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Tom Brenner

With his Senate trial to begin in earnest next week, President Trump has added some high-profile lawyers to his legal team, including Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and former independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Word of the new firepower came as House impeachment managers and Trump’s attorneys scrambled to produce legal briefs ahead of the Senate’s return Tuesday after the holiday weekend.

The Senate trial opened Thursday amid new allegations about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, including an assertion from Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, that Trump knew of Parnas’s role in the effort to dig up dirt in Ukraine that could benefit the president politically.

The impeachment charges center on the allegation that Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, including former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

●Senate GOP hopes for a drama-free impeachment trial while <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/senate-gop-hopes-for-a-drama-free-impeachment-trial-while-bracing-for-trump-and-his-legal-team/2020/01/16/8b25bcda-389d-11ea-bf30-ad313e4ec754_story.html">bracing for Trump and his legal team</a>.

●The Senate trial will <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-senate-trial-will-shape-both-the-presidents-legacy-but-also-that-of-his-republican-party/2020/01/16/60b5d18c-388f-11ea-9541-9107303481a4_story.html">shape the president’s legacy</a> and also that of his Republican Party.

●Trump hotel’s mix of GOP insiders and hangers-on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/it-was-like-a-breeding-ground-trump-hotels-mix-of-gop-insiders-and-hangers-on-helped-give-rise-to-impeachment-episodes/2020/01/16/2e4cdf3a-3888-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html">helped give rise to impeachment</a> episodes.

● Late Friday, House Democrats released text messages between Lev Parnas and Robert Hyde that indicate a third, unidentified individual was tracking the movements of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/15/impeachment-trial-process/" title="www.washingtonpost.com">The Senate impeachment trial process</a> |<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/15/impeachment-managers-senate-trial/" title="www.washingtonpost.com"> The impeachment managers </a>|<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/senate-impeachment-votes/"> Which senators support removing Trump </a>|<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/resolution-impeaching-president-trump-for-high-crimes-and-misdemeanors/4318bc85-4770-47eb-a569-9a051fa3ebfb/"> House resolution impeaching Trump</a> | <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/key-documents-trump-impeachment/" title="www.washingtonpost.com">Other key documents</a>

The politicians’ dueling played out, as it almost always does these days, largely on Twitter and cable TV.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D) alleged in December that fellow California Rep. Devin Nunes (R) conspired with Lev Parnas to undermine the United States. Parnas has pleaded not guilty to violating campaign finance laws.

Then an attorney for Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, sent a multi-page missive <a href="https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1218301644007333888/photo/1">threatening to sue</a> for damages to his reputation, Lieu tweeted. The Democratic congressman replied with a letter of his own and posted a photo of the document online.

“I welcome any lawsuit from your client and look forward to taking discovery of Congressman Nunes,” he wrote. “Or, you can take your letter and shove it.”

On MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Friday, Lieu doubled down. “It turns out that based on text messages in the record and the amazing interview on (MSNBC’s) ‘Rachel Maddow Show’ that I’m right,” he said. “Truth is a defense.”

House Democrats on Friday released text messages between Parnas and Derek Harvey, an aide to Nunes, showing that Nunes’s office knew about the efforts in Ukraine and wanted to use the information that Parnas sought.

Read more <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/17/ted-lieu-devin-nunes-shove-it/?itid=lk_inline_manual_20">here</a>.

Marisa Iati

The White House late Friday released the complete list of attorneys on President Trump’s legal team for the impeachment, which will be led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s personal lawyers.

They will be joined by a slew of other high-profile attorneys, including Kenneth W. Starr and Robert Ray, both former independent counsels who investigated President Bill Clinton, as well as former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi. Bondi had been helping Trump with messaging throughout the impeachment proceedings.

Jane Raskin, another personal lawyer to the president, and Eric D. Herschmann, a partner at the law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP, will also be on the roster.

Rounding out the team is Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard emeritus law professor who said Friday that he was participating on Trump’s team to “defend the integrity of the Constitution and to prevent the creation of a dangerous constitutional precedent.”

In all, Trump has eight attorneys, one more than the seven House impeachment managers.

“President Trump has done nothing wrong and is confident that this team will defend him, the voters, and our democracy from this baseless, illegitimate impeachment,” the White House said in a statement.

Michael Brice-Saddler

Josh Dawsey

House Democrats released new documents Friday evening showing extensive contact between an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney and an aide to the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee regarding the effort to obtain material from Ukrainian prosecutors that would be damaging to former vice president Joe Biden.

The text messages between Lev Parnas, who functioned as Giuliani’s emissary to Ukrainian officials, and Derek Harvey, an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, indicate Nunes’s office was aware of the operation at the heart of impeachment proceedings against the president — and sought to use the information Parnas was gathering.

The newly released texts show that Parnas was working last spring to set up calls for Harvey with the Ukrainian prosecutors who were feeding Giuliani information about Biden.

“Also do you want to interview the general prosecutor who got [ditched] by Biden ? Also the anti corruption prosecutor ? Let me know,” Parnas wrote on April 19.

“Does tomorrow work?” Harvey responded.

The messages also show that Harvey met with Parnas and Giuliani at the Trump hotel in Washington.

Read more <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/nunes-aide-communicated-with-parnas-about-ukraine-campaign-messages-show/2020/01/17/398ea1f6-3984-11ea-a01d-b7cc8ec1a85d_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_35">here</a>.

Paul Sonne

Rosalind S. Helderman

Greg Miller

Documents<a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/the-impeachment-of-donald-john-trump/"> released</a> by House Democrats Friday evening show text exchanges between Parnas, an associate of Giuliani, and Robert Hyde, a Connecticut Republican who is running for Congress, that indicate a third, unidentified individual was tracking the movements and activities of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

One of the texts refers to “a person inside” the U.S. Embassy able to track and report on Yovanovitch’s whereabouts. “Nothing has changed she is still not moving they check again today,” the message says. It’s not clear when the messages were sent, but they include a screen shot of a mention of a March 22 posting about Yovanovitch on Twitter.

The references to Yovanovitch are contained in screen shots of text exchanges between Hyde and an individual who is unnamed and whose phone number is partially redacted. The prefix for the number appear to correspond to the country dialing code for Belgium.

Another message indicates that Yovanovitch “had visitors,” and asks whether those involved in the monitoring efforts are to “stand down???” Another message suggests Yovanovitch was under watch for several days, saying, she’s “been there since Thursday never left the embassy.”

Ukraine authorities announced this week the opening of an investigation into the possibility that the U.S. ambassador was under surveillance or being stalked by associates of Parnas and Giuliani.

Alan Dershowitz <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/election-2016/alan-dershowitz-distances-himself-from-trump-legal-team-im-not-really-part-of-it/">told</a> Mediaite founder Dan Abrams on Friday that he was not a “full-fledged” member of Trump’s legal team — even though the White House confirmed Friday that he is on the team and will have privileges to argue the Constitution on the Senate floor.

“I think it overstates it to say I’m a member of the Trump team,” Dershowitz said in an interview with Abrams. “I was asked to present the constitutional argument that I would have presented had Hillary Clinton been elected and had she been impeached.”

He added: “I will be there for one hour, basically, presenting my argument. But I’m not a full-fledged member of the defense team in any realistic sense of that term.”

Dershowitz told The Washington Post on Friday that he would be making an argument in the Senate that obstruction of Congress and abuse of power do not reach the constitutional standard for impeachment.

A <a href="https://twitter.com/AlanDersh/status/1218188194757300224">statement Dershowitz posted to Twitter</a> on Friday morning said that he will present oral arguments at the Senate trial to address the constitutional arguments against impeachment and removal.”

“He is participating in this impeachment trial to defend the integrity of the Constitution and to prevent the creation of a dangerous constitutional precedent,” the statement read.

President Trump ignored various questions shouted by reporters as he and the first family boarded Marine One on Friday afternoon. Trump is heading to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., for the long holiday weekend.

Shortly after 2 p.m. Friday, after a brief pro forma session of the Senate, a few dozen administrative staff members assembled on the chamber floor, hauling with them tables and chairs and large-screen TVs mounted onto stands.

To be ready for the trial, they have to <a href="https://twitter.com/pkcapitol/status/1218253152446746624?s=21">reassemble portions of the chamber</a> to fit the House managers and the president’s legal defense team. For a chamber that only recently allowed senators to use smartphones and computer tablets — and still forbids the media and the public from using any electronics in the galleries above — the transformation is quite a change.

Workers hauled in six tables with a special curved design (three on each side) so that they would fit the arc of the chamber floor. They also opened up a hatch in the Senate floor to run new wiring to the tables so that the two legal teams can use computers and for the video monitors.

Paul Kane

The new members of Trump’s legal team have collectively made at least 365 weekday appearances on Fox News since January 2019, according to Media Matters for America, a liberal group that closely monitors the media.

A <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/trump-impeachment-inquiry/trumps-new-impeachment-defense-team-has-been-fox-news-over-350-times-past">report</a> by the group Friday afternoon tallied at least 125 Fox News appearances by Starr during the period, at least 110 appearances by Dershowitz, at least 60 appearances by former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi and at least 70 appearances by former independent counsel Robert Ray.

John Wagner

With the Senate trial underway, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is scheduled to appear Friday night on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

An advisory from Pelosi’s office said she will “discuss the next steps on impeachment, House Democrats’ achievements For The People and other news of the day.”

The program airs live from Los Angeles at 10 p.m. Eastern.

Starr, one of the additions to Trump’s legal team, was once characterized as a “freak” by Trump, according to a New York Times column by Maureen Dowd, which she resurrected on Friday.

“Remember that time in 1999 when Trump told me: ‘Starr’s a freak. I bet he’s got something in his closet,’ ” Dowd said in a tweet that included a link to her two-decade old <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/19/opinion/liberties-trump-l-oeil-tease.html">column</a>.

The column captured Trump offering his take on a range of people, including Starr, the independent counsel whose report detailing President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment by the House.

Footage also resurfaced Friday of Trump leveling similar criticism of Starr during an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.

“I think Ken Starr is a lunatic,” Trump said. “I really think that Kenn Starr is a disaster. … I really think that Ken Starr was terrible.”

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel took fresh aim at the House Speaker and some of her top lieutenants Friday, asserting that a Senate trial would expose how “weak” the case is for removing Trump from office.

“Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler led a completely rigged and unfair impeachment sham in the House,” McDaniel tweeted, referring to the speaker and the chairmen of the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees. “Now that impeachment has reached the Senate, the American people will be reminded how weak the Democrats’ case is and there is nothing Nancy Pelosi can do about it.”

Moments before the start of the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history on Thursday, the Senate voted 89 to 10 to approve Trump’s landmark trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

This rewrite of the 25-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement, which allows Trump to deliver on a signature campaign promise from 2016, is one of the most significant trade votes in a generation. It passed with overwhelming bipartisan support from a coalition of strange bedfellows, including the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Final passage came a day after Trump signed a partial economic deal with China, another political victory for a White House that’s eager to defuse trade tensions in an election year.

The subsequent reading of the two articles of impeachment and the swearing-in of the senators as jurors soon overshadowed these hard-fought triumphs for Trump. But the trade vote nevertheless gives cover for lawmakers in both parties to reassure constituents back home that they’re getting results, even amid contentious deliberations over whether the president abused the power of his office to coerce a foreign government to announce an investigation of Biden to boost Trump’s reelection prospects.

Read more <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2020/01/17/daily-202-congress-shows-the-ability-to-legislate-through-impeachment/5e21470888e0fa6ea99cfc88/?utm_campaign=the_daily_202&amp;utm_medium=Email&amp;utm_source=Newsletter&amp;wpisrc=nl_daily202&amp;wpmm=1&itid=lk_inline_manual_75">here</a>.

James Hohmann

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said Friday that he considered the addition to Trump’s legal team of Starr — the former independent counsel whose report led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment — a “weird choice.”

“I’m looking at it as a former prosecutor, lawyer,” Leahy said during an appearance on MSNBC. “He pushed the weakest impeachment case certainly in my lifetime, and now he’s up here to defend the strongest impeachment case in my lifetime. That’s their choice. But it’s a weird choice.”

Trump referenced his impeachment Friday as he welcomed the Louisiana State University Tigers to the White House to celebrate their national football championship.

Toward the end of the event in the East Room, Trump said he was inviting players to come with him to the Oval Office to take pictures.

[Trump drags LSU football team into impeachment fervor during White House visit]

“We’ll take pictures behind the Resolute Desk,” Trump said. “It’s been there a long time. A lot of presidents. Some good, some not so good. But you’ve got a good one now, even though they’re trying to impeach the son of a bitch. Can you believe that? Can you believe that?”

Trump’s comments came shortly after he was presented with an LSU jersey bearing his last name and the number 45.

Earlier in his remarks, Trump called the team “one of the greatest in college football history.”

Trump on Friday accused Democrats of “rigging” their presidential nominating contests against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), given that he largely will be stuck in Washington in coming weeks serving as a juror for Trump’s Senate trial.

“They are rigging the election again against Bernie Sanders, just like last time, only even more obviously,” Trump said in a tweet. “They are bringing him out of so important Iowa in order that, as a Senator, he sit through the Impeachment Hoax Trial.”

Trump asserted that by having delayed the transmission of the articles of impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whom he referred to as “Crazy Nancy,” had given “the strong edge to Sleepy Joe Biden.”

“Very unfair, but that’s the way the Democrats play the game. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to watch!” Trump said.

In his tweets, Trump made no mention of the other three Democratic senators running for president, who will also be grounded: Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Michael F. Bennet (Colo.).

The senators are planning to dispatch surrogates to Iowa and other early voting states to seek to make their cases while they are in Washington.

Trump has previously said the 2016 Democratic nominating contest was “rigged” against Sanders because Hillary Clinton had the active support of the Democratic establishment.

Trump has expanded his legal team to include Harvard emeritus law professor Alan Dershowitz, former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi and former independent counsels Kenneth W. Starr and Robert Ray.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Dershowitz said he would present arguments at the Senate trial that obstruction of Congress and abuse of power do not reach the constitutional standard to impeach a president for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Starr and Ray, who investigated President Bill Clinton, are also joining the team, as well as Bondi, who had been helping Trump with messaging during the impeachment proceedings.

Trump wanted Dershowitz and Bondi on the team because he thinks they are talented on TV and convincing, a White House official familiar with the selections said. Starr, he thinks, gives him credence because of his role in the Clinton impeachment.

Trump’s team is being led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and also includes Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin, personal lawyers to the president,

Sekulow confirmed the new members in a statement.

“Very pleased that Pam Bondi, Alan Dershowitz, Ken Starr and Robert Ray will be part of our team,” he said.

In the interview with The Post, Dershowitz said that “obstruction of Congress and abuse of power” — the two charges the House has brought against Trump — do not amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Dershowitz said he was participating on Trump’s legal team “to defend the integrity of the Constitution and to prevent the creation of a dangerous constitutional precedent.”

Dershowitz said the president asked him to make the case and that he had coordinated with Trump’s legal team.

“The president asked me to present my independent constitutional arguments in my books and my articles to the Senate. My argument is going to be directed at the constitutional criteria and why they haven’t been met in this case.”

Carol Leonnig

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) pushed back Friday on the notion that Republicans could call Biden and his son Hunter Biden as witnesses in Senate trial, arguing that “this case is not about the former vice president or his son.”

During an appearance on Fox News, Dingell advocated for several witnesses Democrats would like to see subpoenaed for the trial, including former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

She was then asked if Republicans should get witnesses in return, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the Bidens and the whistleblower whose anonymous complaint sparked the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/biden-impeachment-inquiry-meaning/?itid=lk_inline_manual_109" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">impeachment inquiry</a>.

Trump pressed Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden’s service on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while his father was vice president.

“We are not investigating Joe Biden and Hunter Biden,” Dingell said. “The charges are against the president and taking funds and using them for his own political purpose. So I’m not going down that rabbit hole. This case is not about the former vice president or his son.”

Dingell also noted that Schiff will be appearing at the trial as a House impeachment manager, not as a witness.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Friday that he was unaware of the possible surveillance of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, that allegedly occurred before Trump dismissed her from the post.

“I never heard about this at all,” Pompeo told syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt. “Until this story broke, I had, best of my recollection, never heard of this at all.” (Hewitt is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post.)

In another radio interview Friday, Pompeo vowed to look into the allegation.

“We will do everything we need to do to evaluate whether there was something that took place there,” Pompeo told syndicated host Tony Katz. “I suspect that much of what’s been reported will ultimately prove wrong, but our obligation, my obligation as secretary of state, is to make sure that we evaluate, investigate.”

Ukrainian authorities announced a probe Thursday into the matter.

[Ukraine to probe possible surveillance of U.S. envoy as FBI approaches man who claimed to have tracked her]

A statement by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry and subsequent FBI action followed the disclosure of new documents related to the impeachment case against Trump. The material included exchanges between Parnas, then an associate of Giuliani, and others about the need to oust Yovanovitch.

The documents — provided to the House Intelligence Committee by Parnas — include messages with Robert F. Hyde, a Connecticut Republican who is running for a seat in Congress. In those exchanges, Parnas was informed about Yovanovitch’s physical location.

During Pompeo’s interview with Hewitt, Hewitt asked Pompeo if he knows Parnas.

Pompeo described Trump’s impeachment as “noise here in Washington” and said he and others at the State Department are trying to keep it “compartmented and kept out of the way of important things that really keep America safe.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday widely shared a New York Times editorial supporting her decision to delay by nearly a month the transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

“Now that the Senate has the articles, it’s clear what was to gain,” said the editorial, which Pelosi’s office blasted to reporters over email. “Ms. Pelosi may not have won any concessions from Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, but the delay did provide time for additional evidence of Mr. Trump’s Ukraine scheme to come to light.”

The editorial recapped some of that evidence, including allegations from Parnas that Trump personally directed the scheme to gather Ukrainian dirt on Biden.

Separately on Friday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) took fresh aim at Pelosi for the delay in sending the articles to the Senate.

“When Americans look back on this sad saga, they’ll see a rigged process that forever damaged the remedy of impeachment,” he tweeted. “Speaker Pelosi got nothing from the Senate, but Americans got worse than nothing — they got stuck with the bill for a costly, never-ending investigation.”

Trump went on Twitter on Friday morning to share quotes from friendly commentators about the impeachment proceedings.

“There is no crime here. Entertaining this Impeachment is a joke. This whole thing should be dismissed,” Trump quoted Fox News’s Laura Ingraham as saying in one tweet.

In another, Trump quoted Ingraham asserting that his partial trade deal signed with China this week would have more lasting impact than his impeachment led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“Years from now, when we look back at this day, nobody’s going to remember Nancy’s cheap theatrics, they will remember though how President Trump brought the Chinese to the bargaining table and delivered achievements few ever thought were possible,” Trump quoted Ingraham as saying.

Trump also quoted Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz pushing back against a Government Accountability Office report Thursday that concluded the White House violated the law by withholding congressionally approved aid to Ukraine.

“The GAO got it exactly backwards,” Trump quoted Dershowitz as saying. “Here’s what they said. The law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities to those Congress has enacted into law. It’s exactly the opposite. The Constitution does not allow Congress to substitute its own priorities for the foreign policies of the President.”

During morning television appearances, Democratic and Republican senators continued to press their cases for and against hearing testimony from new witnesses.

Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) expressed optimism that enough Republicans will vote with Democrats that subpoenas will be issued to several officials who declined to participate in the House proceedings, including former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

“The only way we won’t [have witnesses] is if Mitch McConnell shuts it off and decides witnesses will be too damaging to the president’s cause,” Bennet said on CNN, referring to the Kentucky Republican who serves as Senate majority leader. Bennet is a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) continued to argue that the Senate has no duty to hear from witnesses whose testimony isn’t part of the House record.

She said the trial doesn’t need any witnesses at all.

“Quite frankly, I think after a couple of weeks we will be ready to proceed to a vote,” Blackburn said on Fox Business Network.

McConnell has said he has the votes to adopt rules under which the Senate won’t decide about calling witnesses until after hearing opening statements from House impeachment managers and Trump’s lawyers and having the opportunity to ask questions.

There are 47 members of the Democratic caucus. That means that to get a majority vote to call witnesses, they will need four Republicans to side with them.

Trump plans to welcome the Louisiana State University Tigers to the White House on Friday morning to celebrate the team’s national college football championship, the latest in events designed to show he is continuing to focus on the day-to-day duties of the presidency despite the focus on impeachment on Capitol Hill.

Capping an undefeated season, LSU topped Clemson, 42-25, in the championship game Monday in New Orleans, which Trump attended.

Later Friday, Trump is scheduled to head to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., for the long holiday weekend. While there, he plans to host a fundraiser Friday night for a group that provides money for his campaign, the Republican National Committee and state Republican parties.

Next week, while his trial gets underway in earnest in the Senate, Trump is scheduled to head to the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland.

“I’m going to be going to Davos,” Trump told reporters Wednesday following a White House ceremony honoring Religious Freedom Day. “I’ll be meeting the biggest business leaders.”

While the Senate is in recess until Tuesday, the House impeachment managers and Trump’s lawyers are expected to be working around the clock over the long holiday weekend to prepare legal briefs central to the trial.

A trial brief from House managers is due Saturday at 5 p.m. Trump’s team is due to present a brief by noon on Monday. If House managers want to file a rebuttal brief, that is due by noon on Tuesday.

The impeachment trial is scheduled to resume Tuesday afternoon with debate over a resolution that will dictate the rules of the proceedings. Among the issues to be decided: how long each side will be given to present its case and how long senators will be given to present questions.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is expected to try to force a vote on calling witnesses, but Republicans appear united in delaying decisions on that front until after the early stages of the trial unfold.

Opening statements from both sides are expected later in the week.

A federal judge in Washington has announced he would delay ruling on the Trump administration’s request to toss out a lawsuit that would force the government to turn over the president’s tax returns.

According to a newly released court transcript, House Democrats objected, saying the judge’s hesitation makes it more likely Trump will be able to run out the clock and dodge a congressional subpoena for the records until well after the November election.

In a terse order Tuesday following a telephone conference with the parties in the case, U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden said he would not rule in the matter until an appeals court decides whether to uphold another judge’s order that former Trump White House counsel Donald McGahn must comply with a House subpoena to testify in Congress’s impeachment probe.

McFadden said the White House raised similar claims in both cases that it enjoys absolute immunity from lawsuits by Congress to enforce oversight demands, according to a transcript of the call released Thursday.

Read more <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/us-judges-delay-may-help-trump-dodge-subpoena-for-his-federal-tax-returns-house-democrats-say/2020/01/16/821c3bc2-38b2-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_164">here</a>.

Spencer S. Hsu

Sen. Doug Jones on how he is preparing for President Trump's senate impeachment trial

It was in early fall, before the House formally announced an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/12/biden-impeachment-inquiry-meaning/?itid=lk_inline_manual_167" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">impeachment inquiry</a>, when Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) told his staff: “Gear up.”

At the time, Jones wasn’t sure whether the Senate would even take action on impeachment. But, the former prosecutor said, the evidence was compelling enough for him to want to become an expert on impeachment, legally and historically. He asked his staff to start meeting on the topic, and collect all the research they could for him to read.

The intensive prep work might also have something to do with the fact that a lot of eyes will be on him throughout the Senate’s proceedings. Jones is in an unenviable position, politically speaking.

First, he is a Democrat from a solid red state that has shown considerable support for Trump — more than 62 percent of Alabama voters backed him in the 2016 presidential election. On top of that, the 2020 race for Jones’s Senate seat has been deemed the only true toss-up among all races for Senate seats held by Democrats in this cycle. Former attorney general Jeff Sessions, who used to hold Jones’s seat, is among the Republicans vying for the nomination to face him.

Trump expands legal team to include Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr as Democrats release new documents

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President Trump’s Senate impeachment trial