After six days of opening arguments in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, senators now get the chance to ask questions. Questions are submitted in writing to be read by Chief Justice John Roberts, with answers generally limited to five minutes.

Stabenow asks the House managers to correct “falsehoods” in the Trump team’s arguments.

Zoe Lofgren takes this fat pitch. Moves back again to the discussion of how Zelensky demonstrated that he was resistant to Trump’s demands until it was clear that assistance wasn’t coming. That point was one of the best that was developed in the Senate trial. 

Next question is to the Trump team to ask if the House tried to sue about executive privilege over the Christmas break while the articles were waiting for delivery to the Senate. Which … that’s kind of a pointless question, because not only does everyone know the answer, nothing about it has any connection to the case.

Philbin — who has still taken every swing except for a pop-up by Dershowitz — clearly thinks so as well, because he’s just repeating what he said in response to another question about subpoenas.

House managers given the chance to address the “overturn the election” argument from Team Trump.

Schiff takes this one—after first pointing out that the single case Trump’s team just called “pretty fast” has been in the courts for nine months and is still multiple steps away from a decision.

Schiff: “By definition if you’re impeaching a president that president is in office and has won an election. … Impeachment was put in the Constitution not as a punishment, but to protect the country.” Schiff effectively shredding the idea that you can’t impeach “close to the election” or in the first term.

Schiff also doing a terrific job in identifying the damage Trump did in withholding aid and pushing Russian conspiracy theories.

Trump’s team gets another chance to beat up on the House and play to the Senate with a you don’t need to hear witnesses, because dealing with important Senate stuff.

It’s clear this is one of the real “closing arguments” for the Republican side: The Senate is too important to waste it’s time discovering facts. The House needs to do all the work and deliver the case wrapped in a bow. Philbin again delivering the Trump would demand a “long list of witnesses” that would cause things to “drag on for months” threat.

Next to the House side, is an opportunity to smack down exactly the “witnesses would take too long” question.

Hakeem Jeffries gets the chance to take this slam dunk. Points out that the House took up to five depositions a week. Restates the scope of Trump’s crimes. Jeffries knocking this one out of the park in his details and delivery. “This. Is. A. Trial.” A top notch job in bringing the historical facts, as well as the importance of witnesses.

I do wish we would get back to how Roberts can expedite challenges.

And Trump’s team gets to … sigh … once again talk to issues of Trump’s executive privilege. This is at least the third time already that Philbin has had an opportunity to make claims about how Trump can shut everyone up.

If you’ve been waiting for a coffee break, consider this it.

Philbin makes the case that it’s important to protect the precedent of preventing Bolton from speaking … even though neither Clinton nor Nixon blocked the testimony of a single witness during impeachment. That seems like precedent.

Jason Crow tackles a question about dealing with information that is related to national security and the supposed “inter-agency review” that was supposed to be taking place advance of Trump releasing the military assistance. 

Crow makes it clear that there are no documents, no witnesses, no evidence to support the idea that Trump halted assistance out of some legitimate concern. Crow invites Trump to present the evidence.

Graham and Cruz send the House managers a question … a theoretical that asking “If Mitt Romney’s son was being paid $1 million a year by a corrupt Russian company, would it be impeachable for Obama to try to get Russia to do an investigation.”

Graham and Cruz think they’re being clever here, but Schiff smacks it down. “It’s remarkable to me that we even have to have this conversation.” Points out that FBI Director Christopher Wray has said that they would turn down such a request. “I can’t imagine any circumstance...” where withholding aid to a rival to obtain political advantage is justified.

Cruz and Graham clearly concocted this question because they’re going to hustle in front of Fox cameras at the next available break to claim that Democrats want a “Biden free zone.” That is, if someone on Fox isn’t making that case right now.

And “high crimes and misdemeanors” vs. criminal code again. This time to the House side where Zoe Lofgren handles it. And again, both sides keep returning to this question because in the light of Bolton’s statements, there is no doubt of Trump’s guilt.

Republicans are working on a tripartite extraction to get out of voting for witnesses.

1) Deshowitz tells us this isn’t impeachable.

2) Philbin says it would take a long time.

3) So why waste our time calling Bolton if it’s not impeachable anyway?

And now Trump’s team gets to make another claim that all subpoenas from the House were invalid, because they get to define how the House does impeachment. It’s an even more ridiculous argument than the one launched by Dershowitz.

Maybe worth having the House team slam back … but it’s clearly a band-aide that no one believes and which the White House is putting up as a transparent excuse. So whether it’s worth even talking about it is debatable. 

And once again the House is back on whether these charges are impeachable. This time the question cited Federalist No. 65 — which is the bugle call that brings forth Jerry Nadler.

Nadler polishing up some of the arguments he made earlier about the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors and going through a chunk of his previous speech at high speed.

Again, we’re going to keep returning to this “impeachable” argument, because it’s where the Republicans are hanging what’s left of their case.

Nadler points out that the House had previously given the committees subpoena power. Which is the correct response to the baseless argument that Philbin was making … and will almost certainly be making again in five minutes.