Following what Rep. Adam Schiff described as the “rather abrupt end to the president’s case,” the House impeachment managers spoke to the press, with Schiff saying it was “clear that [Trump’s lawyers] are still reeling” from the revelation that former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his book that Donald Trump directly told him that military aid to Ukraine was being held up to pressure the country to investigate Trump’s political opponents.

Schiff offered a brutal assessment of the defense’s arguments and continued to press hard for the Senate to hold a fair trial, saying that Trump’s lawyers “really did not, cannot defend the president on the facts,” despite their presentation of a “list of grievances, which I’m sure the president was delighted to hear but nonetheless, not particularly relevant to the charges.”

“I don’t think frankly that we could have made as effective a case for John Bolton’s testimony as the president’s own lawyers,” Schiff said. “And part of the way they did that today was the bulk of Mr. Sekulow’s argument was this is merely a policy difference. That’s all this is—they’re seeking to impeach the president over a policy difference. As if, as Sekulow would have us believe, Donald Trump released the military aid because he was so grateful that the Ukrainian parliament passed a anti-corruption court bill, and he was just waiting for that the whole time. No one believes that. No one believes that.”

Schiff returned again and again to the need for a fair trial in the Senate. Asked if the House will subpoena Bolton if the Senate fails to call him as a witness, he refused to talk about a “back-up, fallback position” because “At the end of the day nothing is sufficient if the Senate doesn’t decide to have a fair trial, and you simply can’t have a fair trial without witnesses.”