Trump Impeachment News: Hunter Biden To Testify Or Inquiry A 'Sham', Sen. Paul Says

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is again demanding, along with other Senate Republicans, the whistleblower that ignited the Trump impeachment inquiry be unmasked and testify at public hearings to be conducted by the House starting Thursday.

"If you can't call Hunter Biden and you can't call the whistleblower, that's sort of a sham. That's not really even a trial," said Sen. Paul on NBC's "Meet the Press."

His demand was echoed by other Trump supporters such as Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX).

Hurd claims the impeachment inquiry by House Democrats "has been a partisan exercise from the very beginning," He said that in past impeachment proceedings, the minority (in this case the GOP) had been allowed to call its own witnesses.The renewed calls for outing the whistleblower follow the submission by Nunes of a list of witnesses he wants to see called in the inquiry's public hearings. The list includes Hunter Biden, son of vice president Joe Biden and the target of malicious charges of corruption levied by the GOP.

In his letter, Nunes warned Adam Schiff (D-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, "failure to fulfill Minority witness requests shall constitute evidence of your denial of fundamental fairness and due process."

On the same day, Schiff responded to Nunes saying the intelligence committee was "carefully evaluating the witness list you provided." Schiff stood by his earlier pronouncement the hearings would neither be used to unmask the whistleblower nor to investigate the Bidens.

Schiff called the inquiry "a solemn undertaking, enshrined by the Founders in the Constitution." He again drove home the point the hearings "will not serve as vehicles for any Member to carry out the same sham investigations into the Bidens or debunked conspiracies about 2016 U.S. election interference that President Trump pressed Ukraine to conduct for his personal political benefit."

The ongoing impeachment inquiry led by House Democrats is investigating if Trump withheld congressionally mandated military aid to Ukraine as this country fights a war against Russia, in order to pressure president Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating allegations Biden used his office to block an anti-corruption probe from looking at Burisma Holdings.

Hunter Biden was formerly a member of the Burisma board. Trump also wanted Zelensky to say that Ukraine, not Russia, was the foreign power that interfered in the 2016 election.