Fox News contributor Brit Hume called Democratic efforts to call witnesses in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump a “Hail Mary pass.”
Appearing on Tuesday night’s edition of “The Story with Martha MacCallum” to react to news about Republican senators who could force a vote to grant Democratic prosecutors witnesses like former National Security Advisor John Bolton and White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Hume viewed it as desperation ploy.
“I think that witnesses could happen but make no mistake about what this is, this is a Hail Mary pass being encouraged mostly by a Democratic prosecution, House prosecutors who obviously don’t think the evidence they have introduced so far is sufficient for a conviction and they are trying at the last minute to get further witness testimony,” Hume told Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum.
“Think about it for a second, what do they know about what these witnesses will testify to?” the former Fox News anchor asked. “The answer is nothing. They don’t know what John Bolton would say or Mick Mulvaney or any of the rest of them. They don’t know what these people are going to say. They haven’t taken depositions. They haven’t interviewed them so they don’t know what they’re going to say. And how often does a competent prosecutor going to a case in the midst of a trial, call the witness that he hasn’t even interviewed?” (RELATED: WaPo Reporter: ‘A Lot Of Democrats Have Privately Said’ Pelosi’s Impeachment Strategy ‘Failed’)
Hume called not asking a “question that you don’t already know the answer to” an “axion of the practice of trial law.”
“So if they have full confidence in the evidence they have so far, they wouldn’t be trying to do this,” he said before noting that even if Bolton or others testify, they aren’t likely to add anything new to what is already known.