The White House and Senate Republicans were pushing for a quick end to the proceedings, working aggressively to discount John Bolton’s revelations and line up the votes to block new witnesses from testifying.

Trump’s legal team put forth a number of arguments that immediately struck some scholars as outlandish. One was from Alan Dershowitz, who said that anything a president does to aid his re-election could be considered in the nation’s interest, and would therefore not be impeachable. Expect more of the same on Thursday.

One of Wednesday’s most startling scenes occurred just outside the Senate chamber, when Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani who has been indicted over his involvement in the Ukraine affair that set off impeachment, arrived at the Senate to get a peek at the proceedings.

Our colleague Patricia Mazzei got a firsthand view of what happened next.

The hour before the start of Wednesday’s impeachment trial found me kneeling on the floor in the office of Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, as we reporters crammed inside, seeking a front-row view of the Lev Parnas show.



Parnas — the Soviet-born, now-indicted businessman who worked to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Trump’s political rivals — had come to Washington in an attempt to enter the Senate visitors’ gallery so he could watch the trial in person. But he didn’t even make it into the Capitol, for one reason: no ankle-monitoring devices allowed. Security rules. (He’s wearing one while out on house arrest, though he declined to have it photographed.)



No matter. Parnas pulled a throng of us reporters along with him anyway as he abandoned the gallery and strode down narrow hallways and into elevators, eventually making his way to Schumer’s office. “Trumpworld,” he opined at one point, “is like a cult. And a lot of the senators are in the cult.”

Bloomberg’s Super Bowl ad buy

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Sandwiched between the Super Bowl’s pop music-filled halftime show and the kickoff of the second half, Mike Bloomberg’s campaign is hoping to “stop people in their tracks” with an emotional ad featuring a mother who lost her son to a random act of gun violence.

The 60-second ad, which cost $11 million to reserve, features a mother talking about her son, George, who was killed by gunfire while he was in college.

Bloomberg himself decided the ad should focus on gun control. The campaign said it did not worry about running a weighty, emotional ad amid the lighter beer and snack-food ads that tend to fill commercial time during the actual game.