Trump impeachment: senators kill Democratic efforts to subpoena more evidence – as it happened

Senate Republicans successfully killed minority leader Chuck Schumer’s amendment to the resolution outlining rules for the impeachment trial, which called for subpoenaing White House documents related to the charges against Trump.

Schumer is now introducing another amendment, which is aimed at subpoenaing State Department documents related to the impeachment. It will likely also fail along party lines.

As expected, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has introduced a motion to table (or kill) Chuck Schumer’s amendment, which calls for subpoenaeing White House documents related to Trump’s impeachment charges.

The motion to table is expected to pass along party lines, and Schumer will then likely introduce another amendment to McConnell’s resolution outlining the rules for the impeachment trial.

House impeachment manager Zoe Lofgren pushed back against arguments from Pat Philbin, deputy counsel to the president, that the House is trying to get the Senate to do its investigative job.

“The House is certainly not asking the Senate to do the House’s job,” Lofgren said. “The House is asking the Senate to do its job.”

The House impeachment managers and the president’s legal team continue to debate an amendment from Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer calling for the White House to be subpoenaed for relevant documents.

Fun fact: House impeachment manager Adam Schiff is not actually the first person to use the term “ass-backwards” on the Senate floor.

That honor appears to go to Republican senator Lindsey Graham, who used the term in 2016 to denounce a bipartisan proposal to block a military arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

“I think it would be pretty odd for members on the other side of the aisle who almost unanimously supported the Iranian nuclear agreement ... [to] deny a weapons sale to somebody who is in the fight with you,” Graham said at the time. “You’re talking about ass-backwards.”

Former Republican senator Jeff Flake, who declined to run for reelection in 2018 because of his opposition to Trump, was spotted in the Senate chamber as the president’s impeachment trial continues.

Flake wrote a Washington Post op-ed last month urging his former Republican colleagues to “put country over party” once the trial began:

I don’t envy you. You’re on a big stage now. Please don’t accept an alternate reality that would have us believe in things that obviously are not true, in the service of executive behavior that we never would have encouraged and a theory of executive power that we have always found abhorrent.

If there ever was a time to put country over party, it is now. And by putting country over party, you might just save the Grand Old Party before it’s too late.

Denouncing the proposed rules for Trump’s impeachment trial, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff argued it would be “ass-backwards” to hold a trial and then request witness testimony.

House impeachment manager Zoe Lofgren has now taken the Senate floor to argue for the need to subpoena White House documents related to the charges against Trump.

Lofgren, who participated in the Clinton and Nixon impeachment cases, will make history as the first woman to present arguments as a manager during an impeachment trial.

The New York Times has more on Lofgren’s impeachment history:

She was a member of the House Judiciary Committee in 1998 when it approved articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton for lying about an affair with a White House intern. And as a young law student in 1974, she helped the committee draft its Watergate charges against President Richard M. Nixon.

Now — 46 years after the Nixon case — the 72-year-old lawmaker will take a high-profile role in the nation’s third impeachment trial, serving as one of the managers who will prosecute the House’s case against President Trump in the Senate.

Amy Klobuchar, one of the Democratic senators running for president, psuhed back against a comment from White House counsel Pat Cipollone that the presidential candidates are “upset” to be away from the campaign trail.

As Trump’s impeachment trial continues on Capitol Hill, Joe Biden is holding a campaign event in Ames, Iowa, with less than two weeks to go until the state’s caucuses.

Two of Biden’s closest rivals -- senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren -- have been pulled away from the campaign trial because of the impeachment trial, and Sanders has already had to cancel at least one rally because of the trial schedule.

A Yahoo News reporter sitting in the trial room said Republicans appeared uncomfortable as House impeachment manager Adam Schiff made the case for Trump’s removal from office.

Meanwhile, some of the president’s Senate allies appear to be using the recess to push back against Schiff’s argument because they are not allowed access to electronic devices while they are in the trial room.