Day nine of the trial on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020.

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Watch prior days:

• Day 2 (Jan 22)
• Day 3 (Jan 23)
• Day 4 (Jan 24)
• Day 5 (Jan 25) Highlights
• Day 6 (Jan 27)
• Day 7 (Jan 28)
• Day 8 (Jan 29)

The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump began on Tuesday, Jan. 21, after a weekslong impasse over how the Senate trial would proceed, and debate over the rules stretched nearly 13 hours.

Reporting on day nine of the trial from The Hill:

The Senate on Thursday is set to conclude a marathon question-and-answer session as it moves toward a turning point in President Trump’s impeachment trial.

Senators are expected to reconvene at 1 p.m. after spending approximately 10 hours, including breaks, on Wednesday to ask more than 90 questions of both Trump’s legal team and House impeachment managers.

As of the end of Wednesday, senators had used roughly eight hours of the 16 total hours that the rules resolution set aside for the question-and-answer session.

Under a deal announced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), questions alternate between Republicans and Democrats.

In a break with the Senate impeachment trial so far, senators were allowed to speak on Wednesday to note that they had a question and announce if it was from multiple senators.

The questions were then passed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who read out the question and which side it was addressed to.

Roberts has asked both sides to limit their answers to five minutes, and interrupted Trump’s legal team and impeachment managers several times on Wednesday to let them know they had reached their time limit.

Wednesday’s session was chocked full of opportunities to try to read the tea leaves on which way undecided senators in both parties are leaning.

Read the full story from TheHill.com

Day eight of the trial on Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2020.

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Watch prior days:

• Day 2 (Jan 22)
• Day 3 (Jan 23)
• Day 4 (Jan 24)
• Day 5 (Jan 25) Highlights
• Day 6 (Jan 27)
• Day 7 (Jan 28)

The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump began on Tuesday, Jan. 21, after a weekslong impasse over how the Senate trial would proceed, and debate over the rules stretched nearly 13 hours.

Reporting on day eight of the trial from The Hill:

Senators are preparing to take the reins of the impeachment trial on Wednesday after largely being relegated to the sidelines of the floor proceedings in the first week.

After six days of opening statements from House managers and President Trump’s team, senators will start asking questions of both sides at 1 p.m. on Wednesday.

The question-and-answer session is expected to be stretched over two days, with senators getting a total of 16 hours to ask questions, before moving to a vote on Friday on whether or not to call witnesses.

Under a deal announced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), questions will alternate between Republicans and Democrats. Wednesday’s session is expected to last eight hours, not including breaks.

McConnell also doled out advice to both senators asking their questions as well as to House managers and Trump’s team for how to answer them: Get to the point.

“During the question period of the Clinton trial, senators were thoughtful and brief with their questions, and the managers and counsel were succinct in their answers. I hope we can follow both of these examples during this time,” McConnell said Tuesday.

Senators aren’t allowed to speak during the trial. Instead, they are submitting their questions in writing. The questions will first be fielded through leadership on both sides, who have said their main object is to weed out duplicates or repetitive questions.

The questions will then be passed, alternating between parties, to Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding over the trial.

Read the full story from TheHill.com

Day seven of the trial on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020.

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Watch prior days:

• Day 2 (Jan 22)
• Day 3 (Jan 23)
• Day 4 (Jan 24)
• Day 5 (Jan 25) Highlights
• Day 6 (Jan 27)

The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump began on Tuesday, Jan. 21, after a weekslong impasse over how the Senate trial would proceed, and debate over the rules stretched nearly 13 hours.

Reporting on day seven of the trial from The Hill:

President Trump’s impeachment trial completes its first full week on Tuesday with closing arguments from the president’s lawyers.

The president’s legal team, led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow, spent roughly eight hours Monday seeking to pick apart House Democrats’ case as flawed, incomplete and politically-motivated.

They also went on the attack against the Bidens in a bid to argue that Trump had legitimate reason to raise the family on the call with Ukraine’s president at the center of the impeachment case.

Monday’s proceedings featured arguments from a number of figures on the president’s legal team who had not previously spoken on the Senate floor, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr and Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who wrapped up the proceedings by arguing that House Democrats’ case did not meet the constitutional criteria for impeachment because they did not allege “criminal-like conduct.”

The attorneys waited until the very end of the day to explicitly address the elephant in the room — namely an explosive New York Times report that said Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton writes in a draft of his memoir that Trump told him he wanted to continue to withhold security assistance to Ukraine until the country helped with investigations into Democrats.

“Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense,” Dershowitz said late Monday evening after the rest of the legal team danced around the issue.

Read the full story from TheHill.com

Day six of the trial on Monday, Jan. 27, 2020.

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Watch prior days:

• Day 2 (Jan 22)
• Day 3 (Jan 23)
• Day 4 (Jan 24)
• Day 5 (Jan 25) Highlights

The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump began on Tuesday, Jan. 21, after a weekslong impasse over how the Senate trial would proceed, and debate over the rules stretched nearly 13 hours.

Reporting on day six of the trial from The Hill:

President Trump’s lawyers are poised to begin their second day of opening arguments in his Senate impeachment trial on Monday in what is expected to be a more robust presentation than their first day of abbreviated arguments over the weekend.

The sixth day of the trial will begin less than 24 hours after explosive new details about former national security adviser John Bolton’s knowledge of the Ukraine affair threaten to severely complicate Trump’s defense.

The New York Times reported late Sunday that Bolton wrote in a draft copy of his forthcoming book that Trump told him in August that he wanted to suspend military assistance to Ukraine until the country helped with investigations into the Biden family and a debunked conspiracy theory about 2016 election interference.

Trump quickly denied telling Bolton the aid was tied to investigations into Democrats, alleging in a tweet that his former aide was only making the allegations “to sell a book.”

It is unclear whether Trump’s defense team will address the new details during Monday’s proceedings.

Read the full story from TheHill.com