What’s happening Monday?
Trump’s team will continue with their opening arguments when the Senate reconvenes at 1:00 p.m. Monday. (The trial takes a hiatus on Sunday.)
Look for legal heavyweights added to the team, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr and retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, to make their first appearance to defend Trump.
4:01 P.M.
Senate Republicans eye quick Trump acquittal after witness vote
Senate GOP leaders are strongly considering a move to quickly end President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial next week if a motion to call additional witnesses is defeated, according to three top Republican senators.
The Republican strategy — which is still fluid — could mean senators have limited time between key procedural votes and the final vote on whether to convict the president of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
And with the odds growing against additional witnesses being called, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will face critical decisions on how fast he can bring the proceedings to an end. Read the full story. — Burgess Everett and John Bresnahan
3:45 P.M.
Trump lashes out against impeachment after opening statements
President Donald Trump railed against his ongoing impeachment trial on Saturday after his defense team completed the first day of their opening arguments, repeating claims that he’s being treated unfairly.
“Any fair minded person watching the Senate trial today would be able to see how unfairly I have been treated and that this is indeed the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax that EVERYBODY, including the Democrats, truly knows it is. This should never be allowed to happen again!” he posted on Twitter at about 1:45 p.m.
Trump’s lawyers spent two hours on Saturday attempting to poke holes in the Democrats’ case to remove the president. Trump’s defense team, however, isn’t expected to spend the full 24 hours allotted to them. On a call with reporters after the White House presented the first part of their defense, sources on the president’s legal team said they plan to be “more efficient” with their time, as compared to House Democrats.
“I doubt that there’s a scenario where we approach 24 hours presentation,” a person on the president’s legal team said. “But how that will be played over Monday and Tuesday is sort of hard to predict at this point.”
Democrats on Friday night concluded their opening arguments after spending three days outlining why Trump’s attempt to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rivals meets the Constitutional requirements for removal. — Meridith McGraw
3:02 P.M.
Dems say Trump lawyers boosted their case for witnesses
Senate Democrats had a surprising takeaway on Saturday: President Donald Trump’s lawyers are making their argument for them.
In their fight to win new witnesses and evidence, Democrats latched onto a line from White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin — that “cross-examination in our legal system is regarded as the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.” Given the stiff opposition from the Trump administration and Republicans to hearing from witnesses with direct knowledge of the president’s actions in the Ukraine saga, Democrats almost couldn’t stand the irony.
“I was absolutely stunned that they would consistently say that cross-examination is the greatest engine for truth and we’re playing a shell game,” said Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.), referring to counsel Pat Cipollone’s remarks to end Saturday’s session. “It is the president that is playing that shell game and denying cross examination.”
Jones, who described himself as “pretty animated” when he heard the argument from the president’s lawyers, faces the toughest Senate reelection bid in the country. But it seemed easy for him to come to a conclusion about the president’s opening arguments: “I deserve to hear more about the facts and not just the partisan rhetoric.” Read the full story. — Burgess Everett, James Arkin and John Bresnahan
1:02 P.M.
Sen. Blumenthal: “We will use all 16 hours” of Q&A time
President Trump’s lawyers are center stage in the trial now but Democrats won’t be ceding the debate to them.
Come question time next week, Senate Democrats say they will be sure to give the House managers a chance to swing back.
“We will be posing questions that will very pointedly give House managers an opportunity to rebut some of the distortions and misstatements that we’ve seen here, and we are framing those questions so that there will be, in effect, an opportunity to dispute some of those facts,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters Saturday after the Trump defense team wrapped up their opening presentation.
The question and answer session is expected to begin Tuesday or Wednesday depending on when the Trump team wraps, and the trial then will shift to 16 hours of Q&A with senators writing down their questions that Chief Justice John Roberts will read aloud.
“We will use all 16 hours,” Blumenthal predicted. ”We have as many questions as we will have time to present.” — Darren Samuelsohn
12:35 P.M.
Republicans give thumbs-up to Trump’s defense
Several Republican senators congratulated the president’s lawyers after they wrapped up the first day of their opening arguments after a quick two hours. McConnell shook hands with White House counsel Pat Cipollone and gave a thumbs-up to Cipollone’s deputy Patrick Philbin before heading out of the chamber.
Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) was later seen chatting with Cipollone, while Sen. Pat Roberts talked to Trump’s longtime personal attorney Jay Sekulow.
Several other GOP senators came over to talk briefly with the Trump lawyers, including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Thune of South Dakota, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Deb Fischer of Nebraska.
Meantime, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Chief Justice Roberts were talking at the presiding officer’s chair. Roberts had lingered after the proceedings to chat with parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough and was among the last to leave the Senate Saturday afternoon. — Darren Samuelsohn
12:05 P.M.
Trump’s legal team launches attack on Dem case
President Donald Trump’s lawyers laced into the House’s impeachment case Saturday, opening their defense with pointed efforts to seed doubt in GOP senators’ minds about Democrats’ push to remove Trump from office.
Trump’s top lawyer Pat Cipollone and his deputy Michael Purpura repeatedly sought to poke holes in the evidence that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals. They contended that central witnesses in the House’s impeachment hearings based their assessments on „presumptions“ and „guesswork“ rather than knowledge of Trump’s intentions.
They also argued that the words Trump spoke on his July 25 call to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, conveyed no pressure — and that Ukrainians never publicly expressed any. Read the full story. — Kyle Cheney and Darren Samuelsohn
11:19 A.M.
Dems are united on witnesses. Less clear is the final verdict.
Sen. Chris Murphy said Saturday morning that Democrats are likely to be united on a key procedural vote on calling witnesses next week, though he acknowledged that not all 47 Democrats are guaranteed to vote to convict the president.
The Connecticut Democrat said that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other party leaders aren’t whipping senators on the question of the final verdict. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are considered the most likely senators to be mulling possible acquittal votes.
“I don’t have any reason to think there are Democrats that aren’t with us on procedural votes,” Murphy told reporters. “It’s certainly possible there are Democrats that are going to vote no on one of the articles, two of the articles. And I don’t have a sense where everybody is on the articles. We haven’t talked about it.”
He added: “Schumer may know, but nobody has done public or private whipping on this.” — Burgess Everett
11:17 A.M.
Scenes from Saturday’s trial
It was like herding cats to have all 100 senators in the chamber at one time Saturday morning.
A couple of Democrats, including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Delaware‘s two senators, Tom Carper and Chris Coons, came in from their party’s cloak room five minutes into the Trump lawyer presentations. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Marco Rubio were also tardy, with the Florida Republican’s tie askew. Rubio fanned himself for several seconds with a blue folder to cool down while other senators appeared to be chilled, including Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who was wearing a pink shawl over her shoulders.
President Donald Trump’s defense table was full Saturday morning, a marked contrast to Friday night’s closing remarks from Schiff when there were only four or five in attendance. The top White House and Trump personal lawyers sat shoulder to shoulder with lower level associates.
Lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) stared straight at the video monitor behind Mike Purpura, a Justice Department veteran serving on the president’s legal team, as the White House lawyer opened his presentation with the video of the House chairman’s much-criticized summary of the Trump phone call. The other Democratic managers and aides sitting at the prosecution table, now on the sidelines, scribbled into their notebooks.
Some things in the chamber were largely identical Saturday morning as they were Friday. The new Georgia senator, Kelly Loeffler, continued her practice of maintaining no eye contact with the speakers and instead kept her head down, writing. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sat with his hands clasped while his Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer slouched low in his chair.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) nodded his head in agreement when Purpura said Trump was a better friend to Ukraine. About 40 minutes in, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) pulled a cell phone from his jacket pocket and waved down a page to take it back to the cloak room. Cell phones and other electronics are not allowed in the Senate chamber during the trial. — Darren Samuelsohn
10:35 A.M.
Trump’s team goes after Schiff
President Donald Trump’s team began their defense with an attack on Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), playing a video of the California Democrat parodying Trump’s July 25 call with the president of Ukraine.
Schiff’s embellished reading of Trump’s call has become a consistent rallying cry for Trump, who has ignored Schiff’s admission before and after the reading that he meant it as a parody and a paraphrase. Rather, Trump has described the reading as an attempt to defraud viewers into believing a more sinister version of the call.
In his version of the call, Schiff added his own inferences about what he argued Trump intended to convey to Ukraine: that they had to investigate his Democratic opponents or face reprisal. — Kyle Cheney
10:30 A.M.
28,578 pages of evidence
Democrats delivered 28,578 pages of evidence to the Senate on Saturday, marking the formal transfer of the House’s impeachment record that supported their case to remove President Donald Trump from office.
The delivery of the hard-copy evidence was a made-for-TV moment, with the seven House prosecutors — led by Rep. Adam Schiff — accompanying carts stacked with boxes and binders into the Senate chamber.
The evidence is already available online. — Kyle Cheney
10:25 A.M.
Trump’s defense doesn’t ‘anticipate’ using full 24 hours to make case
The White House does „not anticipate“ using its full 24 hours of debate time, counsel Pat Cipollone said on Saturday morning, putting President Donald Trump’s trial on an even faster track than previously envisioned.
Trump’s legal team will make its opening argument for about three hours on Saturday, and then come back on Monday to continue its case.
Cipollone said he will be respectful and of the Senate’s time and „very efficient.“ Democrats used the allotted 24 hours over three days to make their opening arguments.
„We will finish efficiently and quickly so we can all go have an election,“ he said. — Burgess Everett
10:19 A.M.
Marsha Blackburn’s Vindman vendetta
Marsha Blackburn has it out for Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
The freshman senator from Tennessee has been on a multi-month, multimedia crusade against Vindman, who flagged President Donald Trump’s July 25 call with the Ukrainian president to the top National Security lawyer and testified to House impeachment investigators that he considered it improper. And she’s stepping up the offensive right in the middle of the Senate impeachment trial. Read the full story. — Marianne LeVine and Burgess Everett
6:40 A.M.
Trump’s legal team to launch unbridled attack on Biden
President Donald Trump is the one on trial, but brace yourself Saturday to hear an awful lot about Joe Biden.
After sitting silently on the Senate floor for three full days, White House and personal lawyers to the president plan to turn his impeachment trial into an uninterrupted attack on the former vice president — a frontrunner to be the Democrats’ 2020 nominee.
“Believe me, you’ll hear about that issue,” Jay Sekulow, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, told reporters. Read the full story. — Darren Samuelsohn and Kyle Cheney
6:40 A.M.
Forget impeachment. Republicans fear Ukraine revelations could spill into election.
Republicans are already looking past impeachment, sensing a looming Democratic plot to gradually release more Ukraine bombshells as Donald Trump fights for re-election.
Even with the president’s impeachment trial racing toward a swift acquittal for Trump, Republicans have seen a drip, drip, drip of information in recent days about Trump’s role in pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival. They liken it to the repeated allegations of misconduct lodged against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his 2018 confirmation fight, and fear they’re witnessing an election-year repeat. Read the full story. — Anita Kumar
Source: politico.com
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