George Conway: There’s a critical witness impeachment is missing

Trump’s lawyers contend that a president should not be impeached and removed for making a bona fide policy judgment, whether or not that judgment turns out to be misguided or wrong. On that point, they’re absolutely right. If a president makes a reasoned decision about what best serves the nation’s interests, even if he turns out to be wrong, he has committed no impeachable offense. The Framers didn’t intend, through impeachment, to transform such policy disputes or mistakes into high crimes.

The claim that Trump acted for legitimate reasons ostensibly serves as the basis for his backers’ suggestions that former vice president Joe Biden or his son Hunter should be called to testify. The theory of summoning the Bidens would be to lend credence to the contention that Trump’s involvement in Ukraine was genuinely motivated by concern over corruption there.

But that argument presumes Trump has to meet a higher burden in showing his innocence than he actually bears. Precisely because the Constitution allows presidents to make non-corrupt mistakes in judgment, the true facts about Hunter Biden’s well-paid service on the board of a Ukrainian energy company or the vice president’s role in ousting a Ukrainian prosecutor don’t strictly matter. What does matter is Trump’s state of mind: What he actually believed, and what basis he personally had for that belief, should determine whether he committed an abuse of power.

All of which means that it’s Trump, and not the Bidens, who should take the stand here. Trump needn’t come to the well of the Senate for that; in deference to the presidency, he could be allowed to testify from the White House, the venue from which President Bill Clinton testified before independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s grand jury two decades ago.