Day 8: Senate impeachment trial of President Trump

Transcript

After listening to open arguments from both sides, senators are finally getting a chance to participate in President Trump’s impeachment trial.

Yesterday (Wednesday) was the first day for senators to submit questions for the House managers and the president’s defense team.

Senators get 16 hours total over the course of two days to ask questions.

This period of the trial could impact how senators ultimately vote on the possibility of having witnesses and documents.

House managers and the president’s defense lawyers answered questions and tried to push their cases.

The defense, saying there’s no wrongdoing on the behalf of the president and that the House managers have a weak case.

And the Democrats, doing all they can to convince at least four Republican senators to vote yes on witnesses like the former national security advisor, John Bolton.

After the two days of questions, the Senators, and perhaps Chief Justice John Roberts, will finally have to confront a likely difficult vote on whether to call witnesses.

The trial will resume today (Thursday) at 1 p.m. Eastern time.

Meanwhile, yesterday (Wednesday) the White House issued a formal threat to Bolton to keep him from publishing his White House memoir.

That’s according to sources familiar with the matter.

The warning letter comes amid tweets by President Trump attacking Bolton.

The tweets suggest he knew the contents of the manuscript.

And Bolton’s lawyer is accusing the White House of corrupting the book’s vetting process by sharing contents with people outside the National Security Council’s records management division.

Neither Bolton nor a spokesperson for the publisher responded to a request for comment.

The White House also had no comment.