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Branding Trump a Danger, Democrats Cap the Case for His Removal https://nyti.ms/30RrKfe

Branding Trump a Danger, Democrats Cap the Case for His Removal

On the final day of their oral arguments, House impeachment managers called President Trump a danger to the nation.

By Nicholas Fandos | Published Jan. 24, 2020 Updated 9:39 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 24, 2020 |

WASHINGTON — The House impeachment managers concluded their arguments against President Trump on Friday with a forceful plea for the Senate to call witnesses, while portraying his pressure campaign on Ukraine as part of a dangerous pattern of Russian appeasement that demanded his removal from office.

Ending their three-day presentation in the Senate, the president’s Democratic prosecutors summoned the ghosts of the Cold War and the realities of geopolitical tensions with Russia to argue that Mr. Trump’s abuse of power had slowly shredded delicate foreign alliances to suit his own interests.

“This is Trump first, not America first, not American ideals first,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead House manager. “And the result has been, and will continue to be, grave harm to our nation if this chamber does not stand up and say this is wrong.”

Hours later, as his time ticked down, Mr. Schiff sought to appeal to the consciences of Republican senators weighing whether to hear from witnesses and seek more documents that Mr. Trump suppressed from House investigators.

“I ask you — I implore you,” Mr. Schiff said. “Give America a fair trial. She’s worth it.”

But rather than win over converts, Mr. Schiff’s fiery final oration appeared to alienate many Republicans. When he referred to an anonymously sourced news report that Republican senators had been warned that their heads would be “on a pike” if they voted against Mr. Trump, several of them vigorously shook their heads and broke the trial’s sworn silence to say “not true.”

“I hope it’s not true,” Mr. Schiff responded, pressing his point.

Mr. Schiff and the six other managers prosecuting the president spent much of Friday tying up the facts of the second charge, obstruction of Congress, and arguing that Mr. Trump’s attempts to shut down a congressional inquiry into his actions toward Ukraine was unprecedented and undermined the very ability of the government to correct itself.

“He is a dictator,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York. “This must not stand.”

But even as the managers pulled together their complex case, the Republican-controlled Senate appeared unmoved — not just on the question of whether to acquit Mr. Trump, which it is expected to do, but also on the crucial question of compelling witnesses and documents that the president has suppressed.

“We have heard plenty,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Senate Republican.

He said that many in his party had quickly soured on the soaring appeals by House Democrats to repudiate Mr. Trump’s behavior. As day turned to evening on the fourth full day of the trial, many senators unaccustomed to long hours in the Capitol appeared to have simply been numbed by the House managers, and were anticipating the president’s defense, set to begin Saturday.

They were presented with three days of often vivid narrative and painstaking legal arguments that Mr. Trump sought foreign interference in the 2020 election on his own behalf, by using vital military aid and a White House meeting as leverage to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals. Yet the pool of moderate Republican senators that had expressed openness to joining Democrats in insisting on witnesses or new documents appeared to be dwindling, not growing.

Comments by Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska suggested that they may have cooled to the idea, although Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah gave no indication that they had shifted.

Still, Ms. Collins was among those shaking her head when Mr. Schiff referred to the purported threat against Republican defectors, as he portrayed Mr. Trump as a tyrant bent on intimidating would-be critics.

“‘Head on a pike,’ that’s where he lost me,” Ms. Murkowski said afterward, clarifying that she meant in the speech, not necessarily on votes for witnesses. “I thought he did fine until he overreached.”

Throughout Friday, inside and outside the chamber, the House managers and Democratic senators worked in tandem to appeal to their consciences, hinting strongly at the political stakes if they failed to press for a more thorough airing of the charges against the president.

“We’ve made the argument forcefully, the American people have made the argument forcefully that they want the truth,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “Will four Republican senators — just four — rise to the occasion, do their duty to the Constitution, to their country to seek the truth?”

They got an unexpected lift early in the day when a 2018 recording surfaced of Mr. Trump appearing to order the firing of Marie L. Yovanovitch, then the United States ambassador to Ukraine. The recording was first reported by ABC News and later handed over to the House by Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.

The recording appeared to confirm earlier claims by Mr. Parnas that he had told Mr. Trump about rumors that Ms. Yovanovitch was not loyal to him. The House’s impeachment inquiry concluded that the ambassador was ultimately removed in 2019 as part of Mr. Trump’s attempt to strong-arm Ukraine to announce investigations of his political adversaries.

“Get rid of her,” Mr. Trump can be heard to say, according to ABC. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care.”

Without an agreement to take new testimony or subpoena documents relevant to the case, Mr. Trump may be headed toward a historically speedy acquittal in as little as a week from now, before the Iowa caucuses or his planned State of the Union address. That would make the third impeachment trial of a president in American history the shortest.

Mr. Trump’s defense team plans to open its arguments on Saturday, though senators were expected to meet for only an abbreviated, two- to three-hour session before adjourning the trial until Monday afternoon.

Mr. Trump was not pleased about the schedule, writing Friday morning on Twitter that his team had been “forced” to start on a Saturday, a time “called Death Valley in T.V.” He also turned around Democrats’ accusation, declaring that “the Impeachment Hoax is interfering with the 2020 Election,” not him.

Jay Sekulow, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, said his team would treat the weekend session like a “trailer,” providing an overview of their case for acquittal while holding back until Monday the president’s more television-friendly lawyers, the former independent counsel Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz.

Democrats used almost every one of the 24 hours afforded to them by senators to make their case, determined to persuade American voters watching at home who will cast ballots in just 10 months, if not senators.

On Wednesday, Mr. Schiff and each of the managers took turns introducing the facts of the case in narrative form, unfolding the tale of Mr. Trump’s alleged misconduct chapter by chapter. Beginning with the abrupt removal of Ms. Yovanovitch, they said that Mr. Trump empowered first Mr. Giuliani and then American officials to push Ukraine to announce investigations of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats, before himself asking that country’s leader to “do us a favor.”

When the Ukrainians resisted, they added, he withheld a coveted White House meeting and almost $400 million in military aid the fledgling democracy badly needed to fend off a menacing Russia. And when Congress found out, he undertook an across-the-board campaign to block officials from testifying or producing records that would reveal the scheme.

On Thursday, Mr. Nadler lectured extensively on the constitutional and historical standards for impeachment, setting the stage for the managers to methodically argue that Mr. Trump’s actions toward Ukraine constituted an impeachable abuse of power that warrants his removal from office.

Mr. Schiff completed that case on Friday, directly engaging the national security implications of Mr. Trump’s actions as he argued that the president was a serial offender in seeking foreign help for his own political benefit, allowing himself to be used as a tool of Moscow’s agenda in the process. As a candidate, Mr. Trump welcomed Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to help him win the White House, Mr. Schiff noted, and then as president, he repeatedly cast doubt on the conclusions of American intelligence agencies about that interference. Later, Mr. Trump said outright that he would welcome foreign campaign assistance again.

The California Democrat played a video of the news conference in Helsinki, Finland, where Mr. Trump stood next to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and accepted his denial that Moscow meddled in the 2016 election.

“That’s one hell of a Russian intelligence coup,” Mr. Schiff said. “They got the president of the United States to provide cover for their own interference with our election.”

At another point, Mr. Schiff showed a clip of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who was an outspoken champion of Ukraine and Russia hawk, promoting the benefits of bipartisan American support for Kyiv to contain Russia and its anti-democratic agenda.

The move appeared to be a subtle effort to appeal to Republican senators, many of whom respected Mr. McCain and share his strongly anti-Russia stance, to place those values above their loyalty to the president.

As the managers moved on to the obstruction of Congress charge, they contended that Mr. Trump’s blockade of evidence was far more pernicious than the kind of partisan squabbles that are typical between Congress and the White House.

Even Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard M. Nixon, they said, had produced documents to the investigations that would threaten them with impeachment. Mr. Trump’s administration had not handed over a single page, declaring for the first time an across the board objection to House subpoenas.

Trying to head off Mr. Trump’s defense team, which argues that the president was lawfully protecting the interests of the executive branch from a politically motivated House, the managers pointed out that he never actually invoked executive privilege, the legal mechanism afforded to presidents.

“Only one person in the world has the power to issue an order to the entire executive branch,” said Representatives Val B. Demings, Democrat of Florida. “And President Trump used that power not to faithfully execute the law, but to order agencies and employees of the executive branch to conceal evidence of his misconduct.”

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Reporting was contributed by Maggie Haberman, Carl Hulse, Catie Edmondson, Michael D. Shear and Emily Cochrane.

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Lev Parnas Says He Has Recording of Trump Calling for Ambassador’s Firing

The former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani said through his lawyer that he had given the recording to the House Intelligence Committee for use in the impeachment inquiry.

By Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Protests | Published Jan. 24, 2020 Updated 9:24 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 24, 2020 |

WASHINGTON — A former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, said on Friday that he had turned over to congressional Democrats a recording from 2018 of the president ordering the removal of Marie L. Yovanovitch as the United States ambassador to Ukraine.

The associate, Lev Parnas, who worked with Mr. Giuliani to oust the ambassador and to pressure the Ukrainian government to pursue investigations to help Mr. Trump, located the recording on Friday after its existence was first reported by ABC News, said Joseph A. Bondy, Mr. Parnas’s lawyer.

Mr. Bondy said the recording was “of high materiality to the impeachment inquiry” of Mr. Trump and that he had provided it to the House Intelligence Committee, whose chairman, Representative Adam B. Schiff, is leading the impeachment managers in their presentation of the case.

The recording emerged as Democrats continued to press the Senate to call more witnesses and seek additional evidence for the trial.

While it does not appear to provide any substantive new information about the effort to oust Ms. Yovanovitch, the possibility of the recording being played in public could provide a powerful political moment for Democrats by hammering home Mr. Trump’s personal involvement. It also illustrates that there could be more revelations from untapped evidence, even as Democrats are wrapping up their case in the Senate.

That was precisely the argument they made on Friday as they sought to overcome Republican resistance to seeking new information and extending the trial.

Patrick Boland, a spokesman for the Intelligence Committee, declined to comment.

In the recording, ABC News reported, Mr. Parnas can be heard saying that “the biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of” Ms. Yovanovitch.

“She’s basically walking around telling everybody, ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait,’” Mr. Parnas says on the recording, according to ABC News.

“Get rid of her!” a voice that sounds like Mr. Trump’s responds, according to ABC News. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. O.K.? Do it.”

Those comments were directed at one of Mr. Trump’s aides who was in the room at the time, Mr. Parnas has previously said.

Ms. Yovanovitch remained in her job for another year after Mr. Trump’s remarks until she was recalled on the White House’s orders, according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry. It is not clear whether the president changed his mind, forgot about his order or was talked out of dismissing her.

Asked about the recording by Fox News, Mr. Trump said he was “not a big fan” of Ms. Yovanovitch. “I want ambassadors that are chosen by me,” he said. “I have a right to hire and fire ambassadors, and that’s a very important thing.”

The campaign to remove Ms. Yovanovitch is among the central elements of the Democratic case that Mr. Trump abused his power in an effort to pressure Ukraine’s government into announcing investigations into purported meddling in the 2016 election and into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his diplomacy in Ukraine.

Mr. Parnas had previously recounted how he and another associate of Mr. Giuliani’s, Igor Fruman, had met with Mr. Trump during a dinner for a small group of donors in a private suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington in late April 2018. At that dinner, Mr. Parnas relayed a rumor that Ms. Yovanovitch, then the American ambassador in Kyiv, was bad-mouthing the president — an unsubstantiated claim that Ms. Yovanovitch has denied.

Republicans have sought to challenge Mr. Parnas’s credibility by noting that he is under indictment. But the recording seemed to buttress Mr. Parnas’s claims that he had discussions with Mr. Trump about ousting Ms. Yovanovitch, who Mr. Parnas and Mr. Giuliani later came to believe was blocking their efforts to press the Ukrainians to commit to the investigations.

Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman had obtained direct access to the president by donating to Republican committees, and the recording suggests he spoke in front of them in a remarkably unfiltered and undiplomatic way, given their relative obscurity.

The April 2018 meeting came months before Mr. Giuliani began working with Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman to win support in Ukraine for investigations that could have helped Mr. Trump’s re-election prospects. Mr. Giuliani came to believe that Ms. Yovanovitch was blocking his efforts to advance the investigations. By early last year, Mr. Parnas had become a key intermediary between Mr. Giuliani and Ukrainian officials, including Yuriy Lutsenko, the country’s chief prosecutor at the time, who was also seeking Ms. Yovanovitch’s ouster.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he does not know Mr. Parnas or Mr. Fruman, who are facing federal campaign finance charges brought by prosecutors in Manhattan. They have pleaded not guilty. Mr. Giuliani is under investigation by the same prosecutors, who are examining his efforts to remove Ms. Yovanovitch.

Mr. Parnas has broken with Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump. He has provided reams of records and data to House impeachment investigators and signaled his willingness to cooperate with the prosecutors in Manhattan. Mr. Fruman’s legal team is working closely with lawyers for Mr. Giuliani — “they talk two, three times a week” — according to Mr. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor.

The recording was captured on Mr. Fruman’s phone, according to people familiar with the matter.

A lawyer for Mr. Fruman declined to comment.

Mr. Parnas and his legal team did not provide the recording to ABC News, Mr. Bondy said.

After ABC News’s report, Mr. Bondy said Mr. Parnas “undertook a renewed search of his iCloud accounts and found a copy of the recording.”

The recording “appears to corroborate” Mr. Parnas’s recollection of the April 2018 gathering at which Mr. Trump issued the order, Mr. Bondy said.

In an interview with the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow last week, Mr. Parnas said that Mr. Trump had tried to recall Ms. Yovanovitch “at least four, five times.” Mr. Parnas said he had personally spoken “once or twice” to the president “about firing her,” including at the dinner, which he said was also attended by Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.

“I don’t know how the issue is — the conversation came up, but I do remember me telling the president the ambassador was bad-mouthing him and saying he was going to get impeached, something to that effect,” Mr. Parnas recalled. “And at that time, he turned around” to an aide “and said, ‘fire her.’ And we all — there was a silence in the room.”

Mr. Parnas added that Mr. Trump raised the subject again later in the dinner: “I don’t know how many times at that dinner, once or twice or three times. But he fired her several times.”

Ms. Yovanovitch came into Mr. Parnas’s sights at least partly because he had come to believe that she was opposed to his business efforts in Ukraine, where he and Mr. Fruman had hoped to break into the natural gas market, according to associates of the two men, both of whom are Soviet-born American citizens.

Prosecutors have accused Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman of donating money and pledging to raise additional funds in 2018 — some violating legal limits — for a congressman who was then enlisted in the campaign to oust Ms. Yovanovitch.

While the congressman is not named in court filings, campaign finance records identify him as former Representative Pete Sessions, Republican of Texas, who lost his re-election bid in 2018.

Less than two weeks after his dinner with Mr. Trump, Mr. Parnas met with Mr. Sessions to discuss his gas venture in Ukraine, and the meeting eventually turned to Ms. Yovanovitch. After the meeting, Mr. Sessions wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying that Ms. Yovanovitch should be fired for privately expressing “disdain” for the current administration.

Mr. Sessions has said that he wrote the letter independently of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, but when Ms. Yovanovitch was not removed, Mr. Sessions provided Mr. Parnas with a copy of the letter, signing his name across the back of the envelope. “Mr. President” appeared across the front.

Photographs appearing to show the signed envelope — and Mr. Parnas presenting it to Mr. Trump — were included in a batch of records provided earlier this month by Mr. Parnas to the House Intelligence Committee.

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Trump Tries to Upstage Drama in the Senate With His Own Programming

While Democrats and Republicans debate whether he should be convicted and removed from office, the president has offered up an alternative menu of events and priorities.

By Peter Baker | Published Jan. 24, 2020 Updated 9:09 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 24, 2020 |

WASHINGTON — On the chilly grounds of the National Mall, within sight of the gleaming white Capitol where he is on trial for high crimes and misdemeanors, President Trump on Friday rallied abortion opponents gathered for their annual march and equated their battle with his own.

“They are coming after me,” Mr. Trump declared about a half-hour before the day’s trial session opened, with two of the juror-senators joining him onstage, “because I am fighting for you and we are fighting for those who have no voice. And we will win because we know how to win. We all know how to win. We all know how to win.”

For Mr. Trump, the strategy to win these days is counterprogramming. While Democrats and Republicans debate whether he should be convicted and removed from office, the president has offered up an alternative menu of events intended to focus attention on his economic record, present himself as a peacemaker and cater to his conservative base.

As the trial opened in earnest this week, he was hobnobbing with global corporate titans in Davos, Switzerland, trumpeting the growth of jobs and markets back home. As the House managers prosecuting him wrapped up their case on Friday, he became the first sitting president to attend the March for Life, bolstering his ties to the anti-abortion movement. And as senators begin posing their own questions next week, he plans to host Israeli leaders and release his long-awaited Middle East peace plan.

In case those are not enough to draw away attention from the proceedings in the Senate chamber, Mr. Trump has scheduled not one but two campaign rallies next week, one in New Jersey on Tuesday and another in Iowa on Thursday — even as four of his putative Democratic rivals are stuck at his trial, unable to campaign in the last days before the Iowa caucuses.

And he sought to get the last word in on Friday, giving an interview to air on Fox News at 10 p.m., just an hour after the House managers wrapped up their opening arguments. In the interview, he defended the decision to recall Ambassador Marie L. Yovanovitch, who was viewed by his associates as an impediment to their effort to get Ukraine to investigate Democrats.

Still, while Mr. Trump hoped to distract from the prosecution case led by Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, the past three days, the ever-ratings-conscious former reality show star was clearly irritated that his own lawyers would be opening their arguments on Saturday, when the television audience presumably may be smaller.

“After having been treated unbelievably unfairly in the House, and then having to endure hour after hour of lies, fraud & deception by Shifty Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer & their crew, looks like my lawyers will be forced to start on Saturday, which is called Death Valley in T.V.,” the president wrote on Twitter on Friday.

But the primary challenge for the White House legal team will not be earning ratings so much as doing no harm. With acquittal all but assured given the requirement for a two-thirds vote for conviction, the president’s lawyers will try to poke holes in the prosecution’s case to buttress Republican senators already inclined to vote for the president. At the same time, they will have to make sure they do not lose any of the handful of relative moderates who at one point may have been up for grabs.

Mindful that senators of both parties have grown weary and were eager to get out of town, if only for part of the weekend, the White House team agreed to a Senate request to start Saturday’s proceedings early and use only a portion of its time. The session will open at 10 a.m. instead of 1 p.m. and last no more than three hours. Then the White House team will put on a full presentation on Monday.

“I guess I would call it a trailer, coming attractions — that would be the best way to say it,” Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s lawyers, told reporters.

Mr. Sekulow also previewed the aggressive and confrontational approach the White House lawyers intend to take when it is their turn. They will argue that it was the Democrats who accepted foreign help in 2016, citing a research dossier by a British former intelligence officer, and that Mr. Trump has been persecuted from the start. They will highlight a recent report criticizing the F.B.I. for the way it obtained a warrant to continue surveillance on a onetime Trump campaign adviser.

They will also focus attention on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, arguing that Mr. Trump had legitimate reasons to accuse them of corruption. Mr. Sekulow said the managers not only opened the window to discussing the Bidens by spending so much time on Thursday defending them but they “kicked the door open.” He and his colleagues will argue that Democrats were trying to influence the 2020 election by taking Mr. Trump off the ballot.

“They put their case forward,” said Mr. Sekulow. “It’s our time next.”

As the trial has gotten underway, Mr. Trump uncharacteristically has limited his public pushback to select moments, instead making an effort to appear focused on other matters, much like President Bill Clinton sought to do during his own impeachment trial in 1999. He largely stuck to the topic of abortion at the march on Friday, turning to other issues during an afternoon public meeting with mayors from around the country.

But there have moments this week when his grievance and anger got the better of him and he has lashed out, usually on Twitter. On Wednesday, as Mr. Schiff and his team had the Senate floor to themselves and without interruption all afternoon and deep into the night, Mr. Trump posted or reposted 142 messages on Twitter, many assailing the managers and their case, setting a record for his presidency.

The effort to counterprogram with other public initiatives has led to some strategic gambles. Mr. Trump’s decision to attend the March for Life in person on Friday defied the conventional wisdom that led other anti-abortion Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush to play it more cautiously by staying away and sending taped or telephoned messages instead.

Likewise, the president chose now, of all times, to finally unveil his plan to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. For three years, he and his team have said they would wait for the most opportune moment, then suddenly concluded that this was that time, even though Israel is focused on its third election in a year and the Palestinians are not on speaking terms with the Trump administration.

Underscoring just how unsettled the moment really is, Mr. Trump plans to host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Tuesday, and has invited Mr. Netanyahu’s major campaign opponent, Benny Gantz, as well, unsure who his negotiating partner will be in just a matter of weeks.

Yet the president’s friend, Mr. Netanyahu, eager to hang onto office, may be just as eager for a distraction from his domestic troubles as Mr. Trump, leading to the odd spectacle of an American president on trial in the Senate for abuse of power hosting an Israeli prime minister indicted on charges of corruption.

For Mr. Trump, at least, the public remains largely unmoved. A new poll by The Washington Post and ABC News found that Americans remain as divided as they have been for months over whether he should be removed from office, with 47 percent for and 49 percent against. His approval rating stood at 44 percent.

Whether that will change as a result of the trial remains uncertain. But Mr. Trump said his legal team starting on Saturday will reinforce his message that he has been unfairly targeted by a partisan witch hunt.

“What my people have to do is just be honest, just tell the truth,” he said in the Fox interview. “They’ve been testifying, the Democrats, they’ve been telling so many lies, so many fabrications, so much exaggeration. And this is not impeachable.”

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Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

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Emotional Schiff Speech Goes Viral, Delighting the Left and Enraging the Right

Representative Adam B. Schiff took a risk in telling senators they must convict and remove President Trump because "you know you can't trust this president to do what's right for this country."

By Sheryl Gay Solberg | Published Jan. 24, 2020 Updated 8:29 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 24, 2020 |

WASHINGTON — Senator James M. Inhofe, a conservative Republican from Oklahoma, has made clear that he intends to vote to acquit President Trump. But after Representative Adam B. Schiff’s fiery speech Thursday night calling for the president’s removal, Mr. Inhofe felt compelled to give a fellow lawmaker some grudging respect.

“I have to say this,” Mr. Inhofe told reporters Friday morning in the Capitol. “Schiff is very, very effective.”

Mr. Schiff, a California Democrat who steered the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump and is the lead prosecutor in his Senate trial, has long been a hero to the left and a villain to the right. But never has he aroused as much passion as he did with his late-night appeal for senators to convict and remove Mr. Trump because “you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country.”

By Friday morning, the phrase #RightMatters — from the last line of Mr. Schiff’s speech — was trending as a hashtag on Twitter. The Daily Beast declared that the remarks “will go down in history.” Ryan Knight, a progressive activist, called it “a closing statement for the ages.” Video of the speech quickly went viral. Liberals lavished him with praise.

“I am in tears,” wrote Debra Messing, the “Will & Grace” actress and outspoken Trump critic. “Thank you Chairman Schiff for fighting for our country.”

Republicans had precisely the opposite reaction. Many view Mr. Schiff, 59, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as a slick and self-righteous political operator intent on undoing the results of the 2016 election — or preventing Mr. Trump from winning in 2020. In the Senate, Republicans took particular umbrage at his declaration that they could not trust the president.

“I don’t trust Adam Schiff,” Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, shot back.

On Fox News, Mr. Schiff was filleted. “Amateur Thespian Schiff Tries Out Some New Lines,” TV monitors broadcasting the network declared Thursday, as the host Tucker Carlson mocked the congressman, calling him a “wild-eyed conspiracy nut.”

A Stanford- and Harvard-educated lawyer, Mr. Schiff is drawing on skills he honed as a young federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. He first drew national attention in 1990 by winning the conviction of an F.B.I. agent who became romantically entangled with a Russian spy, and was accused of selling government secrets in exchange for promises of gold and cash.

Prosecutors said Mr. Schiff took a risk in his bald declaration that the president could not be trusted because Republicans in the chamber, almost all of whom support Mr. Trump, would see the criticism as implicitly directed at them.

“When you make an argument like that, you better be sure that your entire audience is with you,” said James G. McGovern, a criminal defense lawyer at Hogan Lovells in New York and a former prosecutor.

Multiple Republicans said afterward that they had not at all been moved by Mr. Schiff. “It seems to me their case is weaker today than it was yesterday,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Senate Republican, as he faulted Mr. Schiff.

But Anne Milgram, a former attorney general of New Jersey and now a law professor at New York University, described Mr. Schiff’s sharp criticism of Mr. Trump as a “wise calculation,” because unlike a regular jury trial, Mr. Schiff does not need a unanimous verdict. The argument was aimed, she said, at the four or so moderate Republicans whose votes Democrats will need to call witnesses at the trial.

Regardless of the risk, it was clear on both sides of the aisle — and to experienced prosecutors who watched — that after a long day of complicated and sometimes monotonous testimony, Mr. Schiff’s oratory broke through. Mr. Schiff apparently thought so himself. He posted the last eight minutes, the most dramatic part of his speech, on Twitter Thursday night, and by Friday evening it had been viewed more than 5.9 million times.

“Sometimes when Schiff steps to the mic I think he’s a little scripted,” Ms. Milgram said. “I did not feel that last night. I thought it was the most authentic I have seen him. He sort of crossed into another level.”

Mr. Schiff opened by carefully leading the Senate through the House’s case that the president abused his office by trying to enlist Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, weaving in bits and pieces of testimony and commentary along the way. He then turned to his Senate audience and stated what he believes to be the obvious: Mr. Trump is guilty.

“Do we really have any doubt about the facts here?” Mr. Schiff asked. “Does anybody really question whether the president is capable of what he’s charged with? No one is really making the argument Donald Trump would never do such a thing, because of course we know that he would, and of course we know that he did.”

But that, Mr. Schiff said, led to the most critical question of all: “Does he really need to be removed?” The answer was yes, Mr. Schiff said, then offered a situation in which the Russians interfered in the 2020 election to help Mr. Trump, just as they did in 2016.

“Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to them and protect our national interest over his own personal interest?” Mr. Schiff said. “You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country.’’

In the Capitol, Mr. Schiff is ordinarily serious, composed and in control. But as he moved toward his closing comments, he grew visibly emotional as he recalled the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the White House national security aide and Ukrainian immigrant who testified in impeachment hearings before Congress and helped Democrats build their case.

Colonel Vindman, who fled the former Soviet Union with his family when he was 3, testified that he felt deeply uncomfortable with a telephone call Mr. Trump had on July 25 with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, when Mr. Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to “do us a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Mr. Schiff recalled how Colonel Vindman told lawmakers that unlike in the former Soviet Union, “right matters” in the United States.

“Well, let me tell you something,” Mr. Schiff went on, his forefinger jabbing the air for emphasis. “If right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. Doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is.” If “right doesn’t matter,” he concluded, “we’re lost.”

Trump on Trial is a continuing series of articles offering reporting, analysis and impressions of the Senate impeachment proceedings.

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Trump Impeachment: Highlights of Friday’s Trial

House managers wrapped up their oral arguments on Friday, focusing on the obstruction of Congress charge against the president. Here were the highlights.

By Eileen Sullivan | Published January 24, 2020 | New York Times | Posted January 24 2020 |

Here’s what you need to know:

In his closing, Schiff said acquitting Trump would be ‘an unending injury to this country.’

House impeachment managers closed their three-day presentation to the Senate by arguing that allowing the President Trump to remain in office would continue to threaten the country’s security.

In his closing remarks, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, cast Mr. Trump as a continuing threat to the Constitution and implored senators not to set a precedent that would cede Congress’s investigative authority to the executive branch for generations to come.

“If we are to decide here that a president of the United States can simply say, ‘Under Article 2, I can do whatever I want, and I don’t have to treat a coequal branch of government like it exists, I don’t have to give it any more than the back of my hand,’” Mr. Schiff said, “that will be an unending injury to this country.”

Another impeachment manager, Representative Jason Crow of Colorado, told senators that the goal was to “protect against future presidential misconduct that would endanger democracy and the rule of law” and described Mr. Trump’s obstruction of Congress as “a constitutional crime in progress.”

House prosecutors focused largely on the obstruction of Congress charge.

Democrats used most of their final seven hours and 53 minutes of oral arguments to make their case that Mr. Trump obstructed Congress, the second article of impeachment against him.

Discussion of Mr. Trump’s alleged cover-up had focused primarily on his defiance of subpoenas for testimony and documents in the impeachment inquiry. But two of the managers, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York and Mr. Crow, suggested to senators that those moves were part of a longer cover-up, much of which took place behind the scenes before the House had even learned of the pressure campaign.

“They were determined to prevent Congress and the American people from learning anything about the president’s corrupt behavior,” Mr. Jeffries said of lawyers at the White House and Justice Department who bottled up reports in July, when White House foreign policy advisers became alarmed by the legality of a White House meeting with Ukrainian officials and Mr. Trump’s July 25 phone call with the country’s leader.

Mr. Crow said the president’s cover-up intensified after three House Democratic committee chairmen announced in early September that they were investigating the suspension of $391 million in military aid earmarked for Ukraine. Now, White House budget officials rushed to put together a justification for a weeks-old freeze.

“This is where the music stops, and everyone starts running to find a chair,” Mr. Crow said.

— Nicholas Fandos

A recording appears to capture Trump talking about Yovanovitch.

A lawyer representing Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, said on Friday that he turned over to congressional Democrats a recording that appeared to be of Mr. Trump speaking about Marie L. Yovanovitch, the United States ambassador to Ukraine at the time.

According to ABC News, which first reported the existence of the recording on Friday, Mr. Trump could be heard on the tape, saying, “Get rid of her.” The president went on to say: “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. O.K.? Do it.”

Joseph A. Bondy, Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, described the recording as having “high materiality to the impeachment inquiry.” The emergence of the recording coincides with a push by Democrats in the Senate to call more witnesses and seek additional evidence for the trial.

Ms. Yovanovitch was removed from her post last spring on Mr. Trump’s orders after being the subject of a smear campaign by his allies, who saw her as an impediment to their agenda, which included efforts to force Ukraine to announce investigations into the Bidens.

The fight over admitting new evidence, like documents and witnesses, goes on.

Once Mr. Trump’s lawyers conclude their arguments, sometime between Saturday and Tuesday, senators are expected to have a short debate on whether to admit new evidence and witnesses to the trial. Republicans defeated an effort to consider the matter before the start of oral arguments, drawing outrage from Democrats, who have maintained that there could not be a fair trial without them.

The evidence-and-witnesses argument is the crux of the charge that Mr. Trump obstructed Congress. New evidence has emerged since the House completed its impeachment inquiry last year, and one of the president’s former national security advisers, John R. Bolton, said he would testify at the Senate trial if he received a subpoena. (Mr. Bolton did not testify before the House.)

This is an area where Democrats have been hoping to sway some of the Republicans who have signaled they might be open to hearing from witnesses, including Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Democrats also are holding out hope for Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring at the end of this term.

The No. 1 witness Democrats want to hear from is Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who played a central role in the Ukraine pressure campaign.

Mr. Mulvaney is “the chief cook and bottle-washer in this whole evil scheme,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, told reporters on Friday morning.

Trump’s defense team expects to make a short appearance on Saturday.

Mr. Trump’s team is set to begin presenting his defense at 10 a.m. Saturday. They will have the Senate floor for up to 24 hours if they choose to use all their time, but they plan to start with a short presentation on a day that the president has already derided as “Death Valley” in television ratings.

According to people briefed on the plan, Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, and Jay Sekulow, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, will appear and speak for about an hour each, although officials said the planning was still fluid.

One argument his defense is expected to make — that Mr. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly made — is that there was no pressure campaign on Ukraine, because the Trump administration released the military assistance without getting anything in return from President Volodymyr Zelensky.

One of the House impeachment managers tried to pre-emptively dismiss that argument Friday afternoon.

“Regardless of whether the aid was ultimately released, the fact that the hold became public sent a very important signal to Russia that our support was wavering,” Mr. Crow told the senators. “The damage was done.”

Some senators are pulled in by name to the case they are deciding.

As the Democratic House managers outlined how Mr. Trump and officials in his circle orchestrated and tried to hide his pressure campaign on Ukraine, they ended up name-checking some of the senators now serving as jurors.

The arguments underscore the actions several lawmakers took when they learned Mr. Trump was withholding the nation’s military aid for Ukraine and the involvement of some senators in the very affair that they are now considering as jurors.

Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, both leaders of the bipartisan Senate Ukraine Caucus, urged Mr. Trump to release the aid. Mr. Johnson traveled to Kyiv to tell Mr. Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, that he had tried but failed to persuade Mr. Trump to release the aid; Mr. Portman called Mr. Trump and privately lobbied him for hours before he eventually released it.

— Catie Edmondson

Trump is not in the chamber, but he is on Twitter.

Mr. Trump on Friday got an early start on Twitter, firing out 42 retweets and quotes from his supporters and two posts of his own by 8 a.m.

“The Impeachment Hoax is interfering with the 2020 Election,” Mr. Trump wrote in one of the posts, redirecting the Democrats’ arguments on Thursday that he had abused the power of his office by pressuring Mr. Zelensky to undertake politically motivated investigations that could affect the election.

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

The Impeachment Hoax is interfering with the 2020 Election - But that was the idea behind the Radical Left, Do Nothing Dems Scam attack. They always knew I did nothing wrong!

7:50 AM - Jan 24, 2020

Just before the Senate trial resumed, Mr. Trump addressed the annual March for Life, becoming the first sitting president to appear in person at the gathering of anti-abortion demonstrators. He made the surprise announcement on Twitter on Wednesday, just before the start of the Senate trial — a reminder to his conservative Christian supporters that he still shared their values.

______

Catie Edmondson, Nicholas Fandos and Zach Montague contributed reporting.

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What to Watch For in Trump’s Impeachment Trial on Saturday

House impeachment managers will step back as the president’s legal team fires its first salvo.

By Zach Montague | Published Jan. 25, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET |New York Times | Posted January 25 2020 |

President Trump’s lawyers will begin presenting their defense on Saturday, hoping to deliver a sharp counterargument to three days of presentations that House impeachment managers wrapped up Friday night.

As Democrats ended their opening arguments, Republican senators appeared largely unmoved in their belief that Mr. Trump should remain in office, and dismissed the notion that the president’s actions rose to the level of an impeachable offense. But some conceded that the managers, in particular Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, had pieced together a case that at times was impressive.

For a few hours this weekend, Mr. Trump’s legal team will have a chance to change the tone in the Senate chamber.

The basics.

What we’re expecting to see: A first look at how the president’s defense strategy will play out in the Senate, and at the confrontational approach his lawyers seem prepared to take in their full formal arguments next week.

When we’re likely to see it: The Senate has asked Mr. Trump’s team to begin at 10 a.m. and limit itself to three hours.

How to follow it: The New York Times’s congressional and White House teams will be following all of the developments. Visit nytimes.com for coverage throughout the day.

A three-hour trailer?

On Friday, Jay Sekulow, a member of Mr. Trump’s legal team, characterized the presentation he and his colleagues plan to make on Saturday as “a trailer” and “coming attractions.” He added that the more meaningful and substantial presentation of his team’s case will be reserved for next week.

Nonetheless, the president’s lawyers will have three hours, and anything they say will resonate over the weekend and could be seized on by Democratic presidential candidates who will be campaigning aggressively ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3.

With this in mind, the president’s lawyers are likely to take the opportunity to try out a few sound bites that could foreshadow the arguments they plan to push in their fuller presentation on Monday.

New evidence has emerged. Will it be considered?

Senate Democrats on Friday began openly expressing doubt that they would be able to muster the support they need from Republicans to subpoena new witnesses or introduce new evidence in the trial. Yet as House managers brought their opening arguments to a close, new evidence emerged in the form of a recording that seemed to document the president demanding the removal of Marie L. Yovanovitch as the United States ambassador to Ukraine.

How Republicans react to the recording’s existence could provide clues as to whether it has the potential to affect the vote expected next week on whether any additional evidence will be entered into the record before the trial’s conclusion.

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