The Senate heard closing arguments in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial on Monday.

The proceedings came after the upper chamber voted to block new firsthand witnesses from coming to testify against the president.

House impeachment managers, who act as prosecutors in Trump’s trial, argued the Senate has a constitutional obligation to hear any relevant information pertaining to Trump’s alleged misconduct.

The president’s defense team said the Senate didn’t need to hear from any more witnesses while simultaneously claiming House prosecutors hadn’t allowed for enough witnesses.

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President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is expected to come to an end this week as prosecutors and defense lawyers begin closing arguments.

The arguments started at 11 a.m. ET on Monday and lasted for roughly four hours. Senators now have until Wednesday to make their final statements on the trial.

At 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, the Republican-led Senate will vote on the two articles of impeachment against Trump. The chamber is widely expected to acquit the president, and last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called Trump to get his permission to push the final vote to this week.

Monday’s proceedings came after the Senate blocked a motion to call new witnesses to testify in Trump’s trial. Democrats had zeroed in on four witnesses they wanted to hear testimony from: John Bolton, the former national security adviser; Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff; Robert Blair, an aide to Mulvaney; and Michael Duffey, an official in the Office of Management and Budget.

Bolton, in particular, claims of have firsthand knowledge of Trump’s efforts to strongarm Ukraine into delivering politically motivated investigations targeting the president’s rivals while withholding a $391 million military aid package and a White House meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky desperately sought and still has not gotten.

Mulvaney is the head of the Office of Management and Budget, which took on a lead role in carrying out Trump’s order to freeze Ukraine’s aid. Emails and other documents also indicate that Mulvaney was in the loop on Trump’s decision to withhold Ukraine’s military aid from the start.

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Blair has direct knowledge of Mulvaney’s involvement in the Ukraine pressure campaign.

And Duffey officially ordered the freeze in Ukraine’s aid 91 minutes after Trump’s phone call with Zelensky on July 25.

House impeachment managers, who act as prosecutors in Trump’s trial, argued the Senate has a constitutional obligation to hear any relevant information pertaining to Trump’s alleged misconduct.

The president’s defense team, meanwhile, said the Senate didn’t need to hear from any more witnesses while simultaneously claiming House prosecutors hadn’t allowed for enough witnesses.

Watch the trial below:

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Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin calls for the Senate to censure Trump in lieu of voting to convict of acquit

Foto: Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Senators on his Supreme Court Justice nominee Neil Gorsuch, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington.sourceEvan Vucci/AP

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia called on Monday for the Senate to censure President Donald Trump for his conduct toward Ukraine.

Manchin, a Democratic senator who represents a deep-red state, is widely viewed as a swing vote in the upper chamber and is known to be friendly with the president.

Manchin’s motion is unlikely to gain traction because of how divided Democrats and Republicans are on removing Trump.

Democratic senators have largely come out in favor of convicting him and ousting him, while Republican senators maintain that he did nothing wrong, despite the hours of witness testimony, documents, and Trump’s own statements in which he admitted to soliciting foreign interference in the upcoming election for his personal benefit.

But Manchin’s motion may squeeze some Republican senators who have been critical of Trump – but reluctant to condemn him outright – into a corner.

Sens. Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski, for instance, both acknowledged that the president acted inappropriately. Both announced that they will not vote to convict Trump, however.

Other Republican senators have also voiced their disapproval of the president, and it’s possible Manchin’s move could put them on the spot.

Those senators are:

Mitt Romney of Utah

Susan Collins of Maine

Rob Portman of Ohio

Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania

Joni Ernst of Iowa

Ben Sasse of Nebraska

Chuck Grassley of Iowa

Lead House manager Adam Schiff closes his remarks with a plea for Republicans to stand up to Trump: ‘If you find the courage to stand up to him … your place will be among the Davids who took on Goliath’

Foto: Adam Schiff.sourceGetty Images

Schiff admitted as he wrapped up his closing remarks that House managers knew it would be difficult to convince two-thirds of the Senate to vote to convict and remove Trump from office.

“And yet, the alternative is a runaway presidency and a nation whose elections are open to the highest bidder,” he said. Schiff added that while he hoped the Democratic Party would never have a president like Trump, if it did, Schiff would want the party to “impeach him and Democrats would lead the way.”

He concluded:

“History will not be kind to Donald Trump. If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history. But if you find the courage to stand up to him … your place will be among the Davids who took on Goliath.”

Lead House manager Adam Schiff delivers a scathing monologue of Trump’s repeated efforts to solicit and benefit from foreign help in elections

Foto: U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Florida from the South Lawn of the White House in WashingtonsourceReuters

In response to the Trump defense team’s argument that the Senate should let the voters decide whether to hold Trump accountable in the November 2020 election, Schiff said the following:

“Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in that very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide and that the president will shun any further foreign interference in our democratic affairs? And the short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can’t. You can’t trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can’t. He will not change and you know it.”

Schiff went on to lay out how Trump called for the Russian government to recover former Secretary of State and then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails during an infamous July 2016 press conference.

According to the former special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers, Russian operatives made their first attempt to hack the Clinton campaign that same day.

Mueller’s final report about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election also found that the Trump campaign enthusiastically welcomed Russia’s efforts and sought to benefit from them.

Meanwhile, Schiff said, “when [Trump] was investigated, he did everything he could do obstruct justice.”

And the day after Mueller testified to Congress about his findings in the Russia probe, “Donald Trump was back on the phone … and once again seeking foreign help with his election,” Schiff said, referring to Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky.

“Only this time he had the fulll powers of the presidency at his disposal. This time he could use coercion,” Schiff added. “This time he could withhold aid from a nation whose soldiers were dying every week. This time, he believed he could do whatever he wanted under Article 2. And this time, when he was caught, he could make sure that the Justice Department would never investigate the matter. And it didn’t.”

Lead House manager Adam Schiff: If abuse of power isn’t impeachable, Trump could ‘offer Alaska to the Russians’ or ‘let Jared Kushner run the country’

Foto: resident Donald Trump passes his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner during a Hanukkah Reception at the White House in Washington, U.S., December 7, 2017.sourceKevin Lamarque/Reuters

Schiff ripped Trump’s defense team, particularly the Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, for arguing that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense because it isn’t a statutory crime.

(Fact check: There was no such thing as a statutory crime at the time the Constitution was drafted.)

“If abuse of power is not impeachable … then a whole range of utterly unacceptable conduct in a president would now be beyond reach,” Schiff said.

“Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support in the next election, or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and let Jared Kushner run the country, delegating to him the decision of whether to go to war,” he continued. “Because those things are not necessarily criminal, this argument would allow that he could not be impeached for such abuses of power. Of course this would be absurd. More than absurd, it would be dangerous.”

Schiff then highlighted Dershowitz’s claim that if Trump does something to help his re-election and believes it’s in the public interest, it’s not impeachable behavior.

“Under this theory, as long as the president believed his re-election was in the public interest, he could do anything and no quid pro quo was too corrupt,” Schiff said. “This was such an extreme view that even the president’s other lawyers had to run away from it.”

Lead House manager Adam Schiff: Trump used ‘his own obstruction as a sword and a shield’

Foto: U.S. President Donald Trump campaign rally in WildwoodsourceReuters

After detailing how the president withheld nearly $400 million in military aid from Ukraine and a coveted White House meeting for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Schiff tore into Trump for engaging in an “unprecedented” effort to “cover up” his alleged misconduct.

Schiff went on to accuse Trump of using “his own obstruction as a sword and a shield” as he fought all subpoenas and issued a sweeping order for witnesses not to cooperate with the House’s impeachment inquiry.

‘How did we get here?’

Foto: House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.sourceYouTube/CSPAN

Lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff took center stage as the prosecution began wrapping up its closing remarks.

He detailed how just last week, the Justice Department informed a federal court that it would not turn over documents directly related to Trump’s decision to withhold aid from Ukraine.

“The Trump administration has them, it is not turning them over, and it does not want the Senate to know until it is too late,” he said. “In a replay of the duplicity that we saw during the trial – when the president’s lawyers argued here that the House must go to court, and argued in court that the House must come here – they were at it again, telling the court in a midnight filing that it would not turn over relevant documents even as they argued here that they were not covering up the president’s misdeeds.”

“Midnight in Washington,” Schiff continued. “All too tragic a metaphor for where the country finds itself at the conclusion of the – only the third impeachment in history – and the first impeachment trial without witnesses or documents, the first such trial, or non-trial, in impeachment history.”

“How did we get here?” Schiff said.

House manager Sylvia Garcia drills down on how Trump engaged in the ‘ABCs of impeachable behavior’

Foto: sourceScreenshot via C-SPAN 2/Senate TV

Garcia highlighted the three ABCs that Trump has been accused of:

Abusing his power

Betraying the country

Corrupting elections

Garcia also noted that senators from both sides of the aisle agree the president acted inappropriately, and that the question now is whether his behavior warrants removal from office.

In addition to the vast majority of the Democratic caucus, two Republican senators – Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – acknowledge that Trump did something wrong. Alexander has indicated he will vote to acquit Trump because he doesn’t think Trump’s actions rose to the level of impeachable offenses.

Murkowski has also made up her mind on how she will vote but she’s declined to publicly discuss it.

Trump defense attorney Patrick Philbin contradicts the DOJ’s position on whether the courts should intervene in disputes between Trump and Congress

Foto: Patrick PhilbinsourceYouTube/C-SPAN

Philbin on Monday slammed House Democrats for moving too quickly to impeach Trump without first waiting for courts to rule on congressional subpoenas.

But Philbin’s argument directly contradicts what the Justice Department has argued as it seeks to stop former White House counsel Don McGahn from testifying before the House about Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice.

Specifically, the DOJ says that the dispute over McGahn’s testimony is a political one that appeals courts should stay out of.

Deputy White House counsel Michael Purpura rehashes a few ‘core facts’ that are not based in facts

Foto: sourceSenate TV

This isn’t the first time Purpura has put these “facts” out to prove Trump’s impeachment and removal from office is unwarranted. Despite saying on Monday that he would not “repeat” the arguments that “we’ve already put forth,” Purpura proceeded to do just that.

Here’s a rundown of what Purpura said:

The July 25 call transcript shows that the president did not condition either security assistance or a meeting on anything. Fact check: The “transcript” Purpura referred to is a rough summary the White House released. The summary shows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky telling Trump Ukraine is ready for more military aid. Trump replied: “I would like you to do us a favor, though,” and immediately asked Zelensky to pursue investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, as well as conspiracy theories about Ukrainian election interference.

Zelensky and other Ukrainians have repeatedly said there was no quid pro quo or pressure on them to launch investigations. Fact check: It’s true that Zelensky said he didn’t feel pressured and that there was “no blackmail.” But context matters, especially in a geopolitical relationship like this one, where there’s a clear imbalance of power. As Insider’s John Haltiwanger reported last year, Ukraine is still reliant on US military assistance as it fends off Russian aggression. By acknowledging feeling pressured, Zelensky would risk angering Trump. “Whether the hold, the security assistance hold, continued or not, Ukrainians understood that that’s something the president wanted and they still wanted important things from the president,” the State Department official David Holmes testified. “So I think that continues to this day. I think they’re being very careful. They still need us now going forward.”

Zelensky and “the highest levels of the Ukrainian government” did not know the security assistance was paused until the end of August, over a month after the July 25 call. Fact check: Laura Cooper, a Russia and Ukraine expert at the Pentagon, revealed in public testimony last year that the State Department emailed a member of her staff on July 25 – the day of the Trump-Zelensky phone call – saying Ukrainian embassy officials and the House Foreign Affairs Committee were asking about US military aid. In other words, Ukraine seemed aware of the freeze at the time Trump spoke with Zelensky.

Not a single witness testified that Trump himself said there was “any linkage” between military aid and political investigations. Fact check: Former national security adviser John Bolton, whom the Senate has refused to call as a witness despite his willingness to testify, writes in his upcoming book that Trump personally told him last year that he would withhold Ukraine’s security assistance until Zelensky gave in to his demands for investigations. Gordon Sondland, the US’s ambassador to the European Union, testified that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo that involved conditioning military aid and a White House meeting on Ukraine launching the investigations he wanted. Sondland also told Holmes Trump only cares about “the big stuff” as it relates to Ukraine. When Holmes noted that Ukraine is at war with Russia, Sondland said “the big stuff” is more about the Bidens. And Sondland raised the request for investigations at a July 10 meeting with Ukrainian officials after they asked when Zelensky could expect a White House meeting with Trump. Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, publicly acknowledged that Trump withheld the security assistance in part because the president wanted Ukraine to investigate the debunked conspiracy theory about Ukrainian election interference. Mulvaney later walked his statement back.

Security assistance was released on September 11 and a Trump-Zelensky meeting happened on September 25, without Ukraine announcing any investigations. Fact check: The president released the aid only after Politico publicly reported, on August 28, that he had frozen it, and after Congress and the public learned about a whistleblower’s complaint against Trump. The September 25 presidential meeting Purpura referred to was a brief meeting on the sidelines of the UN. Zelensky himself said at the pull-aside that he was keen on meeting Trump at the White House. The president has not yet granted that request.

Trump has been a better friend and stronger supporter of Ukraine than his predecessor. Fact check: Republican lawmakers have repeatedly pointed to Trump’s sale of javelins to Ukraine as a sign of his strong support for the country’s fight against Russian aggression on its eastern border. However, as Haltiwanger wrote, under the rules of the sale, the Javelin missiles have to be stored in western Ukraine, which is far from the frontlines of the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine against pro-Russia separatists.



Trump defense lawyer and former Whitewater independent counsel Ken Starr argues that impeachment should not take the place of voting at the ballot box

Foto: Kenn Starr continues opening arguments for President Donald Trump’s legal team in the Senate impeachment trial on January 27, 2020.sourceYouTube/C-SPAN

Starr’s key defense of the president throughout the impeachment trial has centered on his belief that the House moved too swiftly to impeach Trump.

Fact check: This statement is intriguing coming from Starr, given that his leadership of the Whitewater investigation quickly ballooned into a sprawling probe that included lurid details of President Bill Clinton’s sex life.

Starr’s wide-ranging inquiry led to accusations that he used the Whitewater investigation to poke around every corner of the Clinton administration, resulting in Starr’s push to have Clinton impeached for lying about his sex life.

Trump, meanwhile, is accused of abusing his power by trying to force a foreign power to interfere in an upcoming presidential election, and of subsequently stonewalling any congressional investigation into the matter.

Trump defense lawyer and White House counsel Pat Cipollone: ‘The only conclusion based on the evidence and based on the articles of impeachment themselves and based on the Constitution is that you must vote to acquit the president’

Foto: Pat CipollonesourceScreenshot via C-SPAN

Cipollone added that Trump’s impeachment was an “effort to overturn” the results of the 2016 impeachment and to “interfere” in the 2020 election.

Fact check: Cipollone and Trump’s other defense attorneys have repeatedly equated impeachment with an attempt to overthrow a legitimately elected president. But the Constitution confers upon the House of Representatives the “sole power to impeach” the president for treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.

It’s also remarkable that Cipollone and Trump’s lawyers have cast the impeachment inquiry as a Democratic attempt to intervene in the upcoming election, given that Trump’s own efforts to solicit foreign interference in the race for his own political benefit are at the center of his impeachment.

Lead House manager Adam Schiff pays tribute to the late congressman Elijah Cummings before Senate breaks for recess

Foto: Elijah Cummings.sourceAP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Schiff, a representative from California and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was the last impeachment manager to speak before the Senate broke for lunch.

As he ended his remarks, Schiff invoked the late congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland and what Cummings said last year when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally announced an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s actions.

Here’s what Cummings, whom Schiff described as a “dear friend and former colleague in the House” said at the time:

“As elected representatives of the American people, we speak not only for those who are here with us now but for generations yet unborn. Our voices today are messages to a future we may never see. When the history books are written about this tumultuous era, I want them to show that I was among those in the House of Representatives who stood up to lawlessness and tyranny.”

Lead House manager Adam Schiff says members of his staff ‘have been made to endure some of the most vicious, false attacks to the point where they feel their lives have been put at risk’

Foto: sourceScreenshot via CSPAN/Senate TV

Schiff took some time on Monday to express gratitude for staff members involved in the impeachment inquiry.

He added that those staffers “have committed their lives to this effort because they, like the managers and the American people, believe that a president free of accountability is a danger to the beating heart of our democracy.”

Schiff also said that “some of those staff, including some singled out in this chamber, have been made to endure some of the most vicious, false attacks to the point where they feel their lives have been put at risk.”

He continued: “The attacks on them degrade our institution and all who serve in it. You’ve asked me why I’ve hired certain of my staff and I will tell you: because they are brilliant, hard-working, patriotic, and the best people for the job. And they deserve better than the attacks they have been forced to suffer.”

Trump chimes in on the ‘Impeachment Hoax’ as House prosecutors make their case against him

Foto: FILE PHOTO: President Donald Trump to Launch ‘Evangelicals for Trump’ CoalitionsourceReuters

Here’s what Trump tweeted: “I hope Republicans & the American people realize that the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax is exacty that, a Hoax. Read the Transcripts, listen to what the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said (‘No Pressure’). Nothing will ever satisfy the Do Nothing, Radical Left Dems!”

I hope Republicans & the American people realize that the totally partisan Impeachment Hoax is exacty that, a Hoax. Read the Transcripts, listen to what the President & Foreign Minister of Ukraine said (“No Pressure”). Nothing will ever satisfy the Do Nothing, Radical Left Dems! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2020

Fact check:

“Read the Transcripts.” The White House has not released a transcript of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky. But a rough summary of the call shows Trump repeatedly asking Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, over the latter’s employment on the board of the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings. Trump also asked Zelensky to look into a bogus conspiracy theory suggesting Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Trump made the requests right after Zelensky told him Ukraine was ready to purchase more lethal weapons from the US. Trump replied, “I would like you do us a favor, though,” immediately after.

Ukraine said there was “No Pressure.” It’s true that Zelensky said he didn’t feel pressured and that there was “no blackmail.” But context matters, especially in a geopolitical relationship like this one, where there’s a clear imbalance of power. As Insider’s John Haltiwanger reported last year, Ukraine is still reliant on US military assistance as it fends off Russian aggression. By acknowledging feeling pressured, Zelensky would risk angering Trump. “Whether the hold, the security assistance hold, continued or not, Ukrainians understood that that’s something the president wanted and they still wanted important things from the president,” David Holmes, a State Department official and key impeachment witness, testified last year. “So I think that continues to this day. I think they’re being very careful. They still need us now going forward.”



House manager Val Demings reminds the Senate that Trump didn’t have any legitimate reason for withholding Ukraine’s aid and ‘all relevant agencies were opposed to the freeze’

Foto: Rep. Val Demings of Florida in February 2019.sourceChip Somodevilla/Getty Images

None of the 17 witnesses who testified in the impeachment inquiry were given any reason for why the Trump administration abruptly decided to freeze Ukraine’s aid.

Every other agency in the executive branch was opposed to the freeze and there were multiple attempts to convince Trump to release the aid.

He finally released it on September 11, after Politico publicly reported on the freeze and Congress and the public began learning of his efforts to force Ukraine to cave to his political demands.

House manager Val Demings outlines how Trump ‘successfully hijacked the tools of our government to serve his corrupt, personal interests’

Foto: Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani shakes hands with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S., August 18, 2016sourceREUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Demings zeroed in on a period of time in late May of last year, during which she said Trump “successfully hijacked the tools of our government to serve his corrupt, personal interests.”

She went on to cite testimony from Fiona Hill, the White House’s former senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, who said that it was around this time she realized Trump’s “domestic political errand” was overshadowing US national security and foreign policy goals.

Indeed, by that point last year, Giuliani was making headlines as he advocated for Ukraine to pursue the two investigations Trump wanted. He told The New York Times on May 9 that he planned to travel to Ukraine to push for the inquiries, which he said would be “very, very helpful to my client.”

When he was asked whether his actions could be viewed as soliciting foreign interference in the 2020 election, Giuliani replied, “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do.”

House manager Val Demings highlights Trump’s conspiratorial belief that Ukraine ‘tried to take me down’ in 2016

Foto: President Donald Trump meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in New York.sourceAP Photo/Evan Vucci

In many ways, Trump’s own tendency to subscribe to conspiracy theories is what landed him in the middle of an impeachment trial that will go down in history as the biggest stain on his presidency.

The US intelligence community determined with high confidence in early 2017 that the Russian government carried out an elaborate and multi-faceted campaign to intervene in the 2016 US election to propel Trump to the presidency.

But the president and many of his allies, like his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, believe Ukraine meddled in the race to undermine Trump and benefit Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party.

There is no evidence to support this theory.

It’s true that there were some Ukrainian officials who voiced their disapproval of Trump’s candidacy during the 2016 campaign. But as Fiona Hill, the White House’s former senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, testified to Congress last year, there were many foreign officials in different countries who made disparaging remarks about Trump’s candidacy while he was running.

Those comments, however, are distinct from Russia’s campaign, which Hill characterized as a “top-down” effort ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and which involved Russia’s security services – like its military intelligence unit – in a government sanctioned effort to swing the election in Trump’s favor.

Still, Trump believes Ukraine not only interfered in the election – a conspiracy theory started by Putin himself – but that it continues to protect the Democratic Party by hiding a purportedly incriminating “server” belonging to the Democratic National Committee from the FBI.

Witnesses in the impeachment inquiry have testified that it’s likely Trump’s flawed belief that Ukraine “tried to take me down” is at the crux of his unwillingness to grant Zelensky a White House meeting and to freeze Ukraine’s security assistance until the country gave him the investigations he wanted.

House prosecutors hammer Trump for leveraging ‘the powers of the presidency and the full weight of the US government’ to pressure Ukraine and trying to ‘block evidence and muzzle witnesses’ when he ‘got caught’

Foto: sourceScreenshot via C-SPAN

House impeachment manager Jason Crow acknowledged that impeachment is an “extraordinary remedy” and “a tool only to be used in rare instances of grave misconduct.”

Trump’s actions, Crow said, meet that threshold. The House of Representatives impeached Trump in December for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

House impeachment manager Val Demings highlighted the crux of those two articles of impeachment in her remarks after Crow’s concluded

“The president and his agents wielded the powers of the presidency and the full weight of the US government to increase pressure on Ukraine’s president to coerce him to announce two sham investigations that would smear his potential election opponent and raise his political standing,” Demings said.

She added that Trump’s pressure campaign was “on the verge of succeeding” until “the president got caught and the scheme was exposed.”

Trump then “ordered a massive cover-up, unprecedented in American history,” Demings said. “He tried to conceal the facts from Congress using every tool and legal window dressing he could to block evidence and muzzle witnesses. He tried to prevent the public from learning how he placed himself above country.”

House impeachment manager Jason Crow quotes former Massachusetts Sen. David Webster’s moving ‘Seventh of March’ speech in a last-ditch appeal to the GOP-led Senate

Foto: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellsourceChip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Crow, a Democratic representative from Colorado, began the House’s closing arguments by recalling Webster’s speech, in which he urged northern and southern states to come to a compromise before the Civil War.

“It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States,” Crow began, quoting Webster. “A body not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to a just sense of its dignity, and its own high responsibilities, an a body to which the country looks with confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels.”

The Republican-controlled Senate faced sharp backlash after it voted against calling new witnesses – a measure that the US public overwhelmingly supports – in Trump’s impeachment trial.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also drew criticism for openly acknowledging that he was working hand-in-hand with Trump’s defense team ahead of the trial, despite senators’ pledge to be impartial jurors in an impeachment trial.

With Friday’s vote to block witnesses, Trump’s impeachment became the first in US history in which the Senate did not hear any witness testimony.

A huge week in Washington politics

Foto: U.S. President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally at Drake University in Des MoinessourceReuters

The Iowa caucuses, which officially kick off the 2020 primary season, are on Monday evening.

The four Democratic senators who are in the running for the party’s nomination – Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Michael Bennet of Colorado – will have the chance to leave the chamber after closing arguments to head to Iowa.

On Tuesday night, Trump will deliver the State of the Union to Congress.

On Wednesday, the Senate will vote on whether to convict Trump and remove him from office. Two-thirds of the chamber, or 67 senators, need to vote to convict the president to trigger his removal, which is highly unlikely.

And on Friday, New Hampshire will host the eighth Democratic primary debate, which is shortly before the state’s primary.