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What happened today

The House managers began to deliver their opening arguments Wednesday afternoon, presenting the evidence and witness testimony they gathered in the impeachment inquiry to an audience — the Senate — that may not have seen the material before.

Representative Adam Schiff, the lead manager, started the session with a dramatic, two-hour presentation that featured historical references, political philosophy and sweeping declarations about what he called President Trump’s attempts to undermine the rule of law and American elections. He accused the president of a “corrupt scheme” to pressure Ukraine for help “to cheat” in the election.

Mr. Schiff was followed by a mix of shorter presentations from his six colleagues, who broke down their time by theme and chronology. For example, Representative Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, homed in on the beginnings of the Ukraine pressure campaign, while Representative Jason Crow, a veteran, talked about military aid and Ukraine’s war with Russia.

The managers played dozens of video clips from witness testimony, including from current and former officials like Fiona Hill, Gordon Sondland, Bill Taylor and David Holmes. And they played several from Mr. Trump himself, showing the president in 2016 publicly calling on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s email and last year publicly calling on Ukraine and China to investigate Joe Biden.

Republican senators were quick to dismiss the presentations, and many of them were spotted leaving the Senate chamber in the middle of them. “So far we haven’t heard anything new from what he heard yesterday,” said Senator John Cornyn. Senator Roy Blunt was harsher: “There’s about one hour of presentation that we’ve heard about 10 times yesterday, and about 6 times today," he said. “It’s not a very deep case.”

Here’s a collection of Wednesday’s biggest moments, video highlights, sketches from inside the Senate chamber and an analysis of the two sides’ legal strategies.

Adam Schiff, leadoff batter

Mr. Schiff’s presentation was especially well received by Democrats — Senator Richard Blumenthal, a former prosecutor, told reporters that it was one of the most powerful arguments he had ever seen. I talked to my colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who visited the Senate chamber on Wednesday, about what made his appearance effective in the eyes of his audience.

Sheryl, why do you think Mr. Schiff organized his presentation the way he did?

I think he felt he needed to serve up the whole story on a platter at the outset and then let the other managers kind of take bits and pieces of it. He is the person Nancy Pelosi trusts the most. He’s been the leader of this whole inquiry from start to finish, so it was natural that he would take the most time to talk.

He’s a former federal prosecutor and is just very adept at speaking to a jury and making a case. I was struck by how he invoked the founders at the beginning and end of his presentation, making lofty appeals to history. But he also did go through, in a very granular way, the scheme that Democrats say Mr. Trump undertook to press Ukraine to interfere with the 2020 election. And I was especially struck by his use of video clips, effectively bringing witnesses into the trial.