary Committee,” he said. “There’s a lot of information there so I’m going to continue to be as much of a resource for the president’s lawyers as I can be over this trial.”

Trump tried to bring Ratcliffe into his administration in August, planning to nominate him as Director of National Intelligence.

Trump changed his plan after critics raised questions about his qualifications for the job, and media reports found that the Texas representative had claimed to be more involved in terrorism investigations in his time as an interim federal prosecutor than he really had been.

“Our great Republican Congressman John Ratcliffe is being treated very unfairly by the LameStream Media,” Trump wrote then.

In the Tuesday interview, Ratcliffe did not discuss in detail the contents of the impeachment articles against Trump or outline the president’s factual defense of his actions. But he did decry the inquiry process as unfair to the president and expressed confidence in the trial’s outcome.

“There isn’t a witness you can call that can fix this process. There isn’t a witness you can call on either side that can inject fairness and due process into a process that had none,” Ratcliffe said, suggesting the president’s team would rather not call more witnesses.

This suggestion cuts to the heart of what has become the most significant dispute within the Senate of how the impeachment trial will be run.

A majority of senators is required to establish the rules of the trial, such as whether to hear witnesses.

Democrats want witnesses to be called to expand upon the evidence sent over with the House impeachment articles, including former National Security Advisor John Bolton who would not testify in the House without a court order but has said he would testify before the Senate.

Most Republicans, such as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, want to avoid this, saying it’s their job only to weigh the evidence already gathered just as jurors do in criminal trials. But several more moderate Republicans are considering joining the Democrats and voting to hear from more witnesses.

Cornyn told the Star-Telegram last week that Senate Republicans have agreed to a cease-fire on the issue of witnesses, delaying a final decision on the matter until after House Democrats have presented their evidence and the president offers his defense.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has taken a more combative stance on witnesses, proposing in a small group strategy meeting with Senate Republican leaders that if the Democrats want to hear from witnesses like Bolton, the White House should be able to call former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter or the whistleblower whose complaint started the inquiry.

Republicans want to force Hunter Biden to testify to ask him about his time on the corporate board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Critics say that Hunter Biden leveraged his powerful last name to get the position while his father was vice president. The impeachment inquiry began after reports that Trump pushed the Ukrainian president to investigate the Biden family regarding Hunter Biden’s spot on that board.

McConnell has laid out rules for a speedy trial that could wrap up before the State of the Union address Feb. 4. But if more witnesses start getting called, Cornyn said last week, the trial could drag on indefinitely.