CBS News legal experts Jonathan Turley, Kim Wehle and Paula Reid help us break down the latest in the House impeachment probe into President Trump.

Our panelists discuss the next steps in the Trump impeachment probe and the latest on the 2020 campaign trail.

Missed the second half of the show? The latest on the House impeachment probe into President Trump.

Mitch McConnell can’t afford any tension with President Donald Trump. So he’s doing everything he can to keep his fragile majority in sync with Trump and his explosive election-year playbook.

Just three days after Trump berated McConnell on Twitter to “get tough” with Democrats and probe the 2016 Russia investigation that ensnared Trump’s campaign, the Senate majority leader took to the floor to echo the president’s misgivings in a way he declined to do last week. Trump’s campaign “was treated like a hostile foreign power by our own law enforcement,” McConnell said Tuesday, subject to “wild theories of Russian collusion.”

In the days to come and with McConnell’s public blessing, GOP committee chairmen plan to follow Trump’s lead and approve a series of subpoenas for documents and testimony that could hit some of Trump’s favorite targets, including Hunter Biden and dozens of Obama administration officials.

It’s all part of the last stage of the GOP’s evolution during Trump’s first term: an apparent end to public disagreements for the next six months until the party is past the election.

“I just think that everybody realizes that our fortunes sort of rise or fall together,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the party whip. “One thing we have to do is to make sure that we are united on our agenda and make sure that there’s not separation between the White House and Republicans in Congress.”

Two hours after McConnell’s floor speech, Senate Republicans hosted Trump for their first party lunch in two months. The gathering was largely an opportunity for the president to present poll numbers, talk about his re-election campaign and tout his handling of the coronavirus crisis, which has ravaged the economy and infected more than a million people.

But Trump also urged Republicans to stick together as the election approaches — and act a little bit more like the opposition party he loathes.

“He very frequently reminds us that we’re not as tough as [Democrats] are, that they play more for keeps, that they stick together better,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “Part of what makes us conservative is our independence, so that is our strength philosophically but sometimes it can be a weakness.”

There was no real agenda for the meeting, but the takeaway was clear to attendees. Trump told senators that “we need to be a team,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). When asked whether Trump encouraged senators to hammer home on the investigative front, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) replied: “He didn’t need to.”

The moment reflected a new level of political synergy between Trump and the Senate Republicans who once blanched at his Twitter insults, his erratic governing style and his unorthodox economic, immigration and diplomatic policies. These days the Senate GOP majority has become an extended arm of Trumpism, with occasional complaints by a scattered few senators but mostly toothless dissent.

Trump has been on a tear as he seeks retribution against his political enemies, whether it’s on the origins of the Russia investigation, the FBI’s case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, or Hunter Biden’s Ukraine work — and Republicans seem eager to play along. McConnell is defending his majority this fall in increasingly difficult conditions, and the GOP has decided the only way to win is to stick by Trump as closely as possible.

“You’re not crazy or a conspiracy theorist if you see a pattern of institutional unfairness toward this president,” McConnell said earlier on Tuesday. “You would have to be blind not to see one.”

McConnell also used his floor remarks to take a rare public jab at a federal judge for trying to slow the Justice Department’s move to drop the case against Flynn.

When asked whether he spoke with Trump after the president issued a direct appeal to him on Twitter over the weekend, McConnell sidestepped the question and said that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) will have “all control on reviewing” the 2016-era investigations. “He has a pretty expansive plan to look into all of that,” McConnell added.

Trump did not directly answer a reporter over whether he was satisfied with how Republican senators were handling the matter. Instead, he reiterated his litany of grievances against the Obama administration.

Since Friday, Trump fired the State Department’s inspector general, went after McConnell on Twitter and revealed he was taking hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug with uncertain benefits for coronavirus according to officials. Meanwhile the U.S. death toll for the pandemic has shot past 90,000 and the unemployment rate is spiking.

Republicans have largely shrugged at Trump’s self-medication and defended his coronavirus response. They’ve also largely backed down as Trump continues his purge of government watchdogs in the aftermath of his acquittal in the Senate’s impeachment trial, sending stern letters to Trump that have been ignored so far.

And when they had the president in front of him on Tuesday, senators decided it was not the venue to demand the explanation for the ousted inspectors general that they say they want.

“I didn’t ask him about it because I’m tracking down my own questions and trying to be able to work through the process,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “I’ve already started my own follow-up, privately.”

At the beginning of 2019, Republicans grimaced at Trump’s government shutdown and a bipartisan majority voted against his national emergency to build a border wall. GOP senators decried Trump’s tariffs for years and even conceded some tweets targeting progressive women in the House were racist.

But after everyone except Utah Sen. Mitt Romney banded around Trump during the impeachment trial, the party turned the page.

“The impeachment thing clearly brought people together,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.).

And Republicans are about to dig in even further behind Trump. On Wednesday, the Senate Homeland Security Committee will vote on a subpoena as part of the panel’s GOP-run investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

After Graham rebuffed Trump’s calls for the Judiciary Committee to haul in President Barack Obama and question him about the Flynn case, Graham now plans to approve a broad subpoena to compel documents and testimony from a slew of former Obama administration officials.

Graham told reporters he hoped to have his report out before the election and insisted that the subpoenas had nothing to do with Trump’s calls for him to call in Obama.

“We’ve been planning this for a long time,” Graham said.

Like Graham, McConnell had declined to endorse Trump’s push to haul Obama and Biden before the Senate, saying only in a Fox News interview last week that the public deserves to know more about how the 2016-era probes began. That response set off a flurry of criticism from Trump's allies in the conservative media, which led to Trump’s direct appeal to McConnell on Saturday to “get tough and move quickly.”

The new subpoena action also comes a week after two key Republicans senators released a list of Obama administration officials who might have been involved in efforts that “unmasked” Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but whose criminal case was dropped earlier this month. Biden’s name was on the list, which was compiled by Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.

These efforts by Republican senators are likely to give Trump a boost with his political base. The president’s reelection campaign unleashed a torrent of criticism against Biden after the “unmasking” list was released.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) has said he wants his party to multi-task and also make headway on climate change policy and health care. But for rank-and-file GOP senators, the election-year agenda is now mostly out of their control and focused increasingly on Trump’s targets.

“Personally, I didn't run for Senate to be involved in that,” said Braun, who won his seat in 2018. “I can see you're largely along for the ride on most of the stuff you'd like to see done.”

He then made clear that he views Trump’s agenda as his own, too: “For the American public there’s some grave issues that occurred. And we ought to get to the bottom of it.”

President Donald Trump is no longer holding raucous rallies with adulating supporters. So for now, he’s settling for the friendly confines of the Republican Senate.

The president’s closed-door lunch Tuesday with Senate Republicans had all the markings of a Trump campaign event. The president bragged about poll numbers, lashed out at the Obama administration’s surveillance of the 2016 election, touted his administration’s handling of the coronavirus, and even talked up the border wall.

And he had a clear message for the team: we need to stick together.

“He didn’t even get into a heavy emphasis on ‘we’ve got to reopen, we’ve got to do it really quickly,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). “He didn’t go there, he was sorta like, steady as she goes and let’s keep our plans and stick together as we move towards the election.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said that it’s clear the president misses his large gatherings and said “of course” he is frustrated he can’t do rallies.

“He’s ready to hit the trail — that’s obvious,” added Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.).

As usual, the president’s re-election was top of mind. Trump brought up his poll numbers and said they demonstrated that his base of support is stronger than Vice President Joe Biden’s, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, according to attendees.

Senators also discussed next steps for coronavirus legislation. While the House passed its $3 trillion coronavirus package last week with no GOP or White House input, Senate Republicans said Trump endorsed their approach to wait and see how the previous tranches of aid play out.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said he also brought up the need to fix the unemployment system with the president, adding that Trump said the unemployment benefits are hurting the economic recovery and "that's a problem.” He also said Trump should do these gatherings more often. A lot more often.

“I told him if I were him I’d come up once a month,” he said. “It’s the one thing [George W.] Bush didn’t really do. I’m glad he comes up. Everybody gets to ask him questions.”

It was an unusual venue for a party unity rally. The cavernous room in the Hart building allowed Senate Republicans to continue their social distancing, even as the president flouts the mask-wearing guidance in the Capitol. And though people who meet with Trump get tested for coronavirus these days, the Republican senators, who donned protective masks, did not get tested before the event.

Trump was surrounded by aides as he left, including his new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who also spoke at the lunch. The president briefly stopped by a pool of reporters to rail against Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), calling her a “sick woman” with “a lot of mental problems.” His remarks follow comments the speaker made he previous night on CNN taunting the president over this weight.

While the lunch covered several topics, including discussion of a vaccine against the coronavirus, Republicans were careful to steer away from sensitive topics. No one talked about Trump’s controversial use of hydroxychloroquine. And another issue that didn’t surface was the president’s firing late Friday night of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.

Trump’s move to fire the inspector general came weeks after he ousted Michael Atkinson, the top watchdog for the intelligence community. Even though some Senate Republicans have voiced concern about the firings and demanded that the administration provide Congress with a written explanation as recently as Monday evening, it never came up during the one-hour lunch, according to attendees.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after the lunch that Trump “has the full authority to hire and fire, under the Constitution, anybody in the executive branch.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has voiced concern about the president’s removal of the inspectors general, described the lunch as “interesting” and “eclectic.” She said Trump, whom she has not endorsed, made no overtures for her to do so even as he touted a party unity message.

He also did not single out Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who also attended the lunch. Trump has frequently targeted the Utah Republican on Twitter, after he voted to remove the president from office in February during the Senate’s impeachment trial.

Trump’s visit to the Hill and emphasis on his own re-election chances comes as the president in recent weeks has mounted a furious new attack on former president Barack Obama, repeatedly tweeting “Obamagate,” the president’s shorthand for unspecified allegations that his predecessor committed crimes against him.

Trump has offered no evidence to support the accusation but has railed against senior Obama administration figures who had a hand in the FBI's long-running investigation of his campaign's contacts with Russia.

And the president didn’t shy away from talking about 2016 and Russian election meddling again on Tuesday,

“We talked about the investigations into Russian involvement in the 2016 election and his concerns, which you’ve heard before which many of us share, about using the institutions like the FBI and the DOJ and others to undermine an incoming president,” Cornyn said.

The message is starting to sink in.

After months of pressure from the president, Graham said Monday his committee will vote in early June to subpoena a wide range of Obama and Trump administration officials connected to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. And McConnell also chastised the FBI in his floor remarks Tuesday for its 2016 counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign and ties to Russia.

“No matter what some Washington Democrats may try to claim, you’re not crazy or a conspiracy theorist if you see a pattern of institutional unfairness toward this president,” McConnell said. “You would have to be blind not to see one.”

Andrew Desiderio contributed to this report.

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