Jan. 24, 2020, 9:26 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 9:26 p.m. ET By Managers wrap up their opening arguments. Video transcript Back bars 0:00 / 3:28 - 0:00 transcript ‘He Is a Dictator’: Democrats Finish Opening Arguments The House impeachment managers completed their opening arguments in the Senate trial of President Trump. “Do you think for a moment that any of you, no matter what your relationship with this president, no matter how close you are to this president — do you think for a moment that if he felt it was in his interest, he wouldn’t ask you to be investigated? Do you think for a moment that he wouldn’t? And if somewhere deep down below you realize that he would — you cannot leave a man like that in office when he has violated the Constitution.” “This is a determination by President Trump that he wants to be all-powerful. He does not have to — to respect the Congress. He does not have to respect the representatives of the people. Only his will goes. He is a dictator. This must not stand. And that is why — another reason he must be removed from office.” “You don’t realize how important character is in the highest office in the land until you don’t have it, until you have a president willing to use his power to coerce an ally to help him cheat, to investigate one of our fellow citizens — one of our fellow citizens. Yes, he’s running for president — he’s still a U.S. citizen. He’s still a U.S. citizen, and he deserves better than that.” “Although senior Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Bill Barr, were reportedly made aware of the concerns about corrupt activity, no investigation into President Trump’s wrongdoing was even opened by the Department of Justice.” “In an effort to conceal the whistle-blower’s concerns, the White House and the Department of Justice took an unprecedented step. No administration had ever intervened in such a manner before. But President Trump maneuvered to keep the whistle-blower’s concerns from the congressional Intelligence Committees.” “At President Trump’s direction, the White House itself refused to produce a single document or record in response to a House subpoena that remains in full force and effect. And it continues to withhold those documents from Congress and from the American people.” “If we are to decide here that a president of the United States can simply say under Article 2, ‘I can do whatever I want and I don’t have to treat a coequal branch of government like it exists, I don’t have to give it any more than the back of my hand’ — that will be an unending injury to this country. Ukraine will survive and so will we, but that will be an undending injury to this country, because the balance of power that our founders set out will never be the same.” The House impeachment managers completed their opening arguments in the Senate trial of President Trump. Credit Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times House Democrats finished their opening arguments on Friday in the impeachment trial of President Trump, after spending nearly 24 hours over three days laying out their case that the president abused his oath of office and obstructed Congress by pressuring the leader of Ukraine to investigate his political rivals and concealing his misdeeds. Representative Adam B. Schiff, the lead impeachment manager, delivered the final remarks, trying to rebut Republican lawyers, who will begin their opening arguments on Saturday. But Mr. Schiff, whose stirring speech on Thursday night gained grudging plaudits from some Republicans, apparently lost ground on Friday. Mr. Schiff invoked an anonymously sourced news report saying that Republican senators had been warned, “Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike,” remarking that putting heads on pikes is what monarchs do. “The whole room was visibly upset on our side and it’s sad, it’s insulting and demeaning to everyone to say that we somehow live in fear and that the president has threatened all of us to put her head on the pike,” Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, said afterward. Lawyers for Mr. Trump will begin to present their case on Saturday during an abbreviated day. The Senate will convene at 10 a.m. and the trial is expected to run until 1 p.m. Senators will have Sunday off, and return on Monday. Read more

Jan. 24, 2020, 9:01 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 9:01 p.m. ET By Republican senators are visibly upset by Schiff’s reference to CBS report. Republican senators had mostly been listening stone-faced to Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the lead House manager, make his closing arguments. But when Mr. Schiff referred to a CBS report that said Republican senators had been warned to “vote against the president and your head will be on a pike,” a number of senators muttered “not true.” Among them was Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine and one of the moderates Mr. Schiff had been directly addressing in a plea to pursue “moral courage.” Senators Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa and Martha McSally, Republican of Arizona, appeared visibly upset as they quietly conferred. Other senators shook their heads as Mr. Schiff continued to speak. “Whatever gains he may have made, he lost all of it, plus some tonight,” said Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming. “He basically offended every Republican senator in there.”

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Jan. 24, 2020, 8:35 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 8:35 p.m. ET By Schiff addresses criticism over his imitation of the president. Representative Adam B. Schiff, the lead House manager, for the first time took head-on the Republican criticism that he mocked President Trump during a hearing by pretending the president’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart was a mob shakedown. At a hearing in late September, Mr. Schiff portrayed “the essence” of the real call by pretending the president was a mobster shaking someone down. The president has said Mr. Schiff “illegally made up” the call, and has attacked him on Twitter, calling him “Shifty Schiff.” On the Senate floor on Friday evening, Mr. Schiff used the attacks on him as an example of what he called “distractions” that senators should expect from the president’s lawyers when they open their defense case on Saturday morning. He urged them to ignore such attacks and focus on what he said was proven misconduct by Mr. Trump. About his parody of the president, he said: “I discovered something very significant by mocking the president, and that is for a man who loves to mock others, he does not like to be mocked. It turns out he’s got a pretty thin skin. Who would have thought?”

Jan. 24, 2020, 8:20 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 8:20 p.m. ET By Schiff warns that not removing Trump would be ‘an unending injury’ to U.S. In his closing remarks, Representative Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, outlined a dire warning: that a failure to reprove President Trump for obstructing Congress would inflict “an unending injury to this country” because “the balance of power that our founders set out will never be the same.” Casting Mr. Trump as a continuing threat to the Constitution, Mr. Schiff implored senators not to set a precedent that would cede Congress’s investigative authority to the executive branch for generations to come. “If we are to decide here, that a president of the United States can simply say, ‘Under Article 2, I can do whatever I want and I don’t have to treat a coequal branch of government like it exists, I don’t have to give it any more than the back of my hand,’” Mr. Schiff said, “that will be an unending injury to this country.”

Jan. 24, 2020, 7:58 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 7:58 p.m. ET By Managers seek to prove Trump is a future threat. Image Representative Jason Crow at the Capitol on Friday. Credit... Erin Schaff/The New York Times As they wrap up their case, House managers have one final task: Prove that President Trump is a future threat, not just a past one. Representative Jason Crow of Colorado made that case Friday evening, telling senators that the goal of impeachment was to “protect against future presidential misconduct that would endanger democracy and the rule of law.” Mr. Trump, he said, is a continuing threat in three ways. He accused Mr. Trump of continuing to assert that he is immune from investigation. He said the president’s conduct with regard to Ukraine was part of a “pattern of soliciting foreign interference” that would continue. And he said Mr. Trump’s obstruction of Congress was “a constitutional crime in progress.” The message is meant for senators as they decide on two articles of impeachment. But more broadly, warning that Mr. Trump continues to be a threat is a political message for the public, an attempt to justify to the voters their focus on Mr. Trump’s actions in the past. Inside the chamber, the House managers are virtually certain to fail in convincing Republicans that Mr. Trump is a persistent threat who should be ousted from office. But the broader political task is more of an open question — one that will most likely not be decided until the 2020 election this year. Read more

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Jan. 24, 2020, 7:36 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 7:36 p.m. ET By Pompeo lashes out at reporter over Ukraine questions. As the hearing was underway, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got into it with a reporter for NPR, Mary Louise Kelly, after she asked about his failure to stand up for the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch. Ms. Kelly reported that Mr. Pompeo shouted at her, using an expletive and demanding, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” “He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map. I said yes. He called out for his aides to bring him a map of the world with no writing, no countries marked,” she said. “I pointed to Ukraine. He put the map away. He said people will hear about this.” Mr. Pompeo is scheduled to go to Kiev next week to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The encounter recalls a conversation last year between two witnesses in the impeachment inquiry: David Holmes, a top American Embassy aide in Kiev, and Gordon D. Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union. Mr. Holmes testified that Mr. Sondland told him that President Trump didn’t give a whit about Ukraine.

Jan. 24, 2020, 6:54 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 6:54 p.m. ET By Senators take a 30-minute break for dinner. After hearing a closing argument from Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, in which he implored the Senate to “put America first,” senators are now taking a 30-minute dinner break. When they return, the Democratic impeachment managers will conclude their opening arguments.

Jan. 24, 2020, 6:21 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 6:21 p.m. ET By Citing stonewalling of congressional subpoenas, Nadler calls Trump ‘a dictator.’ Image President Trump on Friday at the White House. Credit... Pete Marovich for The New York Times In a broadside against President Trump’s pledge to stonewall “all the subpoenas” that Congress issued his administration, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called Mr. Trump “the first and only president ever to declare himself unaccountable.” “This is a determination by President Trump that he wants to be all powerful,” Mr. Nadler said on Friday. “He does not have to respect the Congress. He does not have to respect the representatives of the people. Only his will goes.” Mr. Nadler concluded: “He is a dictator. This must not stand and that is another reason why he must be removed from office.”

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Jan. 24, 2020, 6:08 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 6:08 p.m. ET By Trump’s defense of Russian election interference is an ‘intelligence coup,’ Schiff says. In some of his most confrontational comments yet, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, laid out President Trump’s refusal to accept the conclusion of American intelligence agencies that Russia, not Ukraine, interfered in the 2016 presidential elections as a betrayal of the nation’s foreign policy. “I don’t know if there’s ever been a greater success of Russian intelligence,” Mr. Schiff said. “Whatever profile Russia did of our president, boy, did they have him spot on.” Mr. Schiff said that the president’s defense of Russia in 2018, as he stood in Helsinki, Finland, next to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, amounted to “one hell of a Russian intelligence coup.” “I hope it was worth it for the president,” Mr. Schiff concluded, “because it certainly wasn’t worth it for the United States.”

Jan. 24, 2020, 5:56 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 5:56 p.m. ET By House managers cite the silence at the top of the State Dept. In arguing that President Trump obstructed Congress, Representative Zoe Lofgren zeroed in on the failure of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with one his top advisers, T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, to answer subpoenas. Both are believed to have firsthand knowledge of the Ukraine affair. But neither was on Senator Chuck Schumer’s wish list for Senate witnesses. That is apparently because the Democrats believed Republicans would be more likely to agree to a short list of the former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, and three other witnesses. But Mr. Pompeo is arguably as important as Mr. Bolton. The American ambassador to the European Union, Gordon D. Sondland, testified that Mr. Pompeo was “in the loop” on the pressure campaign, and other witnesses reported interactions with Mr. Brechbuhl on key issues. Democrats have focused more heavily on Mr. Bolton for two reasons: He has said he is willing to testify and they believe he will be critical of Mr. Trump.

Jan. 24, 2020, 5:43 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 5:43 p.m. ET By Graham offers legal advice. Image Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, during a news conference on Friday. Credit... Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and an impeachment manager during the Clinton trial, offered advice to both legal teams during the most recent break in the proceedings. He suggested that the president’s team should emphasize that Mr. Trump had “no corrupt purpose” and that the impeachment managers should “use the words of the other side, as they used my words — I’m fair game — talking about how they viewed executive privilege when it was a Democratic president.” “And I wouldn’t take all 24 hours,” he added. As he fielded questions, Jay Sekulow, a member of the president’s defense team, was behind him, waiting for a turn to speak to the cameras.

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Jan. 24, 2020, 5:41 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 5:41 p.m. ET By As Democrats lay out obstruction claim, the State Dept. skips another deadline. The State Department on Friday afternoon missed another deadline to provide documents requested by Congress, as Democratic impeachment managers accused President Trump of obstructing Congress by stonewalling documents and trying to intimidate witnesses. Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, had asked the department to provide records that he said suggested the agency was aware of threats to the security of Marie L. Yovanovitch. Her abrupt dismissal as the American envoy to Ukraine is at the heart of Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign on the country. “I have serious concerns that the security of an American ambassador and an American embassy were compromised,” Mr. Engel said in a statement. “When she was called in the middle of the night and told to get on the next plane out of Ukraine, Ambassador Yovanovitch was warned, ‘this is about your security.’”

Jan. 24, 2020, 5:25 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 5:25 p.m. ET By Graham defends his brief absence from the trial on Thursday. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told reporters his brief but notable absence on Thursday in the chamber was because of illness. A day earlier, Democratic impeachment managers played a video clip of him from 1999 contradicting a key argument in the president’s legal defense, but he was not at his desk or indeed in the chamber at all. Mr. Graham said he had been feeling under the weather and told reporters that if he knew the Democratic impeachment managers were going to play a video of him, he would have stayed to watch: “Nobody likes watching me more than me.” In spite of rules that require them to sit quietly at their desks for the duration of the impeachment trial, senators have struggled with restlessness and have begun increasingly wandering around the chamber and, like Mr. Graham, even leaving altogether for fifteen to twenty minute breaks to check their phones and grab snacks. Read more

Jan. 24, 2020, 5:22 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 5:22 p.m. ET By Citing White House obstruction, managers weaponize the unknown. Hours after a recording emerged of President Trump apparently ordering the removal of the American envoy to Ukraine, Democratic impeachment managers, laying out their case that Mr. Trump obstructed Congress, sought to weaponize all the evidence still being withheld from lawmakers. The argument appeared to be aimed not only at the public, but also at Republican senators who have signaled they are open to support a Democratic-led measure that would introduce new witnesses and documents to the trial. “This evidence will come to light,” Representative Val B. Demings of Florida said, ticking off a list of documents the White House refused to release to House investigators. “We shouldn’t have to wait for a book.”

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Jan. 24, 2020, 5:13 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 5:13 p.m. ET By In describing Trump’s actions, Democrats hold up Nixon as transparent. Democrats don’t usually hold up President Richard M. Nixon as a paragon of transparency. Yet in making their case on Friday that President Trump was unprecedented in his obstruction of Congress, they did just that. Quoting Nixon’s direction to his administration during Watergate, Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, a House manager, read to senators: “All members of the White House staff will appear voluntarily when requested by the committee, they will testify under oath, and they will answer fully all proper questions.” Ms. Lofgren, who worked as a young lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate hearings, seemed to relish comparing Nixon’s quotation with what Mr. Trump’s lawyers said in a letter in October about the current impeachment inquiry. “In the letter to the speaker of the House, the White House counsel said that President Trump, quote, cannot permit his administration to participate,” Ms. Lofgren said. “No president has ever used the official power of his office to prevent witnesses from giving testimony to Congress in such a blanket and indiscriminate manner.”

Jan. 24, 2020, 4:56 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 4:56 p.m. ET By Emily Cochrane, Noah Weiland and Lindsey Graham wants an independent inquiry ‘like Mueller’ for the Bidens. Image Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Claremont, N.H., on Friday. Credit... Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters this morning that he wants someone “like Mueller” to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and their activity in Ukraine years ago, a reference to Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel who examined Russian interference in the 2016 election. The comment, which he repeated this afternoon, was a significant pivot from a position he took on Thursday, when he said he would resist pressure from Republicans to call the Bidens as witnesses during the trial, a move he said would not serve the Senate well. He also disputed the assertion from House managers that Hunter Biden’s involvement in Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, had been investigated. The managers had raised this as part of their argument that President Trump’s insistence that Ukraine investigation Mr. Biden, the son of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a possible presidential opponent, was unwarranted. “They could have called people in the House, close to the president, they chose not to, and they’re dumping this in our lap,” Mr. Graham said. “They should have looked more at what happened with the Bidens, they chose not to.” When this trial is over, I expect oversight regarding the effect of Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine and what Vice President Biden knew and when he knew it. — Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) January 24, 2020 Read more

Jan. 24, 2020, 4:50 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 4:50 p.m. ET By House managers ask: Where are the documents? The administration, at the direction of the White House, stonewalled 71 requests for documents by House investigators. Some witnesses were able to rely on their own personal notes and records to construct their testimony. But reams of documents have not been turned over or made public. President Trump’s strategy was an extension of his response to the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump refused to answer questions in person, and in written answers, he said dozens of times that he could not recall events. When prosecutors complained the responses were inadequate, they were rebuffed. The House managers accuse Mr. Trump of unprecedented obstruction of justice in withholding documents and blocking the testimony of top aides. Representative Val B. Demings, a Florida Democrat known for her plainspoken style, told the senators that they should not wait and hope the records might dribble out in the future. “You should be hearing this evidence now,” she said.

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Jan. 24, 2020, 4:36 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 4:36 p.m. ET By White House team has contradicted Justice Dept., House lawyer says. Last year, as the Trump administration battled House Democrats in court over information for oversight investigations, the Justice Department said that such matters were a “purely political dispute” and that the House lacked standing to ask the judicial branch to enforce its subpoenas. But in the Senate impeachment trial, Mr. Trump’s legal team has seemingly taken the opposite position. Led by Pat A. Cipollone, Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, and his private lawyer, Jay Sekulow, the defense team argued that the Senate ought not subpoena witnesses and documents because the House ought to have pursued that information in court for itself before deciding to impeach Mr. Trump. On Thursday, the top lawyer for the House of Representatives, Douglas Letter, sent a pair of letters to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia notifying it of the inconsistent legal positions, and urging swift rulings for the House. “In light of President Trump’s argument, it is not clear whether D.O.J. still maintains its position that courts are barred from considering subpoena-enforcement suits brought by the House,” Mr. Letter wrote, adding: “The executive branch cannot have it both ways.” The appeals court is weighing two cases won by the House at the district-court level. One seeks access to grand-jury evidence gathered by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, during the Russia investigation. The other seeks testimony from Donald F. McGahn II, Mr. Trump’s former White House counsel, who was a witness to several episodes in which the president sought to impede that investigation. Read more

Jan. 24, 2020, 4:25 p.m. ET Jan. 24, 2020, 4:25 p.m. ET By Sekulow compares Saturday defense to ‘a coming attraction.’ Jay Sekulow, a member of President Trump’s legal team, said during a break in the impeachment trial on Friday that the defense would present a brief overview of its case on Saturday, comparing it to a movie trailer. “I guess I would call it a trailer, coming attractions — that would be the best way to say it,” Mr. Sekulow said, adding that the Senate had asked the president’s lawyers to limit their presentation on Saturday to no more than three hours, starting at 10 a.m. “We have three hours to put it out, so we’ll take whatever time is appropriate during that three hours to kind of lay out what the case will look like,” he said. “But next week is when you see the full presentation.” Mr. Sekulow also previewed the aggressive and confrontational approach the White House lawyers intend to take when it is their turn. He railed against Representative Adam B. Schiff, the lead House manager, for saying that foreign interference in an election was deplorable. “I wonder if he thought that about the fact that the Clinton campaign had sought — it’s completely cooperated, it’s uncontested — the Steele dossier, who was utilizing both supposedly assets that a former British spy had in Russia to get information on the president,” Mr. Sekulow told reporters, referring to an intelligence report on contacts between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. “Was that not foreign interference? Was that not an attempt for foreign interference?” he asked. “So you could get on your horse and act haughty and proud about it. But you know what, let’s look at what the evidence says.” Read more