GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander, a key swing vote on calling witnesses in Pres. Trump's impeachment trial, released a statement saying he does not plan to vote in favor of hearing additional witnesses, such as former national security adviser John Bolton.
As the Senate appears to move towards acquitting President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to rule out further action to hold the president accountable.’s legal team in his impeachment trial as attempts by Democrats to rally votes for new witnesses appear to have stalled.
ABC News' Trish Turner caught up with McConnell as he arrived at the Capitol Thursday morning. Asked if he has the votes he needs to win the day Friday on witnesses, he responded, “We’ll see what tomorrow brings.” Then, when asked if he felt confident about the vote, he turned his head and with a sly grin and said, “I always do.”Here is how the day is unfolding. Please refresh for updates.Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.
"I believe hearing from certain witnesses would give each side the opportunity to more fully and fairly make their case, resolve any ambiguities, and provide additional clarity," Collins said in a statement."Therefore, I will vote in support of the motion to allow witnesses and documents to be subpoenaed.""I am going to go reflect on what I have heard, re-read my notes and decide whether I need to hear more,” she said.
In response to this question, Sen. Dick Durbin asked the House managers if they would respond. Rep. Adam Schiff was up to the challenge. "You explain that Ambassador [Gordon] Sondland and Sen. [Ron] Johnson both said the president explicitly denied that he was looking for a quid pro quo with Ukraine," Murkowski's question read."The reporting on Ambassador [John] Bolton's book suggests the president told Bolton both directly and indirectly that the aid would not be released until Ukraine announced the investigations the president desired.
"That's not the way that this chamber should allow impeachments to be presented to it," Philbin said.If you're looking for any indication for which way Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander may be leaning, look no further than the question he just asked, teaming up with GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Steve Daines -- asking how the impeachment proceedings against President Trump compare to previous bipartisan impeachments.
"They couldn't turn away from the evidence that their president had committed abuse of power, cheat in the election, and that they had to vote to impeach him," she said. Most notably, around 5:45 p.m., McConnell tears a piece of paper from his notebook and passes a note onto the desk of Sen. Murkowski. She doesn't read it for about three minutes. When she finally opens it, she keeps a stoic face. Then she slides the note into her desk.
He offered to cap depositions of potential witnesses to a week, similar to the Clinton depositions which happened over a three-day period. The White House defense counsel Patrick Philbin argues Rudy Giuiliani was not engaging in foreign policy, but simply a conduit of information to President Trump. The senators ask: How would acquitting the president prevent voters from making an informed decision?
"If it were the intent of the framers to say that a president can't be impeached in an election year, they would have said so. Now, they didn't for a reason. They were concerned about a president who might try to cheat in that very election," he says."...let me begin with something in the category of you can't make this stuff up," House manager Adam Schiff says.
House manager Rep. Adam Schiff responds, saying that this differed from other holds on aid because there was no policy reason for the hold. He also cited the Government Accountability Office report that found the hold unlawful. Deputy Counsel to the President Patrick Philbin answers a question during the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump in the Senate in Washington, Jan. 30, 2020.In response to a question about past legal precedent, White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin makes a connection between Trump withholding military assistance from Ukraine and the administration's negotiations with Central American countries last year.
"So look, the, the point that I was trying to make is that ... when you have a president who lies virtually every day -- and I'm not happy to say that but it's true, he is a pathological liar -- should you really regard as credible something that somebody says who lies all the time? That was the point of my question," Sanders says.
House Manager Rep. Adam Schiff answers a question during the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump in the Senate in Washington, Jan. 30, 2020.The House managers were asked to respond to arguments made Wednesday night by former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz -- that"If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.
Dershowitz has pushed back on characterizations of that argument on Twitter, saying he did not say that a president seeking re-election can do whatever he wants but that a lawful act such as holding up aid money for policy reasons does not become unlawful because a president is seeking re-election. Sen. Rand Paul speaks to the media about the "whistleblower" question blocked by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts during the impeachment trial proceedings of President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill, Jan. 30, 2020.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial, reportedly blocked Paul on Wednesday from offering a question about the whistleblower. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts prepares to start the day's proceedings during the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump in the Senate in Washington, Jan. 30, 2020.
Blumenthal said that Roberts has refused to offer any questions about the whistleblower from Paul thus far. Paul was heard complaining about it on the floor yesterday per our producers in the chamber.“We need their cooperation we need their support in making the country work,” Schiff said. “Some of the best questions actually came from Republicans,” Schumer said. “Senator Collins and Murkowski asked the president's counsel if they could give an example of the president expressing concern about Hunter and Joe Biden before the former vice president announced his candidacy. The president's counsel could not point to a single example to support the claim. So, he made up a bogus excuse that his answer was limited to what's in the record.
In the late hours of debate on Wednesday, Trump's defense team offered two new controversial defenses. In one -- even if Trump intentionally withheld military aid from Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into Joe Biden, White House lawyers argued, those actions are not grounds for impeachment.
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