But Schumer was unbowed: He said while he didn’t need to do all the amendments Tuesday and would push some to Wednesday, Democrats „will not back off on getting votes on all these amendments.“
The chamber went into a brief quorum call to see what the next step is, and when the proceeding restarted it was clear no deal was reached as the Senate proceeded into a debate as long as two hours over subpoenaing Defense Department documents. — Burgess Everett
Klobuchar on missing Iowa campaign: ‘I have to do my job’
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, one of the Democratic senators off the presidential campaign trail for the trial, scoffed at comments by White House counsel Pat Cipollone on the Senate floor that some senators were „upset because you should be in Iowa right now.“
Klobuchar said her family was campaigning for her in Iowa on Tuesday, as were several state legislators who endorsed her White House bid. She also said she would try to conduct tele-town halls, and return to the campaign trail on Sunday when the Senate trial wasn’t in session.
„I have a constitutional duty,“ Klobuchar told reporters during a break. „So whatever the president’s lawyers want to say and poke at us for simply doing our jobs and being here and act like it’s some kind of political disadvantage, I think the people of this country understand it. Something like a recent poll showed that nearly 70 percent of Americans think there should be witnesses, think there should be evidence. What does that mean to me? That the people in these early states are going to understand that I have to do my job.“ — James Arkin
Sen. Martin Heinrich rails against press restrictions
Sen. Martin Heinrich complained to Sergeant-at-Arms Michael Stenger about the press restrictions in the Capitol and urged for the „draconian restrictions“ to be changed.
„Preventing credentialed reporters from moving freely around the Capitol and confining them to roped-off areas limits their ability to interview lawmakers about the impeachment proceedings. These restrictions are antithetical to a free press, good governance and the ability of the public to be fully informed about what we as elected leaders do in their name,“ Heinrich (D-N.M.) wrote.
At certain points during the trial, reporters’ movements are restricted to pens and they are not allowed free flow of movement in the Capitol to interview lawmakers in several key areas like the Senate basement and hallways right off the Senate floor.
During the second break of the day, around 5 p.m., staff escorted reporters to the pens they were required to stay in while senators enter and exit the chamber. Just a handful of senators stopped by and spoke to reporters before the journalists were led away.
Earlier in the day, a Capitol Police officer blocked a reporter from following former Sen. Jeff Flake up an escalator into the Capitol. Flake was famously confronted in a Senate elevator by protesters during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. — Burgess Everett and Jesse Naranjo
McConnell scolds Senate on decorum
After a 15-minute recess, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gave the Senate a decorum reminder as it takes up the first presidential impeachment trial in 21 years.
On the C-SPAN broadcast, McConnell could be heard telling senators: „I’d like to remind everybody to take their seats. And when the chief justice comes in we really should all stand.“ The comment seems to have been made in a hot mic; the C-SPAN camera was not on at the time.
A McConnell spokesman tweeted that the Kentucky Republican „used his microphone on purpose to catch the attention of all Senators.“ — Burgess Everett
Meet the Senate parliamentarian
Elizabeth MacDonough won’t have a speaking role in the impeachment trial. But she already looks plenty busy.
The Senate parliamentarian could be seen advising Chief Justice John Roberts and handing him papers as Tuesday’s debate over the Trump trial rules began in earnest. Expect to see a lot more of the same from her over the course of the proceedings as the 53-year old Senate veteran helps Roberts navigate Congress, a building he otherwise only visits on ceremonial occasions. We profiled MacDonough here if you want to learn more. — Darren Samuelsohn
White House preparing unofficial war room
The White House is planning to go on the offensive this week, as soon as the Senate settles on its rules for the impeachment trial.
Similar to the set-up during the House hearings, the White House will have an unofficial war room out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the West Wing. There, the legal, legislative affairs and communications team will respond to the impeachment trial in real-time by sending out talking points. The president’s legal team will be camped out on Capitol Hill, working out of the vice president’s office for the duration of the trial, while the Republican lawmakers from the House, serving as advisers to president on impeachment, will be deployed to go on TV and act as surrogates for the president.
The White House assumes the outcome of the Senate trial is acquittal, so what officials are trying to do is sway the public. One senior administration official described the White House’s goal this week as making sure the record is correct and that Democrats are held accountable. “We’re not messaging to senators personally,” the official said. —Nancy Cook
Chocolate anyone?
Senators from both parties realize the importance of staying nourished during the impeachment trial — sending baskets and boxes of chocolate goodies to keep reporters fed as the long hours loom.
Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, famous for his “candy desk” stocked full of chocolate goodies from Hershey, had a basket of his home-state treats delivered to the press gallery earlier Thursday.
And Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez sent along a box of full-size packs of peanut M&Ms, a candy that originated in his home state of New Jersey. — Heather Caygle
Republicans ease hard-line trial tactics
Senate Republicans made two big changes to their resolution laying out the ground rules for President Trump’s trial after receiving some pushback from centrist-minded senators like Susan Collins and Rob Portman.
The party changed language that would have barred evidence gathered during the House inquiry from being submitted in the trial, though that can still objected to and debated on.
Also, rather than 24 hours of opening arguments per side over two days and the possibility of midnight arguments, Republicans changed that to over three days. Those changes could complicate plans to clear Trump by his Feb. 4 State of the Union address, but they keep Republicans like Collins on-board. Read more from Burgess Everett and Marianne LeVine here.
Pat Cipollone’s first public comments
The White House counsel just did something he rarely does. He spoke in public.
Pat Cipollone’s remarks during debate over the Senate rules marks the first time he’s commented on the record since taking his job back at the end of 2018. It’s the byproduct of the role the low-key 53-year-old longtime corporate lawyer now has as the lead lawyer on President Trump’s defense team — a job that’ll put him in front of the camera quite a bit more over the coming weeks. — Darren Samuelsohn
Managers call Trump’s defense ‘dangerous’
Impeachment managers responded to the president’s impeachment defense, saying that Trump’s argument that he can’t be held accountable except through an election “underscores the need for the Senate to exercise its solemn constitutional duty to remove President Trump from office.”
The House’s Democratic impeachment managers said the president’s trial brief — which was filed Monday — “confirms that his misconduct is indefensible.” Read more from Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney here.
Impeachment veterans
Lots of references to Bill Clinton trial precedent here as the Senate proceedings kick off. Let’s take a quick look at who in the chamber actually was around on Capitol Hill back then. It’s not that long a list.
First, there are the current crop of 15 senators who were serving in the Senate back in 1999. They are: Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). Schumer stands out because he’d been a House member who voted against Clinton’s impeachment in the House in December 1998 but then moved to the Senate starting in January 1999.
Another nine current senators were in the House during the 1998 impeachment vote, too. They are: Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). — Darren Samuelsohn
McConnell defends impeachment rules
McConnell defended his impeachment trial rules from Democratic attacks and said the Senate will stay in session on Tuesday until it passes.
„Finally some fairness,“ McConnell declared on the Senate floor after a party caucus meeting.
McConnell reiterated that his resolution has support from a majority of the Senate, enough to pass. And he said that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s amendment and any other attempts to alter his resolution will be tabled, a maneuver that scuttles those proposals. More on McConnell’s organizing resolution here.
Senate imposes media restrictions
Press restrictions in the Senate went into full swing Tuesday, with the installment of a metal detector outside the Senate chamber in the Senate Daily Press Gallery.
Reporters will also not have access to the first and second floor of the Senate for the 30 minutes before and after the trial — generally when senators are arriving or leaving the chamber.
„One word on the press policy here? Ridiculous,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Democrats and Republicans have condemned the restrictions. — Marianne LeVine
Schumer’s first trial move for evidence
Schumer said his first amendment will be to ask senators to subpoena White House documents — including on the decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine. He’ll then offer several amendments on witnesses, documents and changes to McConnell’s rules.
“There is no guarantee that Leader McConnell will allow these votes to take place later in the trial so now before any resolution passes we must do it.” Read more here from Burgess Everett and Marianne LeVine.
Managers rail against McConnell
The House impeachment managers harangued McConnell over his proposed rules for the trial, accusing him of lying about his pledge to mirror the 1999 trial of Bill Clinton.
“If Senator McConnell makes this the first impeachment trial in history without witnesses or documents, it will not prove the president innocent; it will merely prove the Senate guilty of working with the president to obstruct the truth from coming out,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead impeachment manager. — Andrew Desiderio
Pelosi calls McConnell’s comparisons to Clinton trial ‘a lie’
Speaker Nancy Pelosi decried McConnell for comparing his resolution to that of the Clinton impeachment trial, calling it „a lie.“
„Leader McConnell’s process is deliberately designed to hide the truth from the Senate and from the American people, because he knows that the President’s wrongdoing is indefensible and demands removal,“ Pelosi said in a statement. „It is obvious that no Senator who votes for it is intending to truly weigh the damning evidence of the President’s attacks on our Constitution.“ — Marianne LeVine
Dems say Cipollone was a witness to Trump’s Ukraine scandal
The seven House Democrats prosecuting the case against Trump said that White House counsel Pat Cipollone was a witness to many of the episodes involving Trump and the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate the president’s rivals.
The Democrats are demanding that Cipollone disclose any firsthand knowledge that he has. Read more here from Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney.
Five factions to watch
In the end, it’s quite unlikely that 67 senators will vote to remove Trump from office. But how the trial proceeds and whether Trump gets the speedy acquittal he craves is far less clear.
The key blocs of senators in both parties you need to watch, per John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett, are:
– The Three Amigos, Part Deux
– Republican Institutionalists
– Trump Hardliners
– Democratic Moderates
– Trump Is Guilty Already Democrats
Source: politico.com
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