Push to Call Witnesses Throws Trump’s Impeachment Trial Into Doubt

WASHINGTON — The Senate barreled on Saturday toward acquitting Donald J. Trump for a second time, after the final day of his impeachment trial briefly dissolved into chaos when House prosecutors made, then dropped, a surprise demand for witnesses who could reveal what the former president was doing as the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol unfolded.

In an unexpected vote, the Senate agreed to allow new evidence, but it threatened to prolong the trial by days or weeks without changing the outcome, and in a head-spinning move, the House managers quickly abandoned it. After a flurry of closed-door haggling with senators in both parties, they agreed with Mr. Trump’s lawyers to admit as evidence a written statement by a Republican congresswoman who has said she was told that the former president sided with the mob as rioters were attacking the Capitol — and to move on.

By Saturday afternoon, the two sides had proceeded to deliver closing arguments under the watch of National Guard troops still patrolling the building and its perimeter one month after the worst attack there since the War of 1812. Afterward, Republican senators were prepared to rally around the former president and acquit him of the charge of “incitement of insurrection” despite an overwhelming case that he provoked the violence.

“If that is not grounds for conviction, if that is not a high crime and misdemeanor against the Republic and the United States of America, then nothing is,” Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead manager, pleaded with senators before the vote. “President Trump must be convicted, for the safety and democracy of our people.”

It would take 17 Republicans joining Democrats to achieve the two-thirds majority needed to find Mr. Trump “guilty,” and then a majority to bar him from office. Though a handful of Republicans were open to conviction — potentially more than had have ever ruled against a president of their own party — the vast majority had repeatedly indicated they would vote to acquit for the second time in just over a year.

After a week of tightly scripted arguments, when all parties openly agreed witnesses were unnecessary to make the case against Mr. Trump, the managers’ 11th-hour request on Saturday to compel new evidence caught senators in both parties flat-footed, infuriated many of them and threatened to indefinitely bog down the proceeding in legal and political fights — all over a piece of secondhand evidence.

The surprise move came just after the top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, had privately told his colleagues he was ready to acquit Mr. Trump, confirming that a conviction was exceedingly unlikely.

It began just after 10 a.m. when the House managers said they had an abrupt change of heart after reading a new account by Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump. In a statement late Friday night, Ms. Herrera Beutler said that Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the minority leader, had told her that when he called Mr. Trump on Jan. 6 to beg him to call off the mob that had stormed the Capitol, Mr. Trump had sided with the rioters.

“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Mr. Trump is said to have told Mr. McCarthy, according to Ms. Herrera Beutler’s account.

Mr. Raskin said he and his team of prosecutors wanted a chance to subpoena Ms. Herrera Beutler, of Washington, for a brief deposition and a copy of contemporaneous notes memorializing the conversation, which he called “an additional critical piece of corroborating evidence.”

But Mr. Trump’s lawyers angrily protested. And in an attempt to sway senators from a potentially protracted and painful delay, Michael T. van der Veen said that if the managers were able to depose Ms. Herrera Beutler, he would need “at least over 100 depositions” including from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats to do “a thorough investigation that they did not do.”

It worked, but not before the Senate voted 55 to 45 to agree in general terms to consider witnesses, with five Republicans — Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska — joining Democrats.

The trial came screeching to a halt for close to two hours as senators scrambled to broker an agreement. Republicans, furious over the prospect of continuing a trial many of them have dismissed as unconstitutional, warned that they would block any efforts to approve nominations to the Biden administration or pandemic relief legislation should the trial continue.

“If they want to drag this out, we’ll drag it out,” said Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa. “They won’t get their noms, they won’t get anything.”

Senate Democrats feared for President Biden’s legislative agenda, which the trial had already put on hold, and that delaying a final vote could alienate some Republicans inclined to find Mr. Trump “guilty.”

Ultimately, the managers agreed to forgo interviewing Ms. Herrera Beutler or anyone else if the former president’s lawyers would allow her statement to be entered into the trial record.

A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy did not reply to requests for comment.

The last-minute commotion over witnesses punctuated a lightening-fast trial, which featured chilling video recreating the rampage from inside the Capitol, where the pro-Trump mob brutalized police officers and hunted down Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers.

The jury, composed of senators who witnessed the violence firsthand, was expected to vote later in the day on a question with no precedent in American history: whether to find a former president accused of seeking to violently thwart the peaceful transfer of power — and putting at risk the lives of hundreds of lawmakers and his own vice president — “guilty” or “not guilty” of high crimes and misdemeanors. A conviction would allow them to impose another constitutional punishment never before meted out on a former president, disqualifying Mr. Trump from holding office in the future.

While party leaders appeared eager to repudiate Mr. Trump, and even some of the former president’s most loyal supporters refused to defend his actions, Republicans were still wary of openly crossing a man who holds unrivaled power with their own voters. They were expected to flock to technical arguments to justify letting him off.

The only other remaining question on Saturday was how many Republican senators would break with their party to support convicting the president. All eyes were fixed on the group of a half-dozen Republican senators contemplating conviction, including Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ms. Collins, Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Romney and Mr. Sasse.

Speculation also centered on a handful of other Republicans — including Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Richard M. Burr of North Carolina — whose plans to retire meant they would not face the wrath of voters if they were to break with the party. But after Mr. McConnell, who has privately said Mr. Trump’s conduct was impeachable and publicly weighed convicting him, told colleagues Saturday morning he would vote to acquit, it was unlikely the numbers would climb much higher.

“While a close call, I am persuaded that impeachments are a tool primarily of removal and we therefore lack jurisdiction,” Mr. McConnell wrote in an email.

The proceeding could scarcely have been more different than Mr. Trump’s first trial a year ago. Then, the House tried to make its case around an esoteric plot to pressure Ukraine to smear Mr. Biden, and it failed largely on party lines. But over five days this week, the nine House managers put forward a harrowing retelling of a horror that had played out in plain sight.

Using graphic video and sophisticated visual aids, they made clearer than ever before how close the armed mob had come to a dangerous confrontation with Mr. Pence and the members of the House and the Senate. They showed the violent assault on the police, and counted the cost both in lives and to American democracy.

All of it, the prosecutors argued, was the fault of Mr. Trump, who spread lies that the election had been “stolen” from him, cultivated outrage among his followers, encouraged violence, tried to pressure state election officials to overturn democratically decided results and finally assembled and finally told his supporters — some of whom had openly planned a bloody last stand on Jan. 6 — to “fight like hell” to “stop the steal.” With no signs of his remorse, they warned he could ignite a repeat if allowed to seek office again.

After stumbling out of the gate this week with meandering presentations, Mr. Trump’s legal team delivered the president a highly combative and exceedingly brief defense on Friday. Calling the House’s charge a “preposterous and monstrous lie,” they insisted that the former president was a “law and order”-loving leader who never meant for his followers to take the words “fight like hell” literally, and could not have foreseen the violence that followed.

“Like every other politically motivated witch hunt the left has engaged in over the past four years, this impeachment is completely divorced from the facts, the evidence and the interests of the American people,” Mr. van der Veen said. “The Senate should promptly and decisively vote to reject it.”

The presentation had a distinctly Trumpian flair, as Mr. van der Veen and his partners accused Democrats of acting solely out of “hatred” and repeatedly played a loop of videos, set to ominous music as if in a political campaign advertisement, of Democratic politicians using combative language they equated to Mr. Trump’s. The montage appeared intended to summon Republicans who might be weighing a conviction to their partisan corners and back to the former president’s side.

They also offered more technical arguments aimed at giving Republicans cover for a vote to acquit, arguing that it was not constitutional for the Senate to try a former president and that Mr. Trump’s election lies and bellicose words to his supporters could not be deemed incitement because the First Amendment protected his right to speak freely.

Emily Cochrane and Luke Broadwater contributed reporting.