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Republican Senators: Turmp's Ukraine Actions Were Wrong, but Do Not Merit
Removal

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - Key U.S. Republican senators are saying that President
   Donald Trump's request to Ukraine to launch an investigation to benefit
   himself politically was wrong, but did not amount to a significant
   enough offense to convict him on impeachment charges and remove him
   from office.

   Trump has for months described as "perfect" his request last July to
   Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate one of Trump's
   top 2020 challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son
   Hunter Biden's work for a Ukrainian natural gas company.

   But both Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa
   said in interviews broadcast Sunday that Trump erred in asking
   Zelenskiy to "do us a favor" to launch the investigations at the same
   time he was withholding $391 million in military aid Kyiv wanted to
   help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

   Alexander, who provided a key vote late last week against the
   Democrats' effort to call key Trump aides as witnesses in the
   president's Senate impeachment trial, told NBC News's "Meet the Press"
   show that it was "crossing the line" for Trump to ask for the Biden
   investigations."

   I think he shouldn't have done it. I think it was wrong," Alexander
   said.

   "If the president was upset with what the Bidens were doing in Ukraine,
   he should've called the [U.S.] attorney general," William Barr,
   Alexander said. Asked why Trump didn't then, Alexander said, "Maybe he
   didn't know to do it."

   But Alexander added, "I think what he did is a long way from treason,
   bribery, high crimes, and misdemeanors," the U.S. Constitution
   threshold for an impeachable offense requiring removal from office. "I
   don't think it's the kind of inappropriate action that the framers
   would expect the Senate to substitute its judgment for the people in
   picking a president."

   He said voters in next November's national election, when Trump is
   running for a second term in the White House, should decide his fate.

   "You know, it struck me, really for the first time, early last week,
   that we're not just being asked to remove the president from office,"
   Alexander said, "We're saying, 'Tell him he can't run in the 2020
   election ...."

   As the heart of the case against Trump ended Friday, another
   Republican, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said, "Let me be clear, Lamar
   speaks for lots and lots of us."

   Ernst told CNN that Trump's request to Ukraine for the politically
   tinged investigations was "not what I would have done. He maybe did it
   in the wrong manner."

   "He knows now he needs to go through the proper channels," such as the
   U.S. Justice Department, if he sees the need for an overseas
   investigation.

   Nonetheless, she concluded, "Does it come to the point of removing a
   president? I don't think it does."

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