Courtroom artist Artwork Lien sketches with a skinny mechanical pencil from his perch within the Senate press gallery, the place he’s covering the trial for The Times. “Folks transfer round and issues change, so it’s good to have the ability to erase,” he stated.
As he attracts every picture, he jots down notes about colour, as a result of he should exit the chamber earlier than filling in his drawings with watercolor.
To establish senators — or their empty seats — he consults a seating chart distributed by press gallery employees members.
See all of Mr. Lien’s drawings from Mr. Trump’s trial here.
Whereas he was beneath assault in Washington on Monday, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. spent his day interesting to Iowans with only a week to go earlier than the state’s caucuses.
On the marketing campaign path, Mr. Biden largely stored his concentrate on subjects apart from impeachment. However at an occasion in Cedar Falls, he pointed to the trial — and President Trump’s conduct that led to it — to argue that the president didn’t wish to face him within the normal election.
“There’s a cause why this man is on trial,” he instructed the group. “The rationale he’s on trial is as a result of he doesn’t wish to run in opposition to me.”
Talking briefly to reporters after the occasion, Mr. Biden stated of the manuscript of John R. Bolton, the president’s former nationwide safety adviser, “If I have been within the Senate, I’d wish to see it.”
He additionally made clear, as soon as once more, that he had no real interest in testifying on the trial. Requested if he can be his personal finest protection if he have been to testify, Mr. Biden responded, “I’ve nothing to defend. That is all a sport.”
Pam Bondi and Mr. Trump have a historical past going again lengthy earlier than her look at present to assist his protection as president.
When she was Florida’s lawyer normal, Mr. Trump was focused in an investigation by the lawyer normal in New York and different states alleging fraud within the advertising and marketing of a enterprise he then ran, known as Trump College. Prosecutors accused Mr. Trump of defrauding college students who had signed up for Trump College’s actual property and wealth-building seminars.
Ms. Bondi’s workplace was requested in 2013 if the lawyer normal had opened an investigation — like different states — into actions of Trump College, given the college’s recruitment efforts in Florida.
“We’re at the moment reviewing the allegations within the New York criticism,” a spokeswoman for Ms. Bondi wrote again to the reporter from The Orlando Sentinel.
It was simply 4 days later, in September 2013, {that a} verify for $25,000 from the Donald J. Trump Basis landed within the Tampa workplace of a political motion committee that had been fashioned to assist Ms. Bondi’s 2014 re-election. By mid-October 2013, Ms. Bondi’s workplace introduced that it might not be appearing on the Trump College complaints.
Brian Ballard, who was then Mr. Trump’s lobbyist in Florida, stated it was “ridiculous” to suppose his shopper sought to purchase off Ms. Bondi. “I’m the Trump Group lobbyist, and he has by no means, ever introduced up Trump College with me,” he stated. (Mr. Ballard has extra not too long ago gone on to be a serious lobbyist in Washington, choosing up company purchasers and overseas governments based mostly on his ties to Mr. Trump).
However questions concerning the donation continued as a result of the contribution had come from a nonprofit charity that Mr. Trump had created and used the cash as a substitute to assist a political trigger. Allegations surfaced that this was an unlawful contribution.
Mr. Trump finally agreed to refund $25,000 to the muse from his private account and pay a $2,500 penalty to the Inner Income Service.
Add one other identify to the listing of Republicans toying with calling witnesses at President Trump’s impeachment trial.
At a non-public luncheon of Republican senators on Monday, Senator Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, indicated to colleagues that he was open to calling witnesses if Republicans might work out an association so {that a} witness like John R. Bolton was known as in change for one seen as extra useful to the president, in response to Republicans aware of his remarks not approved to debate them.
His remarks are one other signal that Republicans are beneath growing strain after revelations that Mr. Bolton asserts in a forthcoming ebook that Mr. Trump instructed him he wouldn’t launch almost $400 million in army help for Ukraine till the nation had assisted with investigations into the Bidens and different Democrats.
Senator Mitt Romney,…