‘I want a Senate impeachment trial’, Trump says in live TV phone call

President Donald Trump has said that he wants to be tried by the Senate if the House votes to impeach him. Trump told Fox & Friends that he would like to see impeachment democrats like “nut job” Adam Schiff testify.

While the Republican-controlled Senate could shoot down any articles of impeachment presented by the House, Trump told the Fox show by phone on Friday that he would like to see the inquiry against him go to a Senate trial.

“I want a trial,”the president said. “I want to see Adam Schiff testify about the whistleblower – who’s a fake whistleblower,” he continued, referring to the intelligence community whistleblower whose report on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky kickstarted the impeachment drive against him.

Calling House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff a “nut job,” Trump added “the one I want to testify most is Shifty Schiff … and what I want to know most is, why did he make up my statement?”

Schiff’s dramatic interpretation before Congress of Trump’s phone call, which the California Democrat later said was a “parody,” is just one bone of contention between him and Trump. Trump has also slammed Schiff for conducting impeachment hearings with second- and third-hand witnesses who have thus far failed to provide concrete evidence that the president arranged a quid-pro-quo deal with Zelensky. Democrats allege that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Kiev reopening a corruption investigation against the family of 2020 candidate Joe Biden.

Trump also said he’d like to hear Hunter Biden, former VP Joe Biden’s son, testify before the Senate. Hunter sat on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma from 2015 to 2019, a position he was unqualified for, and one Trump maintains was gifted to him as part of a corrupt deal between his father and Kiev.

The president also said he wants the mysterious whistleblower to testify, and claimed to know his identity. Trump then berated the Fox hosts when they claimed to not know. 

READ MORE: All whistleblowers are equal, as long as they hate Trump

Throughout the rambling phone interview, Trump boasted about his victory over Hillary Clinton and called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) “crazy as a bedbug.”

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