President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial began in earnest Tuesday, with prosecutors from the House of Representatives and lawyers for the White House tangling over how the case should proceed.
Votes on changes to the trial format showed Democrats and Republicans split along party lines, but last-second, handwritten changes to the proposed rules gave Democrats hope some Republican senators will consider their requests for documents and witnesses later on.
Here are five key things that have happened during Tuesday’s trial proceedings.
Democrats try and fail to change McConnell’s rules
As expected, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., offered several amendments to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s organizing resolution — essentially a blueprint for how the third presidential impeachment trial in United States history would proceed. The first, which would allow the Senate to subpoena White House records was defeated along party lines, 53 to 47. A second, to subpoena State Department documents related to the charges against the president, was also defeated along party lines, 53 to 47, Tuesday evening. Schumer immediately proposed a third amendment, to subpoena documents from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which also failed.
Schumer, undeterred, proposed a fourth amendment to subpoena White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, a key figure in events, such as the unusual freeze on millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, that prompted House Democrats to formally launch an impeachment inquiry. Again, the amendment failed, 53 to 47.
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A seemingly exasperated McConnell asked Schumer if he was willing to “stack” his remaining amendments, a procedure to speed up voting on the Democratic leader’s requests. Schumer refused. “We believe witnesses and documents are extremely important, and a compelling case has been made for them,” he said. “We will have votes on all of those.”
Schumer agreed to postpone the remainder of his amendments until Wednesday, but after a brief negotiation, the minority leader introduced a fifth amendment to subpoena certain Defense Department documents and records. It, too, was defeated, 53-47.
Schumer introduced his sixth amendment of the day, sending the first day of the impeachment trial late into the night. He moved to subpoena the testimony of Robert Blair, a senior adviser to Mulvaney, and Michael Duffey, the associate director of national security at the Office of Management and Budget who oversees the process for approving and releasing U.S. assistance to foreign countries.
A preview of coming attractions
The House managers and lawyers for the White House used the time they had to argue for and against the Schumer amendments to give sneak previews of their opening arguments.
House managers repeatedly referred to evidence they collected from Trump administration officials about the withholding of millions of dollars in military aid to the Ukraine, underscoring the White House’s refusal to hand over any documents related to the freeze while blocking key witnesses from testifying. The unusual aid freeze, prosecutors argued, was part of a larger pressure campaign directed by Trump to get the country’s leader to announce investigations that would benefit the president personally and politically.
White House lawyers contended the president didn’t do anything wrong, and argued their client was denied due process in the House investigation.
The writing is on the resolution
Two items that had initially caused a stir in McConnell’s resolution were apparently changed shortly before the document was read into the record Tuesday. A provision that would have given both the House managers and lawyers for the White House just two days to deliver their allotted 24 hours of opening statements was changed to give them each three days. McConnell also tweaked another provision criticized by Democrats that would have barred all the evidence against Trump gathered during the House Democrats’ inquiry from being automatically entered into the Senate record. The changes were written by hand on the resolution, with other lines crossed out.
Clinton’s precedent looms
A spokeswoman for Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, said the changes to the resolution were made after she and other Republicans complained that the rules strayed too far from the ones used in the Senate trial of President Bill Clinton.
Trump reacts
Trump was in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, but weighed in on Twitter with a single demand.
“READ THE TRANSCRIPTS!” he tweeted, possibly referring to the White House record of his July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (the document notes it is not an exact transcript).
During that call, Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate possible 2020 rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden and well as a conspiracy theory related to the 2016 election. Read the full record here.
