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Senators like to float above messy politics in what’s known by some as the dignified “upper chamber,” home of Congress’ cooler heads and lofty rhetoric. But as a court of President Donald Trump’s impeachment, the Senate beginning Tuesday might seem more like the economy cabin of an oversold flight on an especially tense, mandatory work trip.Rock star legal teams will cram the airy well of the chamber just a few feet from each other and Chief Justice John Roberts. Four television screens take up rarified space. Staff will snap up seats near the wall. A podium stands at the center aisle. As for phones, it’s worse than airplane mode: They are banned from the chamber. That maroons 100 chatty senators — including four Democrats in the heat of a nomination fight — for the serious constitutional business of the impeachment trial, for hours at a time. “I’m going to be stuck in Washington for God knows how long,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told supporters in Des Moines Monday night. What to watch — and whom — when the trial gets underway around 1 p.m. EST Tuesday:GROUND RULESBut first, naturally, some talk from senators. The Senate opens with debate on the structure and rules of the proceedings. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is proposing a condensed, two-day calendar for opening arguments on the articles passed by the House on Dec. 18. They charge Trump with abusing power by pressuring Ukraine to help him politically, and obstructing Congress when it tried to find out what happened. McConnell’s ground rules are outlined in a four-page resolution that must be voted on as one of the first orders of business. It pushes off any votes on witnesses until later in the process, rather than up front, as Democrats had demanded. But McConnell’s plan on witnesses lines up with the organizing resolution that set the structure of President Bill Clinton’s trial in 1999.DRAWING THE CURTAIN”At all times,” according to Senate rules, a majority of senators present can vote to close the proceedings and debate in private. That would mean the cameras shut off and everyone who’s not a member of the Senate kicked out of the chamber until the senators choose to reopen it.Senators did that at various points during the Clinton trial. McConnell then argued that members of the chamber listen to each other better in private.A LONG HAULAfter the four days of opening arguments — maximum 24 hours per side — senators will be allowed up to 16 hours for questions to the prosecution and defense, followed by four hours of debate. Only then will there be votes on calling other witnesses.Senate rules say the trial must proceed six days a week — all but Sunday — until it is resolved.OFF THE TRAIL, OFF THE GRIDWatch a coterie of Democratic senators who literally would rather be somewhere else — specifically Iowa and New Hampshire — ahead of their party’s kickoff votes for the right to try to unseat Trump in the November election. Watch Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota for signs of fatigue from flying between Washington and these places and coping with being off the internet for hours at a time. Also look for the surrogates, video calls to supporters and ads designed to give them a measure of presence in the early nominating states. THE PROSECUTORSLeading the case for the House is Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of Californian and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York. Five other Democrats round out the prosecution team, a group House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she chose in part for their experience with the law. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., has worked on three impeachment inquiries, starting with the one that helped persuade President Richard Nixon to resign. Rep. Val Demings of Florida is not a lawyer, but she is a former police chief and a member of both committees deeply familiar with the case against Trump. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is a lawyer and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, so he’s close to Pelosi’s ranks. Pelosi also chose two freshmen who helped flip the House from GOP control in 2018. Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Texas is a former judge. And Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado is a retired Army Ranger who was one of the seven new members with national security backgrounds to call for Trump’s impeachment over his conduct with Ukraine.FOR THE PRESIDENTTrump cast some big personalities for seats at the defense table. White House counsel Pat Cipollone and personal lawyer Jay Sekulow are expected to lead the argument that Trump committed no crimes, that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense and that the president is a victim of a political “witch hunt” by Democrats. Bringing experience both in constitutional law and the politics of impeachment, he’s adding retired law professor Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Clinton. The team also will include Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general.The team, less experienced in the Senate than the House prosecutors as a whole, visited the Senate chamber Monday, in part to test the equipment they expect to use for audio-visual presentations. Look for signs of tension involving the president’s outside legal team and lawyers within the White House. Dershowitz on Sunday tried to distance himself from the president.THE NUMBERS100: The total number of senators.53: The Republican majority.51: The number of senators who must agree on almost anything to make it happen during an impeachment trial.Four: The number of Republican senators who must join Democrats to get to the magical 51. 2/3: The proportion of senators required to convict and remove a president from office. So 67 members of the Senate would have to vote to convict if every senator is voting. THE GANGBoth sides will be keeping tabs on the Senate’s moderates for an emerging gang of three to four who could influence the outcome on such matters as whether to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton. That vote won’t be taken for days if not weeks.Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has been meeting with a small number of GOP colleagues who want to consider witness testimony and documents that weren’t part of the House impeachment investigation. Watch GOP Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska for signs of whether this group can stick together and force the Senate to consider additional material.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday assailed the impeachment case against him as a “dangerous perversion of the Constitution,” asserting he did “absolutely nothing wrong” in pressing Ukraine to launch investigations to benefit himself politically.The lawyers for the U.S. leader said Democratic lawmakers pushing for the impeachment of the Republican president and his removal from office were not trying to find the truth about Trump’s Ukraine-related actions, but rather some way to overturn his 2016 election and interfere with his 2020 reelection campaign.In a legal brief a day ahead of the first substantive session of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, the lawyers called the Democrats’ case against him “a constitutional travesty” and said the Senate should swiftly acquit him of the two articles of impeachment he is facing. One alleges that he abused the presidency by pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate one of his top 2020 Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden, and the other that he obstructed Congress in its review of his Ukraine efforts.Democratic lawmakers had earlier said it was clear that the “evidence overwhelmingly establishes” that Trump is guilty of both charges in the two articles of impeachment.FILE – Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson, left, and House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving pass through Statuary Hall at the Capitol to deliver the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate, Jan. 15, 2020.The Trump lawyers, in their 110-page filing, said that Trump was conducting normal foreign policy affairs in dealing with Zelenskiy.They said he did not commit a crime, even though conviction of an impeached U.S. president and removal from office does not depend on a specific violation of a criminal law. Rather it is how the 100 members of the Senate, acting as jurors, interpret the standard for conviction set out in the U.S. Constitution, whether a president has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.”  No matter the legal arguments for and against Trump, he almost certainly will be acquitted by the Republican-majority Senate, where a two-thirds vote against him would be required for conviction and removal from office, just months ahead of his reelection bid in November. At least 20 of the 53 Republicans in the chamber would have to join all 47 Democrats to convict Trump, and no Republican has called for his ouster.But Trump’s impeachment trial is only the third such event in the nearly 2-1/2 centuries of U.S. history and the proceedings, overseen by Chief Justice John Roberts, will be fraught with uncertainty.The White House is predicting Trump’s acquittal within two weeks, but the trial could last much longer if Democrats succeed in persuading four Republicans to join them in calling for testimony from key Trump aides about the president’s Ukraine-related actions.Calling witnessesThe Democrats, over the objections of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, want to hear testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and others about how Trump asked for investigations of Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company, and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election to undermine Trump’s campaign. Trump’s Ukraine efforts came at the same time he was temporarily withholding $391 million in military aid that Ukraine wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.Trump at various times has said he wants to call the Bidens as witnesses at his trial, along with the still-unidentified whistleblower who first disclosed that Trump in a July phone call asked Zelenskiy to launch the Biden investigations. But on Twitter Monday, he seemed averse to hearing testimony from Bolton, whom he ousted in September.Democrats, Trump said, “didn’t want John Bolton and others in the House” to testify. “They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!” They didn’t want John Bolton and others in the House. They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – In this image from video, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks as the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump begins in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 16, 2020.McConnell, the Senate majority leader, says he has enough Republican votes to push through rules for the impeachment trial that would hold off on a vote on whether to call witnesses until after House managers prosecuting the case against Trump have made their case and Trump’s lawyers have presented his defense. At that point, McConnell says lawmakers could decide whether they want to hear witnesses or subpoena documents from the White House related to Trump’s Ukraine actions.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer says he will press to try to include witnesses as part of the parameters adopted for the trial, but if McConnell’s vote counting is accurate, Schumer stands to lose such a preliminary skirmish.Trump, who almost daily ridicules the impeachment effort, tweeted Monday, “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is now asking for ‘fairness’, when he and the Democrat House members worked together to make sure I got ZERO fairness in the House. So, what else is new?”Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is now asking for “fairness”, when he and the Democrat House members worked together to make sure I got ZERO fairness in the House. So, what else is new?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) FILE – In this image from video, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., speaks during the impeachment trial against President Donald Trump in the Senate at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 16, 2020.Schiff added, “They really can’t contest those facts. So the only thing really new about the president’s defense is that they’re now arguing that because they can’t contest the facts that the president cannot be impeached for abusing the power of his office.”Trump eventually released the Ukraine military aid in September after a 55-day delay without Zelenskiy launching the Biden investigations. Republicans say that is proof that Trump did not engage in a reciprocal quid pro quo deal — the military aid in exchange for the investigations to help him politically.One of Trump’s staunchest Senate defenders, Senator Lindsey Graham, on the “Fox News Sunday” show, called the impeachment effort “a partisan railroad job. It’s the first impeachment in history where there’s no allegation of a crime by the president.”He said if Democrats demand to hear testimony from Bolton, Mulvaney and others, Trump will seek to invoke executive privilege against their testimony to protect the sanctity of private White House conversations.”Clearly to me any president would ask for executive privilege regarding these witnesses,” Graham said, adding that if they were that important to the House case against Trump, Democrats should have pursued their testimony during the House investigation.Two other presidents — Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago — were impeached by the House but acquitted in Senate trials and remained in office. A fourth U.S. president, Richard Nixon in the mid-1970s, faced almost certain impeachment in the Watergate political scandal, but resigned before the House acted.
 
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When President Donald Trump’s historic impeachment trial is called to order in the Senate this week, he won’t be watching from inside the chamber or on television from the White House. He’ll be thousands of miles away at the Davos economic forum in the Swiss Alps, trying to charm global CEOs over dinner.Trump’s participation in the annual World Economic Forum will provide a conspicuous split-screen moment in a presidency familiar with them. His two-day visit to Switzerland will test his ability to balance his anger over being impeached with a desire to project leadership on the world stage.Administration officials say Trump remains focused on serving the public.
“The president’s work doesn’t stop just because of the impeachment sham,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email.Trump, who departs Washington on Monday night, said he’s going to Davos to encourage businesses to invest in the U.S.”We’re now where the action is,” he said at a farmers’ convention Sunday in Texas.Swooping in for what will be his second appearance at the annual Swiss economic forum, Trump was scheduled to arrive at the ski resort early Tuesday and jet back on Wednesday to a Washington that will be consumed by the impeachment trial.The White House did not release much advance information about the president’s schedule but he is expected to give a speech and meet world leaders and business executives.The Democratic-controlled House impeached the Republican president last month for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after it was revealed that he had pressed Ukraine’s president to announce investigations into former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden, a Trump political rival. Trump withheld foreign aid that Congress had approved for the Eastern European nation and dangled the prospect of an Oval Office meeting as leverage.Trump denies any wrongdoing and argues that Democrats want to remove him from office because they know they can’t deny him reelection in November. Trump would be forced to leave office if convicted, but the Republican-controlled Senate is expected to acquit him.Trump said he would attend the Davos forum despite the awkward timing because he wants to encourage businesses to come back to the U.S.”Our country is the hottest country anywhere in the world,” he said at the White House last week. “There’s nothing even close. I’ll be meeting the biggest business leaders in the world, getting them to come here.”The White House has not said which presidents or prime ministers will get one-on-one sessions with Trump, but he is expected to have his first meeting with the new European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the first woman to hold the position.That meeting could be the most significant, said analyst Matt Goodman, given Trump’s many disagreements with Europe over tax and trade policy, like a new digital levy by the French that will force American tech giants such as Amazon and Google to pay up.”She’s new and she’s formidable,” said Goodman, who studies international economic policy as a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.He predicted a difficult year ahead for U.S.-EU relations.”It could either go very well or very badly,” Goodman said.Trump has smarted over the French tax and his administration has announced plans to impose retaliatory tariffs of up to 100% on cheese, wine, lipstick and other French imports. France has threatened to fight back.The U.S. has also threatened to impose retaliatory duties on $7.5 billion worth of European airplanes, cheese, wine and other goods in a separate dispute over subsidies for Airbus, a competitor to Chicago-based Boeing Co.Trump also has sought to wring trade concessions from the EU by threatening tariffs on German autos, including BMW and Mercedes-Benz.Trump heads to Switzerland as just the third American president, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, to face a Senate impeachment trial. Johnson and Clinton were both acquitted by the Senate.There is precedent for international travel by an impeached U.S. leader.During his impeachment over an affair with a White House intern, Clinton visited Japan, South Korea, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He also traveled to Jordan for King Hussein’s funeral in February 1999, just a few days before he was acquitted by the Senate.Two days after acquittal, Clinton went to Mexico on a state visit.Trump is planning to make his first visit to India at the end of February, probably after the conclusion of his impeachment trial. He also has talked about traveling soon to Beijing, although he has given no dates, to open a new round of trade talks with China. 
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