Alexander Says Democrats Proved Their Case, But It’s Not Impeachable

Credit…Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said late Thursday that although he believed that Democrats have proved their case that President Trump had acted “inappropriately” in his dealings with Ukraine, he did not think the president’s actions were impeachable and he would vote against considering new evidence in the impeachment trial.

“The question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the United States Senate or the American people should decide what to do about what he did,” he said in a statement. “I believe that the Constitution provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begins in Iowa on Monday.”

Mr. Alexander’s statement is a strong indication that Republicans have lined up the votes to block a call for more witnesses and documents.

“I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense,” Mr. Alexander said.

His opposition is a significant victory for Republican leaders. Though not all senators have announced their intentions, the vast majority of Republicans are expected to vote on Friday against allowing new evidence, and Mr. Alexander was a critical swing vote.

His announcement indicated that Republicans had fallen in line to push the trial into its final phase — reaching a verdict that is all but certain to be Mr. Trump’s acquittal — without delay.

“It was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold United States aid to encourage that investigation,” Mr. Alexander said.

Democrats would need four Republicans to join them in voting for a motion to consider additional witnesses and documentary requests. But so far, only two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, have indicated they will do so.

A fourth possible Republican swing vote, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has yet to announce her decision. Both parties deemed it nearly impossible that any other Republican senator would defect.

Mr. Alexander met privately with Ms. Murkowski earlier Thursday evening when the trial broke for dinner.

Mr. Alexander, a former education secretary and presidential candidate, is set to retire at the end of the year.

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said late Thursday that she would vote in favor of considering additional witnesses and documents in the impeachment trial of President Trump.

“I believe hearing from certain witnesses would give each side the opportunity to more fully and fairly make their case, resolve any ambiguities, and provide additional clarity,” she said in a statement released shortly after the trial adjourned for the day. “Therefore, I will vote in support of the motion to allow witnesses and documents to be subpoenaed.”

Democrats would need four Republicans to side with them on Friday to demand new witnesses and documents. Ms. Collins had strongly signaled that she would vote in favor of admitting new evidence. Her statement makes her the second Republican to confirm she will do so, after Senator Mitt Romney of Utah.

Ms. Collins said that if a majority of senators indeed vote on Friday to allow witnesses, she would propose that the House managers and president’s defense lawyers try to agree to “a limited and equal number of witnesses for each side.” If they fail, she said senators should choose the number of witnesses.

Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

If a vote on hearing witnesses ends in a tie, it could fall to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to decide what happens next.

When a vote on any motion ends in a tie, the motion fails. So one outcome in that scenario is that Chief Justice Roberts does nothing, and that’s the end of the matter.

However, a precedent from the first presidential impeachment trial — the unsuccessful effort to remove Andrew Johnson in 1868 — would also seem to give Chief Justice Roberts the option of breaking the tie.

The Senate’s general rules for impeachment trials are silent about what happens in a tie and whether the chief justice may cast tiebreaking votes on procedural motions, and the current version of them — last revised in 1986 — still does not address that question. A resolution that the Senate approved this month laying out specific procedures for the Trump trial is also silent on ties.

But Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, who presided over the Johnson trial, twice cast tiebreaking votes on procedural motions, which therefore both passed. (On a third tie, Mr. Chase abstained, so that motion failed.)

To be sure, both of the procedural motions that Chief Justice Chase voted on were far less momentous than calling Mr. Bolton as a witness would be: They involved whether the Senate should take a short break and adjourn for the day.

Some senators in 1868 believed that Chief Justice Chase lacked that power under the Constitution and moved to declare his intervention null. But the Senate voted down the objection, creating a precedent that chief justices do have tiebreaking power in impeachment trials, just as vice presidents have tiebreaking power in votes on legislation and nominations.

In the only other presidential impeachment trial — against Bill Clinton in 1999 — Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist cast no tiebreaking votes; the issue never came up.

John Warner, a Republican elder statesman who served for 30 years in the Senate, called on his fellow Republicans on Thursday night to bring “relevant witnesses and documents” into President Trump’s impeachment trial.

“As a lifelong Republican and retired member of the U.S. Senate, who once served as a juror in a presidential impeachment trial, I am mindful of the difficult responsibilities those currently serving now shoulder,” Mr. Warner, 92, wrote in a statement.

“I respectfully urge the Senate to be guided by the rules of evidence and follow our nation’s norms, precedents and institutions to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law by welcoming relevant witnesses and documents as part of this impeachment trial,” he added.

Mr. Warner, a five-term senator from Virginia and one of Congress’s most influential voices on the war in Iraq, declined to seek re-election in 2008, and was succeeded by Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat who is of no relation.

A centrist who often worked across party lines, the elder Mr. Warner led the Senate Armed Services Committee, served as secretary of the Navy and was long known as one of the Senate’s “old bulls” — the guardians of its institutions.

His statement, distributed by Mark Warner’s Senate office, harked back to another era in the Capitol.

“Not long ago, senators of both major parties always worked to accommodate fellow colleagues with differing points of view to arrive at outcomes that would best serve the nation’s interests,” he wrote. “If witnesses are suppressed in this trial and a majority of Americans are left believing the trial was a sham, I can only imagine the lasting damage done to the Senate, and to our fragile national consensus.”

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

It started when Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, said, “With the greatest respect, if the Senate can just decide there’s no executive privilege, guess what? You’re destroying executive privilege.”

Then Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead Democratic House manager, snapped back: “It may be different in the court than it is in this chamber and in the House, but when anybody begins a sentence with the phrase, ‘I have the greatest respect for,’ you have to look out for what follows.”

Enter Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who asked the next question: “I sent a question to the desk on behalf of myself and Senators Capito and Scott of South Carolina — with all due respect.”

There was laughter in the chamber.

In his next response, Mr. Cipollone struck back. “I won’t respond to the ad hominem attacks that keep coming,” he said. “I will just say, for the record: You’re right, I haven’t been elected to anything, but when I say ‘the greatest respect,’ I mean it.”

For those keeping track, Senators John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan, asked the third bipartisan question of the trial.

The two men wanted to know how the trial verdict would alter the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches.

In 1999, there was only one bipartisan question asked over the two days of questioning.

Credit…Calla Kessler/The New York Times

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, who is weighing whether to join Democrats in voting to hear witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial, may have tipped her hand Thursday evening with a pointed question for Mr. Trump’s defense team: “Why should this body not call Ambassador Bolton?”

Ms. Murkowski was referring to John R. Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser, whose coming book contradicts Mr. Trump on the question at the heart of the impeachment trial: whether the president withheld military aid from Ukraine until that country’s leaders investigated his political rivals.

Mr. Bolton’s draft manuscript says the aid was conditioned on the investigations. Mr. Trump has said it was not. Given that discrepancy, Ms. Murkowski pushed the president’s team to explain why Mr. Bolton should not be called.

A deputy White House counsel, Patrick Philbin, did not directly address whether Mr. Bolton could settle the matter.

Instead, he replied on procedural grounds, saying that pursuing Mr. Bolton was the job of the House, which did not subpoena him. If the Senate does so, he argued, it would “do great damage” to the Senate by effectively turning it into the investigative body that the framers expected the House to be.

“Whatever is accepted in this case becomes the new normal for every impeachment proceeding in the future,” he said.

Ms. Murkowski is one of four Republicans — the others are Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — who have indicated that they are open to expanding the scope of the trial to include witnesses and new documents. Democrats need the votes of four Republicans to do so.

Four Democratic presidential candidates hoping for breakout performances in the Iowa caucuses next week spent Thursday in Washington listening to questioning in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.

But the president himself headed to Des Moines for a rally to fire up his supporters before the caucuses on Monday. It was his second rally in three nights this week; he spoke Tuesday in Wildwood, N.J.

Mr. Trump told a raucous crowd of supporters Thursday night that they had a “front row seat to the lunacy and the madness of a totally sick left.”

Mr. Trump tried to belittle his Democratic opponents with the nicknames he has become famous for, referring to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. as “Sleepy Joe,” and Senator Bernie Sanders as “Crazy Bernie.” He poked fun, multiple times, at the pronunciation of the surname of the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., Pete Buttigieg.

But Mr. Trump’s focus on the Democratic field in front of him appeared to be divided by his political enemies of the past and his foils in Congress.

“While we are proudly creating jobs and killing terrorists, congressional Democrats are consumed with partisan rage and obsessed with a witch-hunt hoax,” he said. “We are having probably the best years we have ever had in the history of our country. And I just got impeached. Can you believe these people? They impeach Trump.”

Jay Sekulow, one of the president’s lawyers, has made a simple case to the senators: The president is under attack, and they must defend him.

As he describes it, the impeachment inquiry is just the latest iteration of relentless efforts by the president’s enemies to undercut and unseat him. Like the F.B.I.’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, Mr. Sekulow argues, the impeachment investigation has been misguided and deeply unfair.

On Thursday, Mr. Sekulow again raised his favorite example: how the F.B.I. misled a federal court so it could secretly eavesdrop on a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last month severely criticized mistakes and omissions in the F.B.I.’s applications to surveil Mr. Page.

Mr. Sekulow argued that the Page case showed that the president was right to question the assessment of the nation’s intelligence officials about foreign interference in the 2016 election — and to listen instead to people he trusted, like his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

That argument is sure to appeal to Mr. Trump, who takes every opportunity to rail against federal and congressional investigations that have dogged him since he took office. Whether senators see as on point is another question.

Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said his wife, Franki, fielded a number of calls on Wednesday from people who wanted to “express their anger at the president.”

Mr. Roberts lamented the starkly partisan nature of the trial, saying he did not remember it being so bad during the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. “The mood at the time was not as harsh, as full as animus with regards to the president,” Mr. Roberts said.

Still, he shared a moment of levity as he headed into lunch before the session on Thursday: Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, walked by and stopped to shake hands and banter before a gaggle of reporters. “It’s not true that you have to be bald to be named Patrick,” joked Mr. Leahy, who is bald. “The man speaketh the truth,” said Mr. Roberts, who is also bald.

“We’re part of the octogenarian club,” added Mr. Roberts, who is 83. “Almost for me!” said Mr. Leahy, who is 79.

After Mr. Leahy stepped away, Mr. Roberts reflected further on the divided state of the Congress, and the country. “I hope we can get out of here and get back to work,” he said. “That’s the best thing we can do.”

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and a potential swing vote over whether to call witnesses, asked his first question of the impeachment trial on Thursday with Senators Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Steve Daines, Republican of Montana.

Mr. Alexander asked the House impeachment managers to outline the differences in bipartisanship between the Nixon impeachment and the Trump impeachment.

Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and a veteran of all three presidential impeachments, stood to answer the question. But she did not specify the vote margins in the current impeachment inquiry.

After Mr. Alexander conferred with Republican staff, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, asked the president’s defense lawyers to respond to the question. That also signaled Mr. McConnell’s first question.

When one of the lawyers initially referred to Mr. Alexander as “Senator Lamar,” he chuckled, replying, “That’s O.K.”

After five hours of questioning, senators broke for a 45-minute dinner break at 6:39 p.m. Eastern. Over the last two days, nearly 150 questions have been asked.

Senator Elizabeth Warren called John G. Roberts Jr.’s legitimacy as chief justice into question while inquiring about the possibility of witness testimony during President Trump’s impeachment trial.
Credit…Image by Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a particularly pointed question for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to read aloud in the Senate chamber.

“Does the fact that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial in which Republican senators have thus far refused to allow witnesses or evidence contribute to the loss of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Court and the Constitution?” she asked of the House managers.

Stunned gasps and oohs filled the chamber — from senators and spectators alike — as Mr. Roberts finished reading the question, with little emotion on his face.

Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the lead House impeachment manager, said in response that Chief Justice Roberts had “presided admirably” over the proceedings.

As Republicans grow increasingly confident that they have the votes to block calling new witnesses and evidence, Democrats have turned to Chief Justice Roberts as a potential savior for their cause: If there is a tie, it could fall to the chief justice to decide whether to break it.

Progressive activists have also begun to criticize the chief justice, with one group, Demand Justice, photoshopping a “Make America Great Again” hat on him in a video it circulated on Twitter.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman worked hand in hand in Ukraine last year to help Rudolph W. Giuliani dig up damaging information about President Trump’s political rivals, an effort at the center of the impeachment trial.

But in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, their recent split was on display as a dispute erupted between lawyers for the two men, both Soviet-born businessmen, over the extent of Mr. Parnas’s cooperation with impeachment investigators.

The dispute stemmed from Mr. Parnas’s decision to share a trove of his text messages and other records with the House Intelligence Committee, even though he and Mr. Fruman both face criminal campaign finance charges in Manhattan. The committee publicly released some of the records in recent weeks, shedding new light on the pressure campaign and generating momentum among Democrats to call Mr. Parnas as a witness in the impeachment trial.

Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Mr. Fruman, raised concerns afterward that Mr. Parnas produced records to the House that might be protected under attorney-client privilege. As such, Mr. Blanche petitioned the judge presiding over the criminal case to order Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, to seek to “claw back” some of the records from Congress.

Mr. Bondy declined, and defending his decision to release the records, he explained that, “What we tried to do was get all this evidence quickly to the House,” before the trial ended.

Judge J. Paul Oetken, while acknowledging that Mr. Blanche raised “legitimate concerns,” effectively sided with Mr. Bondy, who argued that Mr. Blanche did not object promptly and that such a retrieval was now unrealistic. Instead of recovering the documents, Mr. Bondy agreed to ask House investigators to not publicly release any records involving communications with certain lawyers.

The back-and-forth between the lawyers, which at one point grew heated as they accused each other of acting improperly, reflected a larger split between Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman after their arrest in October. While Mr. Parnas broke with Mr. Giuliani and vowed to cooperate with Congress, and even with prosecutors if they are interested, Mr. Fruman has kept quiet and remains aligned with Mr. Giuliani.

Mr. Bondy indicated at the hearing that he might continue to release some of Mr. Parnas’s nonprivileged records, whether the House does or not.

Shortly before the hearing, Mr. Bondy released a new recording of Mr. Trump meeting in April 2018 with a small group of donors, including Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman. It was the latest step in Mr. Parnas’s recent publicity tour as he seeks to be called as a witness in the impeachment trial, even as the criminal indictment looms in federal court in Manhattan.

“We approached this case a little differently,” Mr. Bondy noted during the hearing.

When she testified before a House committee last year, Fiona Hill, a former top national security official, warned lawmakers not to twist her words to try to legitimize an unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine, like Russia, undertook a concerted campaign to interfere in the election.

But on Thursday, the president’s legal team seemed to ignore that warning.

President Trump’s lawyers are trying mightily to convince the senators that he had some reason to suspect Ukraine of meddling in the 2016 election. That helps them portray the president’s demand that Ukraine investigate the issue as rooted in a legitimate concern, not merely a desire for his own political gain.

Patrick Philbin, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, noted that Ms. Hill had testified that some Ukrainian officials had “bet on the wrong horse” in 2016 and sought to curry favor with Hillary Clinton in the hope that she would beat Mr. Trump.

But he omitted the rest of what she said: Officials in other countries did the same thing, without inciting Mr. Trump’s displeasure. “The difference here, however, is that hasn’t had any major impact on his feelings toward those countries,” Ms. Hill testified at the time.

He also failed to mention that the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, said bluntly last month: “We have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 election.”

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Hours after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. rejected an attempt to name the individual believed to be the whistle-blower whose complaint spurred the impeachment inquiry, a group of Republican senators made a second attempt to ask about the origins of the accusations against President Trump.

As the second afternoon of questioning during the impeachment trial wore on, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and a group of more than a dozen other Republicans asked about news reports about a former National Security Council aide who now works for the Democratic staff of the House Intelligence Committee, and his relationship with someone alleged to be the whistle-blower, as well as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Ukraine expert on the National Security Council who testified in the impeachment inquiry.

Mr. Trump’s defenders have asserted that all three were part of a conspiracy to remove Mr. Trump from office.

Earlier, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, had tried without success to ask about the trio, but Chief Justice Roberts refused to read his question aloud because it contained the name of the person believed to be the whistle-blower. Mr. Paul quickly left the Senate chamber and revealed the name at a televised news conference and on Twitter.

Hours later, the group led by Mr. Johnson had more success by leaving out that name, and simply referring to the person as “an individual alleged as the whistle-blower.”

But Democrats still took umbrage at the mention of the whistle-blower, and the suggestion that one of their aides conspired with the individual to try to bring down the president.

“I will not dignify those smears on my staff by giving them any credence whatsoever,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said in an angry response.

He added that he would not jeopardize the whistle-blower’s privacy, telling senators, “I worry that future people that see wrongdoing are going to watch how this person has been treated, the threats against this person’s life and they’re going to say, ‘Why stick my neck out?’ ”

Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Patrick Philbin, a deputy White House counsel, has quickly emerged as one of President Trump’s leading defenders on the Senate floor, jumping up to answer some of the most pointed questions from senators. His last name quickly drew jokes about whether Mr. Trump, with his love of television, confused the lawyer with the television host who shares the same surname — but his background is in fact far more significant.

After clerking for Justice Clarence Thomas, Mr. Philbin worked at the Justice Department, where he advised President George W. Bush that he could establish military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay to prosecute detainees there, a practice that was criticized for its lack of due process rights.

Mr. Philbin also found himself enmeshed in a standoff in 2004 at a hospital bedside over the renewal of the warrantless wiretapping program known as Stellarwind.

James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007 that Mr. Philbin was among the Justice Department colleagues with him when he rushed to the hospital bed of John Ashcroft, the attorney general at the time, in an attempt to prevent him from signing an extension for the warrantless domestic eavesdropping program.

In a bid to prevent Mr. Ashcroft, who was gravely ill, from being persuaded to renew the program, Mr. Comey enlisted another familiar name who ended up in the same hospital room as Mr. Philbin: Robert S. Mueller III, then the F.B.I. director.

Viewers watching the question-and-answer period of the trial on television will notice a long pause that follows each time a senator tells Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that they have a question they’d like answered. The reason is simple: It’s being hand-delivered by a (probably) harried teenager.

Unable under the Senate rules to ask their questions themselves, senators slip their written query to a page, one of the navy-suit-wearing high schoolers in the chamber, who then briskly walks the notecard to the front of the room, where Chief Justice Roberts reads it aloud.

That is easier said than done for pages who receive a question from senators on the outskirts of the floor. The long tables the impeachment managers and White House defense team sit at have significantly blocked the access from senators’ desk to the dais where Justice Roberts is, forcing many pages to walk around the entire room to pass along the notecard.

The set-up has left some of the Senate pages (who began their program in the last week) frantically fast-walking the questions up to the dais — to the apparent amusement of some senators who can be spotted grinning at their efforts.

If actions taken by a president — or any politician — are to some degree inherently political, then where should senators draw the line between permissible political actions and impeachable political actions?

That was the bipartisan question from Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, and Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, who addressed a recurring theme on many senators’ minds.

Patrick Philbin, a deputy White House counsel, said trying to discern a politician’s motive “is very dangerous.”

“There is always some eye to the next election, and it ends up becoming a standard so malleable that in reality really is a substitute for a policy difference: If we don’t like a policy difference, we attribute it to a bad motive,” he said.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead Democratic House manager, countered that impeachment is the appropriate “political punishment for a political crime” involving corrupt activity.

“If we go down that road” of ignoring a corrupt motive, Mr. Schiff said, “there is no limit to what this or any other president can do.”

In an effort to rebuff arguments that calling witnesses would prolong the trial, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the lead House impeachment manager, suggested limiting the depositions of witnesses to one week.

It was the same length of time used during the Clinton impeachment trial in 1999, he said, and the Senate, as it did then, could return to its regular legislative business for that week.

“Is that too much to ask in the name of fairness — that we follow the Clinton model, that we take one week?” he asked. “Are we really driven by the timing of the State of the Union, should that be a guiding principle? Can’t we take one week to hear from these witnesses?”

“I think we can,” Mr. Schiff concluded. “I think we should. I think we must,”

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Senator Susan Collins of Maine asked a key question on Thursday: Was there a proper way to ask the Ukrainians to investigate?

The question underscored an important point that the Ukrainians themselves raised over the summer to American officials. If the United States wanted Ukraine to begin a criminal investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., or into Burisma, the gas company that hired Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was there a proper way to do it?

Representative Adam B. Schiff, the lead House manager, noted that under the mutual legal assistance treaty between the two countries, the Justice Department can request Ukraine’s help with investigations. But in this case, he said, the department said it was completely in the dark about President Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate his suspicions that Mr. Biden tried to protect his son by pressuring Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. Multiple officials testified in the House inquiry that those suspicions were completely unfounded, and Mr. Schiff said he could not conceive circumstances under which such a request would have been justified, even if it had come from the Justice Department.

The lack of an official request troubled the Ukrainians, as well as some key American officials. Last August, Andriy Yermak, a top aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, asked whether the Justice Department was requesting a Burisma investigation. Kurt D. Volker, the American envoy to Ukraine, testified that the Ukrainians were right to expect a formal governmental request. Given the lack of one, he said that he advised the Ukrainians not to announce an inquiry into the company.

Patrick Philbin, one of the president’s lawyers, tried to suggest to the senators that the president himself never pressured Mr. Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. But in his July 25 phone call with Mr. Zelensky, Mr. Trump specifically asked Mr. Zelensky to “look into” Mr. Biden and whether he “stopped the prosecution” of Burisma.

Four senators asked the first bipartisan question of President Trump’s impeachment trial, quizzing the White House legal team about whether Mr. Trump would pledge that private citizens will not be directed to conduct foreign policy without being formally designated by the president and the State Department.

One of the president’s lawyers, Patrick A. Philbin, dodged the question on Thursday from two Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Mr. Philbin said he was not in a position to make pledges on behalf of the president. But he challenged the apparent reference to Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, who multiple witnesses said was at the center of a rogue foreign policy operation.

“There was no conduct of foreign policy being carried on here by a private person,” Mr. Philbin said. “Ambassador Volker was clear that he understood Mr. Giuliani just to be a source of information for the president and someone who knew about Ukraine and someone who spoke to the president.”

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead House manager, later argued that Mr. Philbin’s answer “undermined their entire argument” in defense of the president by admitting that Mr. Giuliani was not conducting official policy when he was acting on Mr. Trump’s behalf in Ukraine.

One of President Trump’s lawyers argued Thursday that the president’s requests for investigations in Ukraine were not “necessarily” for investigations of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. or his son, Hunter Biden.

“President Trump didn’t ask President Zelensky specifically for an investigation or investigation into Vice President Biden or his son, Hunter,” said Patrick Philbin, a member of the president’s legal team. “I mean, there’s a lot of loose talk and sort of shorthand reference to it that way. But when he refers to is the incident in which the prosecutor was fired.”

It’s a novel argument for the president’s defense team, who has so far spent most of its time arguing that calling for investigations into the Bidens is not inappropriate and certainly not impeachable. A significant part of the White House’s three-day defense was a detailed exploration of the activities in Ukraine by the former vice president and his son in an attempt to prove that inquiries into them were a legitimate thing for the president to want.

And Mr. Philbin’s comment about “loose talk” of investigations into the Bidens ignores significant evidence collected by the House of just that. In the transcript of the July 25 call between Mr. Trump and the president of Ukraine, Mr. Trump presses for investigations and says “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that.”

As the Senate broke until 4 p.m., Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, walked over to Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, one of the few moderate swing votes who has not said how she would vote on allowing trial witnesses. He chatted with her at length, pointing to writing on a folded sheet of paper and enumerating points with his hand. Ms. Murkowski mostly listened and nodded. They finished up with a laugh.

As he stood up to answer a question on Thursday, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the lead Democratic House manager, said that on the same day that President Trump’s lawyers were fighting his impeachment in the Senate, the president’s own Justice Department was making a contrary argument in federal court.

In a hearing over the 2020 census on Thursday, a federal judge asked what the remedy might be for the House of Representatives when the White House defies its subpoenas — as the president has done in the impeachment trial. James Burnham, the attorney for the Justice Department, replied without hesitation that the House could use its impeachment powers.

Senate Democrats laughed when Mr. Schiff recounted the answer, puncturing the silence that had earlier permeated the room. Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, threw up his arms as if to say, “See?”

Senate Republicans sat stone-faced.

In a question, two Democrats went after the Trump legal team’s assertion that it was acceptable for the president to seek derogatory information about Joseph R. Biden Jr. from Ukraine.

Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Ron Wyden of Oregon quoted Mr. Trump’s hand-picked F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, who said in May that any public official or political candidate should tell the F.B.I. if contacted by a representative of a foreign government trying to influence or interfere with an election.

“That is something the F.B.I. would want to know about,” Mr. Wray testified at an Senate hearing.

Asked about Mr. Wray’s comments back in May, President Trump responded: “The F.B.I. director is wrong,” although he later backtracked, saying he would report such incidents to the F.B.I.

On Wednesday night, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that what Mr. Trump sought from Ukraine did not come close to a campaign finance violation.

“Mere information is not something that would violate the campaign finance laws,” Patrick Philbin said. “If there is credible information, credible information of wrongdoing by someone who is running for a public office, it’s not campaign interference for credible information about wrongdoing to be brought to light.”

Representative Hakkem Jeffries of New York, one of the House managers, said he was “shocked” by Trump team’s position. He said it sends “a terrible message” to autocrats and dictators around the world that they can try to influence who ends up in the White House.

“We are not a banana republic,” he said. He pointed out that not just Mr. Wray, but the head of the Federal Election Commission said it was illegal to solicit or accept help from a foreign government in an election.

“It is wrong,” he repeated several times.

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

A lawyer for Lev Parnas, the former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who has offered to testify at the impeachment trial, released a new recording on Thursday of President Trump meeting in April 2018 with a small group of donors at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida.

The recording documented the presence of Mr. Parnas and his business partner, Igor Fruman, at Mar-a-Lago with the president, the first of two such donor gatherings they participated in with Mr. Trump in the span of 10 days. Mr. Trump has sought to distance himself from the two men, who would later become integral players in Mr. Giuliani’s effort to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations that could help the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.

The recording, apparently captured on Mr. Fruman’s phone, includes video of the entrances of Mr. Trump, Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman or the Republican National Committee, and Pete Sessions, a former chairman of the congressional committee who was then a member of Congress Texas.

It was at the event that Mr. Parnas met Mr. Sessions. The two men developed a relationship over the following weeks and months, records show. They would eventually discuss removing the United States ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, which became a focus of the impeachment trial.

The release of the recording came a day after Mr. Parnas traveled to Washington to rally support for calling witnesses — including himself — at the impeachment trial. Federal prosecutors in New York have since charged Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman with campaign finance violations, including for their alleged efforts to mask their involvement in a $325,000 donation to a pro-Trump fund-raising committee.

Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, had released another recording on Saturday of a separate donor dinner held 10 days later, on April 30, 2018, at Mr. Trump’s Washington hotel, at which the president discussed Ms. Yovanovitch with Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman and other donors.

In that recording, Mr. Parnas accuses Ms. Yovanovitch of bad-mouthing Mr. Trump and suggests that “we got to get rid of the ambassador.” Mr. Trump responds “Get rid of her. Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. O.K.? Do it.”

Mr. Trump eventually removed Ms. Yovanovitch in 2019, after his allies accused her of standing in the way of the pressure campaign now at the center of his impeachment trial.

Some House lawmakers, fresh off votes across the Capitol, arrived on the floor of the Senate chamber to watch the proceedings.

Representatives Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, both Democratic freshmen, could be seen standing by the doors behind the Republican desks.

When a staff member gently pointed them to the Democratic side of the aisle, they walked over and sat down behind the Democratic desks.

Before the questioning could begin, Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a freshman colleague, walked over to chat quietly with them.

On the Republican side, Representatives Chip Roy and Daniel Crenshaw, both of Texas, came in the opening moments of the trial, joining Representative Alex X. Mooney of West Virginia in the back of the room.

After failing to get Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to read the name of the person widely thought to be the whistle-blower whose complaint prompted the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, did so himself on Thursday.

Mr. Paul, who left the Senate chamber while the impeachment trial was in session to hold a news conference about Mr. Roberts’s refusal to read his question, said it “deserved to be asked.” He said the question had nothing to do with the whistle-blower, then he proceeded to read it aloud and name the person.

The question asked whether House impeachment managers or the president’s legal defense team were aware of reports that two individuals “may have worked together to plot impeaching the president before there were formal House impeachment proceedings.”

He also posted the question verbatim on Twitter.

At the news conference Mr. Paul asserted that the two had been “working together for years looking for an opportunity” to impeach the president.

Mr. Paul defended himself for asking the question, saying it “made no reference to any whistle-blower or any kind of person, a complaint from the whistle-blower.”

“I think it was an incorrect finding not to allow the question,” he told reporters.

The Kentucky Republican’s disclosure of the name of the person believed to be the whistle-blower on Thursday was not the first time that he has done so. He has repeatedly urged media organizations to reveal the person’s name and in at least one interview with a Washington D.C. radio station, he said it himself.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, on Thursday defended the president’s lawyer, Alan M. Dershowitz, who faced an onslaught of criticism after making this argument on Wednesday: “If the president does something that he thinks will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

“He was talking about rooting out corruption and fighting corruption,” Ms. Blackburn said Thursday on CNN. “And then that is in the public interest.”

Ms. Blackburn added, “waste, fraud and abuse,” and went on to say that this was at the root of Mr. Trump’s comments to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Dershowitz asserted that his statements were misconstrued by the news media.

Democratic senators have promised to question Mr. Dershowitz about it on Thursday during the remaining time for senators’ questions. Ms. Blackburn has been an avid defender of Mr. Trump’s through the entire Ukraine matter.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Chief Justice John G. Roberts refused on Thursday to read aloud a question submitted by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky that would have named a person widely believed to be the C.I.A. whistle-blower in the Ukraine affair.

“The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted,” Chief Justice Roberts said after Mr. Paul submitted the question during President Trump’s impeachment trial.

On Wednesday, Mr. Paul repeatedly sought to submit the question, but it was not sent to be read aloud by the chief justice. Just before Mr. Paul sent his question to the desk on Friday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, made comments that appeared to be directed at discouraging Mr. Paul’s actions.

“We’ve been respectful of the Chief Justice’s unique position in reading our questions,,” Mr. McConnell said. “And I want to be able to continue to assure him that that level of consideration for him will continue.”

Mr. Paul described the rejected question on Twitter.

Republican leaders said they are increasingly confident that the Senate will turn back the Democratic effort to extend the impeachment trial with new witnesses and documents in a Friday vote.

Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, a top Republican leader, said Thursday: “We are getting to where we need to be on the witness vote.”

Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, said his party is pressing to conclude the third impeachment trial in the nation’s history, though he expected Democrats to use procedural gimmicks to try to prevent it.

“The goal would be to get this done tomorrow evening,” Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the Senate, told reporters before the second question period in the trial began. “I don’t know if Chuck Schumer has opportunities to try to slow down the process, but I don’t think we end up leaving the Senate floor, leaving the chamber, until it’s done.”

A four-hour debate on whether to seek additional witnesses and documents is expected to take place Friday, and Democrats need the support of at least four Republican senators. Several Republican leaders predicted that their party would prevail in blocking the Democratic effort.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said that he is “getting more optimistic” that they will reject the demand for witnesses and move to a quick conclusion to the trial. He praised Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

“He’s pretty good at what he does, and I’ve been in the room where people are beginning to consolidate,” Mr. Graham said.

Even so, rank-and-file Republican senators emerging from a private luncheon said the leadership was not certain they had the 51 votes necessary to block witnesses.

“We don’t know for sure,” Senator Mike Braun, Republican of Indiana.

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, suggested Thursday that Democrats would use parliamentary procedures to thwart Republicans’ plans for a speedy acquittal of President Trump.

“The minority has rights, and we will exercise those rights,” Mr. Schumer told reporters, without elaborating.

The trial’s organizing resolution, written by Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and adopted along party lines, specifies that once the question-and-answer portion of the trial is finished, the Senate will vote on whether to call witnesses.

But the resolution is not specific about what happens after that vote, Mr. Schumer said. Democrats need the votes of four Republicans to expand the scope of the trial to include witnesses; if they fall short, as seems increasingly likely, Mr. Schumer hinted they would make some other move to prevent immediate votes on whether to convict or acquit.

But he refused to tip his hand.

“We’re not going to get into that here,” he said. “Our focus right now is on getting the four.”

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, will insist on Thursday that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. read aloud his question on the origins of the impeachment inquiry, a day after the question was repeatedly rejected because it would name the C.I.A. whistle-blower who first raised concerns about President Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.

Republicans and Democrats have expressed deep reservations about Mr. Paul’s efforts to out the whistle-blower. But in a statement, Mr. Paul said he would insist that his question be read at the beginning of Thursday’s impeachment trial session.

“Senator Paul believes it is crucial the American people get the full story on what started the Democrats’ push to impeach President Donald Trump, as reports have indicated Obama appointees at the National Security Council may have discussed organizing an impeachment process in advance of the whistle-blower complaint,” Mr. Paul’s office said in the statement.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said Thursday morning that he did not believe the identity of the whistle-blower should be revealed by Mr. Paul in a question on the Senate floor.

“Not in this environment,” he told reporters, though he added that “later on we need to look at it.”

Asked about his plans Thursday morning, Mr. Paul said only: “We have a question, that’ll be at 1 o’clock, and you’ll find out about it.” He declined to answer any other questions about his intentions.

At her weekly press conference, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said President Trump’s Senate trial won’t be legitimate unless witnesses are called to testify.
Credit…Image by Calla Kessler/The New York Times

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said on Thursday that regardless of the outcome of his impeachment trial, if the Senate refuses to call new witnesses or subpoena more documents, President Trump’s acquittal will not be legitimate.

“He will not be acquitted,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference, when asked whether the president is likely to be chastened or emboldened by the all but certain verdict in his favor, which could come as early as Friday.

“You cannot be acquitted if you don’t have a trial,” she added. “You don’t have a trial if you don’t have witnesses and documentation and all of that,” she said.

Her comments came the day before an expected Senate vote on whether to summon additional witnesses for the impeachment trial, as Republican leaders appear to be lining up the votes to block the move.

“The fate of our nation is riding on how this is resolved,” Ms. Pelosi said. “It isn’t about just one person. It’s about the precedent that it sets for the future.”

In this case, she said, it was also a matter that demanded urgent action by the Senate, given the allegations against Mr. Trump that he sought to invite foreign meddling in the 2020 election on his own behalf and ample evidence that Russia is trying to interfere again, as it did in 2016

“The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming,” Ms. Pelosi warned. “And the president has led a clear path for them to interfere, once again, in our elections, as they are currently doing.”

“I just pray that the senators will have the courage, and the ability, to handle the truth,” she added.

It was not the first bid by Ms. Pelosi to ensure that regardless of the outcome of the Senate trial, the public does not see an acquittal as an exoneration.

“This president is impeached for life, regardless of any gamesmanship on the part of Mitch McConnell,” she told ABC News this month. “He will be impeached forever.”

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Nothing would please President Trump more than to have a bipartisan acquittal in his impeachment trial. He just might get his wish.

While attention has focused on the handful of Republicans who might break ranks, cracks are beginning to show in Democrats’ unity. Senator Doug Jones, facing a tough re-election in Alabama, has hinted he might vote to acquit Mr. Trump of at least one charge, obstruction of Congress.

And two other centrist swing state Democrats — Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — are also being eyed as possible defectors.

Ms. Sinema is a wild card; she issued a statement when the trial began saying she was taking her obligation seriously — and has said nothing public since. When Mr. Trump’s legal team wrapped up its defense earlier this week, she remained on the Senate floor, deep in conversation with Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and a close ally of Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader.

Mr. Manchin has complained about what he has called the “hypocrisy” of both Mr. McConnell and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. When President Bill Clinton was impeached, both men took positions opposite to the ones they are taking now. Like Ms. Sinema, he has given little hint how he will vote. But he has sided with Republicans in saying that Hunter Biden, the son of the former Vice President, might be a relevant witness.

Mr. Jones is unlikely to acquit Mr. Trump on the first charge, abuse of power. He suggested Wednesday that he might vote to acquit Mr. Trump on the charge of obstruction of Congress, though he said that the president’s own behavior was strengthening the case against him.

“I’m still looking at that very closely; there are some things that trouble me about it,” Mr. Jones said, without elaborating. “But I will tell you this about the obstruction charge: The more I see the president of the United States attacking witnesses, the stronger that case gets.”

Democrats are expected to question Alan Dershowitz, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, a day after he argued that the president can do whatever he must to get re-elected, because that is in the public’s interest.

“If the president does something that he thinks will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Mr. Dershowitz said on Tuesday, prompting some jaws to drop in the Senate chamber.

On Thursday, Mr. Dershowitz said in a tweet that his comment is being mischaracterized.

Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said in a tweet that Mr. Dershowitz should come prepared to explain himself during the second full day of questions at the impeachment trial.

“It is essential that you clarify this on the Senate Floor, not on this website,” Mr. Schatz tweeted in reply to Mr. Dershowitz’s tweet denying his expansive presidential powers argument.

“We haven’t met, but I was one of the Senators with my mouth agape as I heard it.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said that when he and other colleagues walked off the Senate floor they turned to each other and said, “Did he really say that? It prompted laughs, but also a deep anger,” Mr. Blumenthal said Thursday on CNN, adding that he and the other senators went to check the transcript to be sure.

Mr. Blumenthal added, “It would be laughed out of a courtroom.”

Hillary Clinton, who ran against Mr. Trump in 2016, offered her thoughts, as well.

“Richard Nixon once made this argument: ‘When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.’ He was forced to resign in disgrace. In America, no one is above the law,” she wrote in a tweet.

On the other side of the Capitol, the House later this morning will take aim at President Trump’s ability to authorize future military action against Iran without the assent of Congress, imposing yet another constitutional check on Mr. Trump even as the Senate weighs whether to remove him.

The House will vote on two measures: one to repeal a 2002 resolution authorizing military force that the administration initially used to justify the strike that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s top security commander, and on another that would bar Mr. Trump from using federal funds for an unauthorized strike against Iran.

The 2002 authorization of military force, passed by Congress to defend against the perceived threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, has long been eyed warily by Democrats and an increasing number of libertarian-minded Republicans, who argue it is now outdated and serves only to provide the president cover to move forward with new, unauthorized strikes.

The White House has threatened to veto both measures, arguing they would infringe on Mr. Trump’s ability to protect American forces and strip him of the constitutional powers afforded to him as the commander-in-chief.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, is not expected to take up the bills in the Senate.

Alan Dershowitz, who defended President Trump on Wednesday by asserting an expansive view of presidential power in which presidents can do virtually anything in pursuit of their re-election, claimed on Thursday that his arguments had been mischaracterized.

Answering a question from Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, about quid pro quos, Mr. Dershowitz forcefully insisted that if a president believes his re-election is in the national interest, then the things he does in pursuit of it is not impeachable.

“Every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest,” Mr. Dershowitz, a celebrity defense attorney and member of Mr. Trump’s legal team, said on the floor of the Senate.

He added: “And if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected, in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

The argument stunned many in the chamber, who saw it as effectively excusing anything Mr. Trump did to further his chances of staying in office. Democratic senators called it “absurd” and “wrong,” while even some Republican distanced themselves from his arguments.

“They characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his re-election was in the national interest, he can do anything,” Mr. Dershowitz wrote on Twitter. “I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest.”

Mr. Dershowitz complained that the media did not accurately report his remarks. “Taking advantage of the fact most of their viewers didn’t actually hear the senate Q and A, CNN, MSNBC and some other media willfully distorted my answers,” he wrote.

Credit…Calla Kessler/The New York Times

President Trump will visit two battleground states Thursday as his defense team and House managers begin a second day of answering questions from senators in his impeachment trial.

Mr. Trump will visit Michigan, where he will highlight the signing of the U.S.M.C.A. trade agreement, one of his key legislative accomplishments during his time in office. Then, he will head to Iowa for a campaign rally, just four days before the caucuses in the state, where Democrats will begin the first votes toward choosing their eventual nominee.

In the split-screen that has been a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s time in the White House, he will be carrying out official activities and then taking part in campaign events, as official Washington is focused on a debate over his conduct in office.

Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, was prevented from asking a question on Wednesday because the question he posed, in relation to the origins of the impeachment inquiry, would have named the whistle-blower, according to a person familiar with the situation.

“It’s still an ongoing process; it may happen tomorrow,” Mr. Paul told reporters on Wednesday.

But at least one member of Senate leadership said that he did not believe that the whistle-blower, whose complaint sparked the impeachment inquiry, would be named on the Senate floor.

“I don’t think that happens, and I guess I would hope that it doesn’t,” said Senator John Thune, the No. 2 Republican in the chamber.

The still-anonymous whistle-blower filed a complaint last summer, after President Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president. The complaint was filed through an official process meant to protect those filing from reprisals.

Credit…Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

Much of the focus will again be on the chamber’s few moderates and the queries they choose to pose during the remaining eight hours of questioning. On Wednesday, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, was given the first question, which she chose to ask in tandem with Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah, both Republicans.

The three senators are seen as the most likely Republicans to vote for witnesses, and their colleagues in the chamber seemed to perk up every time one of the three submitted a question.

“Some of them were good,” Ms. Murkowski said of the nearly 100 answers she heard on Wednesday.

The chamber will also focus on three centrist Democrats: Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Doug Jones of Alabama and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Ms. Sinema, holding a question card, could be seen Wednesday night conferring with her colleagues in the back of the chamber over possible questions to ask.

All the Democrats and at least four Republicans would have to support hearing witnesses to reach the 51 votes needed.

As a growing chorus of Republican senators declared on Wednesday that they felt ready to move to a final vote without calling new witnesses, the president’s legal team delivered several bold answers to senators’ questions. Among the most remarkable was an argument from Alan M. Dershowitz, who suggested that anything President Trump might have done in the service of his own re-election effort was in the public interest.

The president’s lawyers seemed increasingly self-assured in a stance others have offered before: Regardless of whether the Democrats’ impeachment allegations are true, the president’s actions still would not justify his removal from office.

Even as the 16-hour period of questioning comes to a close on Thursday, both sides will still have an opportunity to deliver something akin to a closing argument as early as Friday. But as the president’s lawyers sense that the trial could move toward a swift conclusion, they may elect to commit to the notion Mr. Dershowitz offered on Wednesday that any more discussion, and any testimony from new witnesses, should be considered irrelevant.

Senators questioned the House impeachment managers and President Trump’s legal team. Trump’s lawyers argued that anything a president did to win re-election could be “in the public interest.”
Credit…Image by Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, expressed doubts on Wednesday that he would be able to secure the votes to introduce new witnesses in the trial. At the same time, Democratic and Republic senators alike began tailoring their questions to effectively turn the members of each legal team into witnesses themselves.

Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and lead impeachment manager, was asked about what he and his staff knew about the C.I.A. official who filed a whistle-blower complaint that prompted the impeachment proceedings, and how that information informed the committee’s investigation. Democrats indicated that they hoped to press Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel who is leading Mr. Trump’s defense team, for details about his experience in the White House specific to the case against the president.

On Thursday, senators may look to home in what outstanding information still exists. Several people like John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, and Lev Parnas, an associate of the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani’s who helped pressure Ukraine to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals, indicated this week that they would be willing to testify if subpoenaed. Bracing for an outcome in which those in Mr. Trump’s orbit never appear, senators may look for creative ways to discuss what those potential witnesses could have added to their case.

What we’re expecting to see: The trial will reconvene for a final day of questioning, as senators submit written questions for House impeachment managers and White House lawyers. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. will again read the questions aloud and hold responses to five minutes.

When we’re likely to see it: The proceedings will begin at 1 p.m. Eastern and could run for about eight hours, or until senators feel they have exhausted their lines of questioning.

How to follow it: The New York Times’s congressional and White House teams will be following all of the developments and will be streaming the trial live on this page. Stay with us.



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