Adam Schiff and Hakeem Jeffries are seeing their profiles rise during the Senate trial. How high can they go?

The House Democratic Caucus has long been dominated by a gaggle of also-rans: men and women who, while good enough for Congress, proved to be underwhelming on the larger stage of national politics.

That's changed.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder on the Senate floor as they argue for the president’s removal from office, two men — Adam Schiff of California and Hakeem Jeffries of New York — have been catapulted to the front of the nation's consciousness, to the top of the Democratic Party and have become the fulcrum for speculation about a host of prominent positions both in the House and beyond.

Neither man — nor their staffs — would talk on the record about their next steps in the rapidly shifting caucus, and the larger Democratic Party.

But they didn't need to.

In a series of conversations, people close to Schiff and Jeffries did nothing to discourage the rampant speculation about the men's ambitions, and described it in unusually rich detail.

Schiff is said to be interested in the Senate (California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is 86), a spot in a potential Democratic administration or speaker of the House. Jeffries, meanwhile, has scant interest in running for mayor of New York — a job he was rumored to be eyeing. He wants to be House speaker — and is taking steps to get there.

On-the-record speculation about the future of one's colleagues is seen as uncouth in a Capitol overflowing with ambition, but the hushed whispers about the pair of Democrats — who, together, spoke for more than half of their party’s time during the trial — is pervasive from every corner of the caucus, and illustrative of their stature among their colleagues.

“We put them in this role — we as the Democratic Caucus — because we knew they had that skill,” said Rep. Juan Vargas of California. “They weren’t there by accident.”

Indeed, this week on the House floor, the pair has been lavished with praise for their role in prosecuting Trump. Schiff and Jeffries were the top two speakers during the trial for House Democrats, speaking for a total of nearly 11½ hours, according to statistics compiled by C-SPAN. Both had their viral moments, offering what Democrats celebrated as stem-winding indictments of Trump -- and, on a lighter note, Jeffries invoked the Notorious B.I.G., the late rapper.

Of course, any predictions about Schiff and Jeffries’ future come with big caveats. Nancy Pelosi has shown no signs of leaving the speakership, and her staying power as a prodigious fundraiser and adept navigator of Capitol Hill politics is unmatched. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat, has waited years to succeed Pelosi, and is prepared to fight for the job.

But Pelosi will be 80 in eight weeks, the same age as Hoyer. And the caucus is always wondering who will take the wheel next.

Similarly, Feinstein will be 90 when she is up for re-election 2024, and California voters are sure to have their pick of aspiring replacements. If the seat somehow opens earlier, Gov. Gavin Newsom will have the chance to appoint someone.

And Jeffries and Schiff aren't the only two who have gained prominence amid impeachment. The other managers — Jason Crow of Colorado, Val Demings of Florida, Sylvia Garcia of Texas, Jerry Nadler of New York and Zoe Lofgren of California — have also seen their profiles rise.

But Crow and Garcia are freshmen, Demings is in her second term and Nadler and Lofgren have served in Congress for more than 25 years each, and both committee chairs are likely at the zenith of their congressional careers.

Schiff, 59, and Jeffries, 49, have the most immediate path to increased power when the trial comes to an end.

In many ways, the two are remarkably similar. Schiff represents Los Angeles, and Jeffries hails from Brooklyn — safe Democratic power centers. They’re both known for meticulous attention to detail. Jeffries, in particular, is notorious for personally approving everything from scheduling changes to press statements. Both are relentlessly on-message; both can deliver lengthy, complex speeches with minimal notes.

But in other ways, the two men are cut from completely different cloth. Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, is not the elbow-rubbing, back-slapping pol that typically ascends to power on Capitol Hill. He’s more Paul Ryan than John Boehner, more Eric Cantor than Kevin McCarthy.

Schiff doesn’t fit comfortably in a box: Once a moderate Blue Dog now seen as more progressive, he is white in a caucus that’s increasingly diverse and from California — the same state that’s run the party for 17 years. He could rise by dint of his sheer outside-the-Beltway popularity, and hero-like stature on the left he’s earned through the Russia probe and impeachment.

Schiff has piles of campaign cash, the ultimate currency of House power. He uses his campaign account — filled with nearly $7 million — to help his colleagues keep their seats. Schiff’s campaign says he’s raised or donated more than $3.5 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and front-line candidates in 2019. During the 2018 cycle, Schiff’s campaign says he raised or donated $3.7 million for House Democrats and candidates.

A source close to Schiff — this person’s self-description, not POLITICO’s — said: “After the trial, [Schiff is] looking forward to focusing on his Intelligence Committee responsibilities as well as working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot.”

A House Democrat — insisting on anonymity to speak candidly about Schiff — described the California Democrat thusly: “A towering ego, backed up by towering talent.”

Senators are not typically not quick to praise members of the House, but Schiff has earned plaudits from the upper chamber.

“He blew peoples’ socks off,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who was friends with the California Democrat in the House. “It’s pretty hard to get over-the-top praise from people with egos as big as United States senators.”

But Schiff’s next move could be a Cabinet post that takes advantage of his legal talents. Several lawmakers said Schiff — a Harvard law graduate and former federal prosecutor — should be on the shortlist for attorney general should Democrats topple Trump in 2020.

Jeffries, on the other hand, has relied on his keen political instincts and hard work to scale the ranks of Democratic leadership at a breakneck pace since coming to Congress in 2013. As a leader of House Democrats’ messaging arm last cycle, Jeffries is credited with helping craft the message that helped Democrats regain House majority.

After the 2018 election, Jeffries was promoted to House Democratic Caucus chairman, the No. 5 spot in leadership, and a prime slot for ascending the party’s hierarchy. He has spent much of this Congress working feverishly to develop relationships across the caucus — the kind of work that needs to be done to ascend to the caucus's top position.

Jeffries aides declined to provide fundraising numbers — unusual for someone seeking to ascend in the House. But they noted he traveled more than 20 times for lawmakers last year.

“Hakeem is limited only by his ambition. Whatever spot to which he aspires could be, if he wants it, the last place or it could be a launching pad,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said.

Jeffries has the added benefit of being a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, a Democratic power center that will have an outsize role in picking the next speaker.

Time, as much as anything, may be pivotal to their future successes. Before Jeffries and Schiff, there had been a conga line of similarly ambitious, talented lawmakers who saw their rise blunted by the entrenched trio of House Democratic leaders: Pelosi, Hoyer and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina. Those Democrats largely decamped to the Senate, ran for other higher office or retired into obscurity. One oft-mooted future speaker — Joe Crowley of the Bronx — lost his seat to a young upstart, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He is now a lobbyist.

After nearly two decades with Pelosi as leader, the jockeying when she retires is expected to be a mad scramble, chaos that could lead to a bitter and contentious race for the speakership, with Schiff and Jeffries potentially at the center of the action.

“Just focus on the job you're supposed to do and do the best you can,” counseled Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)

Like Schiff and Jeffries, Van Hollen was once seen as Pelosi’s heir apparent. He decamped for the Senate in 2016 when it was clear his time might never come.

* When the Senate's impeachment trial resumes at 1 p.m. EST (1800 GMT), the 100 senators will get a further chance to pose questions to both the House Democratic impeachment managers and Trump's defense team. * Senators will not ask questions directly but will submit them to U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial. * Questions can be directed at the prosecution or the defense, but not at other senators.

WATERLOO, Iowa—If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. If you want a campaign surrogate while you’re stuck in an impeachment trial in Washington, do the same thing—just make sure that he doesn’t accidentally knock any potential supporters over.Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign worked hard to keep that from happening when one of the Massachusetts senator’s most popular surrogates—her 18-month-old golden retriever, Bailey—visited her campaign’s field office in northeastern Iowa, as Warren’s husband, Bruce Mann, encouraged the crowd of volunteers, organizers, and dog fans to let the dog burn off some excess energy.“As you can see, it is all paws on deck,” Mann told the crowd, apparently unfazed that he and Warren’s son, Alex, were not greeted, as Bailey was, by campaign organizers chanting their names. “While Elizabeth is doing her constitutional duty in Washington, she has a lot of people, and a couple of dogs, standing in for her.”As volunteers played with Bailey on the floor, Mann noted that within 24 hours of the dog’s arrival in Iowa last Friday, the Des Moines Register had endorsed Elizabeth.“You be the judge: correlation or causation,” Mann said. “But I think Bailey is a natural closer.”Warren’s campaign isn’t the only one hoping that a fleet of flashy, moving, or influential surrogates can help shore up support or win over wobbly voters in the final days before the Iowa caucuses. With three of the five top-polling candidates mired in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, campaign surrogates have become more important than ever for the Democrats hoping to win next week in Iowa—even for the candidates who aren’t imprisoned on Capitol Hill.But even setting aside the photogenic canine’s obvious advantages, not all campaign surrogates are created equal—and not all campaigns appear to have deployed their head cheerleaders when they need them the most. Warren’s campaign has made good use of Bailey to perk up weary campaign organizers and volunteers, similar to how certain liberal arts colleges will put a playpen of puppies in the library during Finals Week to keep overworked students from bursting into tears. But the job of winning over undecided caucus-goers has been taken most effectively by Julián Castro, Warren’s former rival for the Democratic nomination and another progressive rising star who is more than happy to take the reins as a champion of “big, structural change.” Speaking in front of two dozen students and professors at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Castro told the story of a visit he made to a trailer park in Waukee, Iowa, where a 90-year-old resident told him about attempts by the park’s new owners to dramatically raise her rent. When Castro asked the woman if any other presidential hopefuls had visited the park, the woman responded that one other candidate was trying to help: Elizabeth Warren.“To me, that was a very fitting example of the kind of leader she is: thoughtful, inclusive, focused not on the people that already have high-powered lawyers and lobbyists to write their legislation but on the people who really need a fighter,” the former housing and urban development secretary told the crowd. “That’s what you want in someone who holds the most powerful office in the land—somebody that’s not concerned about the big money and who gave the most of the campaign… but how are the people that you’re there to serve being served.”While Castro embraced the role of “attack dog” during his own campaign, famously questioning former Vice President Joe Biden’s memory and repeatedly dogging former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg about his dismal performance among African American voters in early-state polls. Castro’s remarks on Wednesday were exclusively focused on priming the pump for Warren, blending policy and personal observations in a way that few but a former rival for the nomination could do.Castro’s enthusiastic embrace of Warren as the “unity candidate” comes at a moment when the progressive wing of the Democratic Party they both represent is increasingly at its own throat—and when Warren could use a cheerleader. After Warren confirmed multiple reports that Sen. Bernie Sanders had told her that he didn’t believe a female nominee could defeat Trump in a general election, saying she had been “disappointed” by his remarks, Sanders called the claims “ludicrous,” sparking an acrimonious battle between supporters of the two campaigns that has yet to be completely resolved.Castro’s upbeat speech was well received by the students at Cornell, many of whom expressed a desire for the one-time mayor of San Antonio to be Warren’s running mate.“I’m a politics-Spanish major, I like wonky politicians—like, I’m a nerd,” said Oliver Trousdale, a Cornell College student from Hanover Park, Illinois, who pointed to Castro’s exchange with Beto O’Rourke in which he called for treating illegal border crossings as a civil violation rather than criminal offense. Trousdale’s partner is an undocumented immigrant, they added, “so seeing that and seeing like him, like, hold his ground and not give in to a lot of the nonsense was definitely a big deal for me.”Elizabeth Warren Leans Into ‘First Female President’Other campaigns, however, still seem to be finding their footing on the thoughtful deployment of surrogates. On Tuesday, Chasten Buttigieg—a hugely in-demand figure for LGBT events and fundraisers for husband Pete Buttigieg’s campaign—played only a small role in a trio of town halls in the Hawkeye State, shaking hands and taking selfies with supporters at a rope line in Indianola. Earlier, at an event in Osceola, he sat quietly, occasionally texting, through most of his husband’s stump speech, just feet away from a young man wearing a “Chasten for First Gentleman” pin.At a “Women for Biden” house party in Ankeny on Monday evening, Valerie Biden Owen’s warm-up remarks ahead of the headliner—Dr. Jill Biden, the former vice president’s spouse—ran longer than Dr. Biden’s herself. At a “Pride for Biden” event at The Blazing Saddle, one of Des Moines’ two gay bars, two days later, Dr. Biden’s speech about her husband’s long history of support for LGBTQ communities was well received by some attendees.“She’s dynamic, she’s smart, she’s passionate,” said Jill Nash of Tiburon, California, who was accidentally introduced by the bar’s owner as the eponymous former second lady. “Those, I think, are winning combinations on a campaign.”But figure skating legend Michelle Kwan, who was also at The Blazing Saddle to support Biden, didn’t make any public remarks, despite her presence eliciting the single most enthusiastic response this reporter has ever witnessed from local Tim Mooney, a patron who had no idea that the Biden campaign was hosting an event.“MICHELLE KWAN! OH MY GOD! GET OUT OF HERE! OH MY GOD!” Mooney shouted, before recounting Kwan’s entire illustrious career to her in encyclopedic detail. “This is a great honor—you’re one of the greatest figure skaters who’s ever LIVED!”Mooney, who lives in Des Moines’ East Village neighborhood, told The Daily Beast that Michelle Kwan notwithstanding, he does not plan to caucus on Monday because he finds the process too confusing—although he said that if he heard the two-time Olympic medalist speak, he would consider it.“Yeah, Michelle Kwan would probably do it for me,” Mooney said. “Other than that, it would take a lot of convincing because I have no idea of what I’m gonna do with anybody else.”(Upon hearing this, another patron leaned over to explain how the admittedly confusing caucus process works.)Without question, the candidate with the most impressive slate of surrogates is Sanders. This week alone, the senator will be repped at the stump by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, indie rock band Vampire Weekend, and folk staple Bon Iver. But Iowans who queued up to meet their favored candidate’s hype-man (or dog) told The Daily Beast that, for the most part, star power still takes a backseat to the issues that matter every day to them.Team Biden’s Been Prepping for Impeachment Smears for Months“I got introduced to Elizabeth via a couple of guys who came door-to-door,” Jerri Iehl, a 61-year-old former newspaper editor, told The Daily Beast as Bailey played behind her. Iehl said she had struggled with health issues after she was prescribed a medication that has since received a “black box” label for potentially dangerous side effects, which “ruined seven years of my life.” It was Warren’s plan for reforming the pharmaceutical industry, Iehl said, that brought her to the Waterloo campaign office—even though Bailey sweetened the deal.“They’re part of the family and, maybe, our next president and first man and first dog, you know? That’s important!” Iehl said. “I’m not gonna probably make it to the White House, so might as well meet ’em here.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

“Let the people decide for themselves!” cried White House Counsel Pat Cipollone Wednesday, warning senators not to even think about pushing Trump out less than 10 months before an election.Hmmm: Where have I heard that one before?Alan Dershowitz Defends Trump With an Unapologetic Embrace of American FascismFlash back four years, to when Justice Antonin Scalia died and, while his corpse was still warm, Mitch McConnell said: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”That was a blatant abuse of legislative branch power, one of the most corrupt procedural moves any senator has made since the days when the old segregationists used whatever tricks they could to hold up civil rights bills. Also a total Hail Mary pass, because as McConnell spoke those words in February 2016, no one thought for a second that Trump was actually going to become president and most everyone thought it would be Hillary Clinton. But the bet came up a winner, and McConnell got away with the kind of black-is-white/up-is-down logic at which the Republicans have become so skilled. He cloaked his anti-democratic maneuver (denying a constitutional prerogative to a duly elected president who won by a very comfortable margin) in the language of democracy (let the people decide).So it is here. They can thump on all they want about Federalist this or Hamilton’s letter that, but the fact is that impeachment is in the Constitution. There’s no time frame on it. The Constitution doesn’t say, “Of course, we think you shouldn’t do it to a president within 10 months of an election.” It says the Senate may convict, period. Just like it says the President shall nominate people to fill Supreme Court vacancies, and the Senate shall vote on that nominee. Nothing about short-circuiting that process in a president’s last year.It’s total nonsense. Suppose that in, oh, July of a presidential election year, a president had a political opponent killed. Caught in flagrante delicto, as it were. Open and shut. And suppose that like Trump most of the time, he didn’t even bother denying it. Under current law, the president couldn’t be arrested. That would have to wait until he left office. So the nation would be faced with two choices. Keep a murderer in the Oval Office, as the leader of the free world, or impeach him and remove him from office.In that case, should the Senate just wait and “let the people decide”? Actually, if the president-murderer were a Republican, Midnight Mitch and Lawless Lindsey would undoubtedly say yes, which would give them and Fox plenty of time to concoct a story that the president was acting in self-defense, boldly preempting some “deep state” conspiracy. But the vast majority of Americans would presumably not want a murderer in the White House and would want him impeached and convicted.And, of course, if it were a Democratic president, Mitch and Lindsey and the gang would be all for impeachment and conviction. They’d stand there before the very same cameras they stand before today solemnly telling us that it doesn’t matter whether it’s 100 days before Election Day or one, the Constitution imposes upon them this grave duty and they have no choice but to carry it out.So “let the people decide” is not a principle. It’s an excuse. But to people paying only fleeting attention, it sounds like principle. Which they know. Which is what makes it so manipulative and cynical. This isn’t a hypothetical question. Alan Dershowitz flat-out claimed this as a legal principle Wednesday, asserting that, “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” If only Nixon had known about this get-out-of-jail free card that Republican senators look ready to punch now for Trump. But that’s not even the worst part of it. The worst part of “let the people decide” is that in our system as it now stands, the people don’t decide. In 2016, the people chose Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes. They decided. They wanted Hillary Clinton to be the next president (and nominate that Supreme Court justice). But people don’t count in our system. States do.Cipollone knows this, as do all the Republicans from McConnell on down who’ve taken to parroting the defense counsel’s line. And they know a couple other things, too.One, they know that after they acquit Trump, he’s going to go right back to cheating and trying to rig the 2020 election. Dershowitz just gave him constitutional carte blanche to do it if Republican senators accept this logic. And not only do they know Trump will go back to cheating; they quietly hope he will. This is because of the second thing they know. Two, they know there’s a sporting (or better) chance that Trump is going win on the cheap again, but this time even worse. Trump could lose the popular vote this time by 5 million or more and still eke out an Electoral College win, as experts like David Wasserman and various others have written. Assuming a vote of perhaps 145 to 150 million (about 137 million voted last time, and I’m guessing interest will be higher), 5 million is a lot. More than 3 percent. In any other election in this country, that’s case closed. The state laws that allow recounts typically allow them if the margin is less than 1 percent, or even .5 percent. Not 3.33 percent.So no, in the United States of America, or the United States of Republican America, the people do not decide. The people chose Al Gore. The people elected Barack Obama to eight years in office, not seven, canceling out his appointment powers in the eighth year. And the people chose Hillary Clinton. This is not partisan sour grapes. This is a crisis of a Constitution that was the product of compromises made with slaveholders. Today, the slaveholders’ descendants likewise have us by the throat and hide behind “the people.” Poor Merrick Garland learned that the hard way. But so have we all.  Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Donald Trump’s presidency may be resting on the whims of the 100 members of the United States Senate, but the White House isn’t sweating it.   Despite a whirlwind few days, in which it was revealed that President Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton had copped to there being a quid pro quo to dig up dirt on his domestic political opponents, Republican congressional sources say that the White House has remained relatively hands-off in trying to keep the party in line. With lawmakers considering whether to call additional witnesses—including Bolton—there has been modest directive offered by White House aides about how to handle such a situation beyond talking points that could be deployed. The president has made his wishes known through his favorite medium—Twitter—and his legal team has argued against additional witnesses before the chamber. Additional signals have been public and not particular subtle, such as when Trump thanked senators attending a Wednesday trade deal signing. "Maybe,” the president joked, “I'm being just nice to them because I want their vote.”But beyond that, aides say, the White House has not felt compelled to use all the carrots and sticks at its disposal. "I don't think there has been much lobbying or heavy lifting and there has certainly been no efforts to quote, unquote, keep people in line,” said one senior Republican Senate aide. The White House has shown, in the past, that it is willing to aggressively lobby the Hill on matters directly tied to the president’s agenda. That they’ve adopted a different approach to this critical juncture of impeachment illustrates the hold that Trump believes he has over his party and a strategic assessment that—in certain cases—such outreach may prove unnecessary or counterproductive. It’s a strategy that the president’s team has been practicing for weeks, as The Washington Post reported. And it’s one they continue to believe will result in acquittal. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), a confidant of the president’s and a lead defender of his during the impeachment trial, said on Wednesday that Trump has had little contact with the Republicans who are weighing the fate of his presidency—a stark departure from the House process, when the White House was actively wooing GOP lawmakers with presidential face-time and other perks to shore up their standing. “It’s a different process, obviously,” Meadows told The Daily Beast. “You have a trial going on now, on the House side it was an investigation.”A senior member of the Senate GOP, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), said a hands-off approach was probably the right way to go. “There are plenty of opportunities for members to reach out if they wanted to, if they had advice or thoughts, and I imagine some of that's happened just during the time the President's team has been here,” he said.  Even Senate Democrats that the White House is hoping to lure to make an acquittal vote bipartisan say they’ve heard little, if anything at all, from the president. ”He hasn't heard from the president or anyone else,” said a spokesman for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who on Wednesday showed he’d be amenable to some Republican demands by expressing support for calling Hunter Biden as a witness. “He hasn't talked to the president in a while.” People familiar with Team Trump’s strategy say that White House officials have opted away from a heavy-handed approach not simply because they are confident that Republicans already know how Trump would react if they did not vote to acquit. There is also a belief that some Republican lawmakers would prefer to have a bit of distance from the president, if only to keep up the appearance of impartiality; and there’s fear that any effort to push GOP fence-sitters like Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) on the constructs of the trial would have the opposite effect. Asked if a personal pitch from Trump to these senators could backfire, Meadows demurred. But he did say, “I don’t see that as something that he would do, and I don’t see if it’s something that he’s even contemplating.”Mainly, however, there is an expectation inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can do much of the heavy lifting without the president’s help. “The thinking is to let Cocaine Mitch do his thing and get his people in line,” said a source close to the White House, using a nickname coined by a former opponent of McConnell that the senior senator from Kentucky has since adopted. All of which is not to say the White House has done nothing. Tony Sayegh, a senior communications official in the Trump White House, has helmed a weekly Senate GOP communicators meeting on Capitol Hill on Mondays. And following The New York Times’ reporting on Bolton’s forthcoming book, the president’s team sprung into action to say all was well.“The facts remain unchanged,” Sayegh told the gathering in his Monday meeting, according to a source who was in the room—a line that Senate Republicans dutifully repeated later in the day and week, much to the pleasure of Trump’s senior staffers in the West Wing.By mid-Monday, the Trump White House had blasted out a list of talking points to surrogates and media allies decrying the Bolton-related “Leaks,” according to a message obtained by The Daily Beast. In its messaging, Team Trump encouraged surrogates to compare the ongoing situation to what occurred during the confirmation hearings for Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of attempted rape, and in doing so again stresses that the juicy tell-all changes nothing in Democrats’ favor.“These selective leaks do not change the actual evidence and are being done purely to influence the Senate, the same playbook we saw during the Kavanaugh hearings,” reads one of the talkers.Despite the Bolton bombshells, the GOP line on witnesses has held. However, with the unpublished manuscript still looming and new information coming out every day, Trump and his allies are not out of the woods yet. The latest example of such came Wednesday morning when House Foreign Relations Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY) released a statement about a call he’d had with Bolton on Sept. 19. “Ambassador Bolton suggested to me—unprompted—that the committee look into the recall of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch,” Engel’s statement read. “He strongly implied that something improper had occurred around her removal as our top diplomat in Kyiv.”Engel had kept the conversation private because he and Bolton have a longstanding relationship. Indeed, the only reason he chose to come forward now, a Democratic aide said, was Trump’s repeated assertion that Bolton never spoke out following his departure from the White House—an assertion Engel believed to be wrong. He did not speak to Bolton before releasing the statement. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Sen. Rand Paul walked out of the chamber after Roberts declined the question. He told reporters his question didn't name the alleged whistleblower.