A Challenge for the Trial: 100 Senators Who Love to Talk, Sitting in Silence

“My staff would probably say it’d be a record for me,” Mr. Roberts added. (Mr. Wyden, for his part, said he remembered some breaks for conversations and the ability to convey messages to the chief justice overseeing the proceedings.)

“You couldn’t talk to each other; you knew that you didn’t drink a cup of coffee before you went in,” Mr. Roberts said. “It was tough. It was extremely interesting and pertinent, but it was tough.”

Asked about the limitations, Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, joked that “all of us are taking bets on Lindsey Graham,” the garrulous South Carolina Republican who spent the Clinton trial as an impeachment manager, making the case that the president should be removed from office for lying about an affair with a White House intern.

“That’s the only one I really know of that I’m really worried about for six hours,” Mr. Lankford said of Mr. Graham.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, made the challenge still steeper on Monday when he released proposed rules for the trial that would effectively require each side to squeeze their opening arguments into two 12-hour days — a true marathon of silence for the senators who will hear the case.

Other veterans from Mr. Clinton’s impeachment trial recalled occasionally chafing under the verbal restrictions, even when they were able to take breaks to go to the bathroom or relax in the cloakroom, a private lounge just off the Senate floor.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, remembered subtly passing notes to a neighboring senator, Tim Hutchinson, then a freshman Republican from Arkansas, with occasional thoughts until, she said, she got too nervous about getting caught.

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