WASHINGTON • With the impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump poised to enter a new public phase this week, lawmakers sparred on Sunday over the witnesses who will be allowed to testify, with Democrats dismissing Republican efforts to call the anonymous whistle blower and former vice-president Joe Biden's son Hunter.
Democrats and Republicans have crafted dramatically different strategies for controlling the narrative of what happened between Mr Trump and Ukraine.
The Democrats are trying to stay narrow and focused, keeping the story simple. But the Republicans want the opposite - bringing in as many characters and events as possible and arguing that whatever Mr Trump did was no different from business as usual in Washington.
These duelling game plans were in sharp relief on Sunday's morning talk shows. "This is a very simple, straightforward act. The President broke the law," Democratic Representative Jackie Speier of California told ABC News' This Week. "He went on a telephone call with the President of Ukraine and... proceeded to ask for an investigation of his rival," she said, adding that "this is a very strong case of bribery".
But Republicans do not want to focus on the July 25 phone call between Mr Trump and Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky, or even on recent events. Instead, they want to broaden the investigation to include actions taken years ago by the Bidens.
On NBC's Meet The Press, Senator Rand Paul argued that "it's unfair to treat Trump under one standard and Joe Biden under a different standard". He claimed that Mr Trump's actions - seeking to use leverage over Ukraine to advance some kind of agenda - have been common among a variety of American elected officials of both parties in recent years.
"I would make the argument that every politician in Washington, other than me, virtually, is trying to manipulate Ukraine to their purposes," Mr Paul said.
Republicans have sought to minimise Mr Trump's role in the campaign to pressure Ukraine, and the list of potential witnesses they released last Saturday suggests they will continue to do so.
Among those on the list are Mr Hunter Biden, whose father is a leading Democratic candidate to challenge Mr Trump next year; Mr Hunter Biden's business partner Devon Archer; the unnamed whistle blower whom Mr Trump and some of his allies have campaigned to publicly identify; the researcher Nellie Ohr of Fusion GPS, which commissioned a dossier that linked Russia and Mr Trump; and Ms Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who worked with the Democratic National Committee.
Other Republicans maintained that Mr Trump sought to hold up much-needed military aid to Ukraine over general concerns about corruption - despite closed-door testimony from witnesses who said the White House had threatened to withdraw the aid unless Kiev announced investigations for Mr Trump's political benefit.
WASHINGTON POST
