Fox host Chris Wallace slammed a network contributor and told her to "get your facts straight" as they sparred over Donald Trump's impeachment trial on Monday afternoon.

While senators determine whether to hear testimony from former national security chief John Bolton, panellist Katie Pavlich claimed that Congress "did not come with a complete case" to present to the Senate, and that "every impeachment beforehand, the witnesses that were called had been called in the House before being brought to the Senate ... So there are questions here about the process."

Mr Wallace interjected, telling her what she was saying isn't true.

He said: "They hadn't all been called in the House, and in [Bill Clinton's] impeachment, they'd been called by the general independent counsel. They had not been called by the House."

Mr Wallace told her it was "just wrong" to claim that all impeachment witnesses were previously called by the House, explaining that the grand jury material presented in the impeachment of former president Clinton was delivered to the Senate with the articles of impeachment.

All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Show all 6 1 /6 All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz is a controversial American lawyer best known for the high-profile clients he has successfully defended. Those clients have included OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. One longtime Harvard Law associated told the New Yorker Dershowitz "revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible." Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Ken Starr Starr became a household name in the 1990s as the independent counsel who led the investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. That investigation began as a look into a real estate scandal known as Whitewater, and eventually led to impeachment after Mr Clinton lied under oath about having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. AP All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Jay Sekulow Sekulow is the president's longtime personal attorney, and, now, personal lawyer in the White House. He has been accused by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas of being "in the loop" during the Ukraine scandal. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pam Bondi Bondi is the former attorney general in Florida, and a longtime backer of the president's. She made a name for herself in Florida for taking hyper partisan stances on issues, and her penchant for publicity. She is likely to be a prominent public-facing figure during the trial. AFP/Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Pat Cipollone Cipollone is the White House counsel, and leading the president's defence team. Getty All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment Rudy Giuliani While not officially named as one of the president's impeachment lawyers, it is hard to ignore Giuliani's outsized role in this process. The former mayor of New York has been making headlines for months as he defends his client, and for his apparent role in the effort to compel Ukraine to launch the investigation into Joe Biden. We'll see how he figures in the actual trial, which he has said he would like to be a part of. Reuters

He said: "They were not given after the House voted for those articles. That is the difference. The process does matter."

The Senate could decide to call on Mr Bolton to testify, after a leaked excerpt from his forthcoming book revealed that Mr Trump told him to continue holding up aid to Ukraine until that country's new government agreed to announce an investigation into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Mr Wallace explained that whistle-blower information that compelled the congressional probe into the president's dealings with Ukraine was delivered to the inspector general, who gave it to the US Justice Department.

That complaint from an anonymous intelligence official details the president's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as well as the White House efforts to lock down the call.

"The Justice Department decided not to investigate, and that is why it went to the House", he said. "So to say that in the Clinton investigation that these people were interviewed by the House — one, they weren't — and to say it wasn't done by the Justice Department, it wasn't done by the Justice Department, because the Justice Department refused to carry out the investigation. Get your facts straight."

Fox host Bret Baier jumped in, telling Mr Wallace to "tone it down."

Mr Wallace's rebuttal followed a rebuke of Mr Trump's supporters "spinning like crazy" by saying that Mr Bolton's likely testimony isn't "big news", illustrating "a sense of how big the news is."

"You get a sense that this is really an important development in this case," he said.

In his December 2019 address to the Newseum before its closure, Mr Wallace condemned the president's attacks on the First Amendment, saying that "he has done everything he can to undercut the media to try and delegitimise us" in an attempt to "raise doubts" about critical reporting on the president and his administration.