Oklahoma U.S. Sen. James Lankford hit the weekend news circuit to talk impeachment.
On CNN's "State of the Union," Lankford dismissed the idea President Trump’s request for Ukraine to investigate interference in the 2016 election could help him in 2020.
Lankford told host Jake Tapper that Trump was simply trying to reconcile competing information when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to look for a Democratic party server.
"That doesn’t affect anything, though, in the 2020 election," Lankford said.
"But it’s evidence that there was a link between the delay in the security assistance and a demand for investigations — that’s what I’m saying — which the Trump legal team argued does not exist, and we all saw it with our own eyes," Tapper said.
"OK. I will give you that, but I don’t think that’s a significant issue," Lankford said.
The question of whether Ukraine hacked a Democratic National Committee server has been debunked as a conspiracy theory. Lankford said he believes intelligence officials' assessment Russia interfered in the 2016 election, but Trump got conflicting information from adviser Rudy Giuliani and his associates.
White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said last year aid to Ukraine was tied to such investigations.
On "State of the Union," Lankford also downplayed the significance of a new recording in which Trump talks to a central figure in the scheme to pressure Ukraine into investigating potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden.
Trump has said he does not know now-indicted businessman Lev Parnas. Lankford told Tapper the president met Parnas at a fundraising dinner and shouldn’t be expected to remember him now.
"It’s a 90-minute recording," Tapper said.
"I understand that, but it’s a dinner. It’s 90 minutes over a dinner that he walks in and actually participates in this. It’s hard to be able to say to the president, who meets 1,000 people a day, 'OK, do you know this person that was at a dinner with you a year and a half ago?' and to say you have a relationship," Lankford said.
Lankford said the White House legal team will put House impeachment managers’ arguments "in context" this week.
Lankford told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s "This Week" it’s not the task of the Senate to hear from witnesses that did not appear before the House.
"Quite frankly, it looks like they’re asking the Senate to go be special counsel. Go search, go seek out. That’s not really the task of the Senate. The task of the Senate is to hear the trial. The House is the one’s that actually gathering the information for impeachment. So, we’re acting on what they’re sending us," Lankford said.
That appearance was before reports a book by former National Security Adviser John Bolton says Trump directly tied military aid to Ukraine to investigations.
Monday, Lankford tweeted the Senate will determine at the end of the week whether more witnesses or evidence are needed and said if Bolton has information, he should "share it now."
