Democrats privately rejected the easiest way to handle such an evidentiary task. They could have created a special impeachment trial committee that would have been tasked with issuing subpoenas, conducting depositions of witnesses along with House managers and Trump’s lawyers, and fighting in court any efforts to block testimony or documents.
This approach would have allowed Schumer to move ahead with Biden’s agenda and confirming his Cabinet, while the trial committee handled those legally protracted issues.
But that might have meant delaying the full Senate trial for several months, when the fury of the moment will have faded.
But advocates of this approach believe that the initial 55-45 vote signaled that the only way to change GOP minds would be to produce evidence showing that Trump was more complicit than is currently known.
“We have an obligation to get the facts, it seems to me,” King said. “And I think those are two relevant facts. If he had intelligence, when he was talking to that crowd, that their plan was to come here and storm the Capitol, to me that is a very important piece of evidence in terms of his culpability.”
