GOP Senators Help White House Prepare For Senate Impeachment Trial

Republican senators are working with the White House to prepare a game plan should the House vote to impeach President Donald Trump.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone met on Thursday with a group of Republican senators including Mike Lee (R-Utah), John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

Graham said Cipollone “was in a listening mode” during the meeting. Cruz said, “We talked about where things stand and where things are headed.”

The lawmakers set a tentative timeline of two weeks to allow Democratic lawmakers to lay out their evidence, but acknowledged that the timeframe could change.

“It’s not on a stone tablet,” an aide told CNN.

The GOP lawmakers encouraged the Trump administration to allow the case to play out, as cutting off the trial process early could make it look like the President is trying to hide something.

They also discouraged trying to force the testimony of the whistleblower whose complaint sparked the inquiry, despite Trump’s repeated calls to publicly out the unnamed member of the intelligence community.

Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee has begun laying the groundwork for an impeachment trial by sending a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Thursday seeking documents about former Vice President Joe Biden‘s dealings in Ukraine. He criticized the House Intelligence Committee for not throughly investigating that facet of impeachment, and appears to have moved to allow his committee to take on that role.

Trump seems to welcome impeachment moving out of the House and to the Senate, where Republicans hold the majority. He tweeted Thursday encouraging Republicans to “keep fighting” and that Democrats “will soon be on our turf.”

“Corrupt politician Adam Schiff’s lies are growing by the day,” Trump wrote. “Keep fighting tough, Republicans, you are dealing with human scum who have taken Due Process and all of the Republican Party’s rights away from us during the most unfair hearings in American History.”

He added, “But we are winning big, and they will soon be on our turf.”