The trial has resumed after a 30-minute dinner break. Hakeem Jeffries, one of the House impeachment managers, is now making the case to subpoena Mick Mulvaney.
The congressman from New York said Donald Trump makes Richard Nixon “look like a choir boy”. Trump is “personally responsible for depriving the Senate of information important to consider in this trial”, Jeffries said, referring to the president’s efforts to block House investigators from accessing documents and witnesses throughout the impeachment inquiry.
“Evidence matters. And the truth matters,” Jeffries said.
But Republicans have voted down multiple Democratic efforts to subpoena more evidence. The trial, writes the Guardian’s David Smith, is testing conscience of the Republican party.
A motion to subpoena documents related to the suspension of military aid to Ukraine from the Office of Management and Budget has been tabled, with a 53-47 vote along party lines.
This is the third amendment brought by the minority leader Chuck Schumer that Senate Republicans have voted down. Schumer has also introduced another amendment to subpoena Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff.
The senators will address that later tonight, after taking a 30-minute recess for dinner. While the trial is ongoing, snacks are banned in the chamber, though drinks of water and milk are permitted.
Both parties have two hours to debate this amendment, and then, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, indicated he’ll move to table it. After a vote, the lawmakers will get a 30-minute break – which, from the looks of everyone in the chamber is much needed.
Senator James Risch of Idaho appeared to nod off, according to reporters.
I am not saying Sen. Risch fell asleep during the proceedings, but his head was in his palm, his were eyes shut and his body was motionless for several minutes, until a Bill Taylor clip prompted him to sit up
Senators vote to kill the amendment to subpoena State Department documents
As expected, senators voted along party lines, 53-47.
Minority leader Chuck Schumer has introduced a third amendment to subpoena the White House Office of Management and Budget. This one is again, expected to fail.
Rush, a Democratic representative from Illinois, told the Chicago Sun-Times he was impressed by Bloomberg’s approach to the “economic discrimination in the black community.”
The congressman had endorsed Kamala Harris before she dropped out of the presidential race.
To demonstrate the importance of subpoenaing the state department, Val Demings displayed text messages between the US envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and the US diplomat Bill Taylor, which were uncovered during the House impeachment inquiry. One of the messages seemed to confirm that the Trump administration was withholding military aid in order to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Trump’s political rivals.
The texts and other messages uncovered by House investigators make clear that there’s more damaging information out there, Demings said. But the Trump administration has been blocking the release of information, claiming executive privilege.
Information obtained through a Senate subpoena “would help complete our understanding of how the president’s scheme unfolded in realtime”, Demings said.
Senators are now debating another amendment to the rules of the Senate impeachment trial from Chuck Schumer. This one involves subpoenaing the state department.
Val Demings, a Democratic representative from Florida and one of the House impeachment managers, spoke in support of Schumer’s amendment. State department documents “would support the conclusion that senior Ukrainian officials understood the corrupt nature of President Trump’s demand and they would further expose the extent to which Secretary Pompeo and Mick Mulvaney and other senior Trump officials were aware of the president’s plot and helped carry it out”, she said.
“We know that [the documents] are relevant, and we know the president is desperately trying to conceal them,” she added.
Still, the amendment is expected to fail along party lines. It’s unclear how many amendments that Schumer will introduce today.
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours as the Senate impeachment trial continues.
Here’s where the trial stands so far:
In a party-line vote, Senate Republicans successfully killed the minority leader Chuck Schumer’s amendment to the resolution outlining rules for the impeachment trial. The New York Democrat’s amendment called for subpoenaing White House documents related to the charges against Trump.
The House impeachment manager Adam Schiff argued on the Senate floor that it would be “ass-backwards” to hold an impeachment trial and then request witness testimony.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, altered the resolution outlining rules for the impeachment trial, allowing each side to present their arguments over three days rather than two. The altered resolution also allows for automatic inclusion of evidence from the House impeachment inquiry, although senators have the chance to object.
The House impeachment managers presented evidence arguing in favor of Trump’s removal from office, while the president’s lawyers depicted his impeachment as the result of a partisan “witch hunt”.
Maanvi will have more updates from the trial coming up, so stay tuned.
The Senate is now taking a ten-minute recess, after which the House impeachment managers and Trump’s legal team will be allowed to debate Chuck Schumer’s second amendment to Mitch McConnell’s impeachment trial resolution.
But McConnell said he intended to propose to also table that amendment, and that motion is likely to succeed on a party-line vote, as the first motion to table did.