Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, despatched a very pointed query for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to learn aloud within the Senate chamber.
“Does the truth that the chief justice is presiding over an impeachment trial through which Republican senators have to this point refused to permit witnesses or proof contribute to the lack of legitimacy of the chief justice, the Supreme Courtroom and the Structure?” she requested of the Home managers.
Shocked gasps and oohs crammed the chamber — from senators and spectators alike — as Mr. Roberts completed studying the query, with little emotion on his face.
Consultant Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the lead Home impeachment supervisor, mentioned in response that Chief Justice Roberts had “presided admirably” over the proceedings.
As Republicans develop more and more assured that they’ve the votes to dam calling new witnesses and proof, Democrats have turned to Chief Justice Roberts as a possible savior for his or her trigger: If there’s a tie, it might fall to the chief justice to determine whether or not to interrupt it.
Progressive activists have additionally begun to criticize the chief justice, with one group, Demand Justice, photoshopping a “Make America Nice Once more” hat on him in a video it circulated on Twitter.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman labored hand in hand in Ukraine final yr to assist Rudolph W. Giuliani dig up damaging details about President Trump’s political rivals, an effort on the middle of the impeachment trial.
However in federal courtroom in Manhattan on Thursday, their current break up was on show as a dispute erupted between attorneys for the 2 males, each Soviet-born businessmen, over the extent of Mr. Parnas’s cooperation with impeachment investigators.
The dispute stemmed from Mr. Parnas’s resolution to share a trove of his textual content messages and different data with the Home Intelligence Committee, though he and Mr. Fruman each face legal marketing campaign finance costs in Manhattan. The committee publicly released some of the records in current weeks, shedding new gentle on the strain marketing campaign and producing momentum amongst Democrats to name Mr. Parnas as a witness within the impeachment trial.
Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Mr. Fruman, raised issues afterward that Mr. Parnas produced data to the Home that may be protected below attorney-client privilege. As such, Mr. Blanche petitioned the choose presiding over the legal case to order Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, to hunt to “claw again” among the data from Congress.
Mr. Bondy declined, and defending his resolution to launch the data, he defined that, “What we tried to do was get all this proof shortly to the Home,” earlier than the trial ended.
Decide J. Paul Oetken, whereas acknowledging that Mr. Blanche raised “reputable issues,” successfully sided with Mr. Bondy, who argued that Mr. Blanche didn’t object promptly and that such a retrieval was now unrealistic. As a substitute of recovering the paperwork, Mr. Bondy agreed to ask Home investigators to not publicly launch any data involving communications with sure attorneys.
The back-and-forth between the attorneys, which at one level grew heated as they accused one another of appearing improperly, mirrored a bigger break up between Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman after their arrest in October. Whereas Mr. Parnas broke with Mr. Giuliani and vowed to cooperate with Congress, and even with prosecutors if they’re , Mr. Fruman has saved quiet and stays aligned with Mr. Giuliani.
Mr. Bondy indicated on the listening to that he would possibly proceed to launch a few of Mr. Parnas’s nonprivileged data, whether or not the Home does or not.
Shortly earlier than the listening to, Mr. Bondy launched a brand new recording of Mr. Trump assembly in April 2018 with a small group of donors, together with Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman. It was the most recent step in Mr. Parnas’s current publicity tour as he seeks to be known as as a witness within the impeachment trial, even because the legal indictment looms in federal courtroom in Manhattan.
“We approached this case somewhat in another way,” Mr. Bondy famous in the course of the listening to.
When she testified earlier than a Home committee final yr, Fiona Hill, a former prime nationwide safety official, warned lawmakers to not twist her phrases to attempt to legitimize an unsubstantiated idea that Ukraine, like Russia, undertook a concerted marketing campaign to intrude within the election.
However on Thursday, the president’s authorized staff appeared to disregard that warning.
President Trump’s attorneys are attempting mightily to persuade the senators that he had some purpose to suspect Ukraine of meddling within the 2016 election. That helps them painting the president’s demand that Ukraine examine the difficulty as rooted in a…