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Watch Live: Donald Trump’s Senate Impeachment Trial Enters a New Phase


Wednesday’s hearing moves into less predictable territory now that opening arguments have concluded.

With both sides in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial having completed their opening arguments, Wednesday’s hearing moves into less predictable territory. The defense wrapped up its closing arguments in two hours on Tuesday, ending a three-day effort to clear the President of any wrongdoing. One of the President’s attorneys, Jay Sekulow, primarily sought to downplay the recent revelations from a manuscript by John Bolton. According to Bolton’s book, tentatively scheduled to be released in March, President Trump withheld military aid for Ukraine to pressure the Ukrainian government to announce an investigation of the gas company Burisma and of the Bidens—and said so to Bolton while he served as Trump’s national-security adviser.

Senate Republicans, and the President’s defense team, have so far relied on a sliver of ambiguity between the quid and the quo. Bolton’s narrative upends that notion. John Cassidy writes that the Bolton news is showing the depth of the Senate Republicans’ obsequiousness: “Rarely, if ever, has a political blood oath—in this case, a pledge to acquit a crooked President regardless of the evidence against him, and without even bothering to call any witnesses—rebounded so horribly, publicly, and spectacularly.”

Whether the Senate decides to call witnesses, including Bolton, remains to be seen. According to reporting by the Times, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed his caucus that he did not have enough votes to prevent the calling of witnesses. Several moderate Republicans, including Susan Collins, of Maine and Mitt Romney, of Utah, have signalled that they are open to supporting an effort to gather more information. Four Republicans would need to flip in order for the Senate to call witnesses. Additional testimony could open up other avenues of investigation and prolong the trial by several weeks. The Democratic senators who are running for President—Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennet—are already absent from the campaign trail, and an extension of the impeachment trial could affect their performances in the early-primary states. On the other hand, if, in the end, McConnell is able to wrangle his caucus, the trial would very likely come to a swift end with an acquittal.

Watch the live stream above for the latest in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.



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