After a day of procedural debate and voting, six days of opening arguments, and two days of question and answer, the impeachment trial of Donald Trump could conclude Friday with debate followed by Republicans voting to end the trial and cover up Trump’s abuses of power. But Democrats will be keeping up the fight for a fair trial.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:17:07 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
As they get underway this afternoon, this heartrending post comes from Jerry Nadler.
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Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 7:12:16 PM +00:00
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Barbara Morrill
Ongoing coverage can be found here.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:19:25 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Lisa Murkowski is reported to have announced that she is also a “no” on witnesses.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:22:47 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Adam Schiff opens the day, and will argue the House’s position first, while leaving some time to respond to the statement from Trump’s legal team.
Schiff moves directly to the new information from Bolton’s book, and pauses for effect before naming Pat Cipollone. Schiff calls out Cipollone for his claims that the House managers were suppressing facts when he was suppressing the fact that he was involved.
Schiff: “The facts will come out. They will come out.”
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:23:51 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
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Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:25:30 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Schiff: “Let’s find out who is telling the truth. Let’s put John Bolton under oath. As Mr. Cipollone said, let’s make sure that all the facts come out.”
Schiff hands off to Val Demings.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:27:48 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Val Demings restates that the “evidence in the House record is sufficient to convict [Trump] on both counts, more than sufficient. But that’s not how trials work.”
Renews the call for witnesses, as in other cases. And reminds all the people in the room who have been complaining about precedent and tradition that there has never been an impeachment — not of a president, not of a judge — conducted without witnesses.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:29:55 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Demings lets emotion slip into her voice as she warns that allowing Trump to remain in office is giving him permission to undermine America’s security and election.
Demings: “Is this a fair trial? Is this a fair trial? Is this a fair trial without witnesses and documents? The answer is unequivocally no!”
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:32:08 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
If the statements from Alexander and Murkowski were not already enough of an indictment of the process in the Senate, Marco Rubio’s is genuinely worse.
Rubio admits that the House made its case and Trump is guilty. He admits that Trump’s actions are impeachable. And he still isn’t going to vote for even bringing in witnesses.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:34:28 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Demings: “Will you let the American people hear, simply hear, the evidence?” Reminds the Senate that when the House managers asked for Bolton’s testimony last week, they did not know what they would say. “Now we know why.”
Not mentioned in Deming’s statement — Cipollone was sitting there arguing against Bolton’s testimony when he definitely knew what Bolton would say.
Demings: “The American people clearly know a fair trial when they see one. Large majorities of the American people want to see witnesses in this trial.”
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:36:55 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Demings reminds the Senate of the deal that Schiff proposed over the last two days, offering to bind the House team to an agreement to limit witnesses and the time of depositions. Her plea here is one of the best moments of this process. She’s pouring her heart into it.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:38:59 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Demings: “The Senate does not just vote on impeachments. It does not just debate them. The Constitution demands that the Senate try impeachments. And a trial requires witnesses.”
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:40:58 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Demings hands over to Rep. Sylvia Garcia.
Garcia opens, as have others, by thanking Senators for listening. Though the evidence that Republicans have listened seems to be scant.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:43:01 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Garcia points out that, as a lawyer or a judge, she’s never run into a situation in which the defendant is claiming there is no evidence, while acting to suppress all the evidence. She speaks directly to the subpoenas for documents, which are not protected by executive privilege, but have also been subject to a blanket cover-up.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:45:50 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Ha. Garcia gets in a mention of “those in the room where it happened” a double-play on Hamilton and Bolton’s book. She plays a clip of Cipollone demanding “all of the facts.”
Cipollone: “Who doesn’t want to talk about the facts? Who doesn’t want to talk about the facts? Impeachment shouldn’t be a shell game. They should give you all the facts.”
Garcia digs Cipollone for misquoting witnesses and leaving out parts of statements in an attempt to generate exonnerating evidence.
Garcia: “Let’s be very clear. We are not the ones hiding the facts … That’s why we are the ones standing up here saying don’t allow [Trump] to silence the witnesses and hide this evidence.”
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:47:33 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Garcia has clearly read the statements from Rubio and Alexander, as she quotes some of their reasoning while calling for witnesses. This is also Garcia’s best moment of the whole trial.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:49:06 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
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Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:51:23 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Both Garcia and Demings have hammered the same points. Nixon and Clinton didn’t just allow their closest advisers to testify, they instructed them to do so. Trump is ordering his advisers not to appear … which definitely can be taken as an indication of what those advisers would say.
Garcia: “There’s not much that the American people agree on these days, but they do agree [that this trial should have witnesses].”
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:54:35 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Garcia hands over to Jason Crow.
Crow reminds the Senate that the House managers asked, not for dozens of witnesses, or unlimited witnesses, but four witnesses. And plays another Cipollone clip with the man who was in the room saying “Not a single witness” testified that there was a connection between military assistance and investigations.
Crow: “Denials in 280 characters is not the same as testimony under oath.”
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:55:01 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
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Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 6:56:49 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Crow brings up the statement that “everyone was in the loop.” So far, the House managers seem to be mostly tiptoeing around the real implications of Cipollone’s involvement. I suspect that in part that’s because this information just landed on the a half-hour before the hearing began.
I also suspect Schiff will not be silent when he wraps this up.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 7:00:48 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Crow makes a nice point that Bolton was mentioned as someone who was trusted by Ukrainian officials. Bolton’s actual role here is something that Americans still don’t understand. It increasingly seems that Bolton was put in the center between a defense of national security and the plot that Trump and Giuliani were directing. There really does seem to be a lot more to come out to describe the whole shape of what happened.
Friday, Jan 31, 2020 · 7:02:43 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Crow spends some time bringing things back to the role of Giuliani. Whose name should have been heard more often in this week.
It would be interesting to go back over the week to see if Trump’s team has ever said anything about Giuliani not in response to a direct question.
