Trump impeachment news - live: Senate votes against calling witnesses, setting up president's acquittal

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Senate ready to acquit Trump after Lamar Alexander drops witness support

Donald Trump looks all but certain to be acquitted by the Senate – perhaps as imminently as Friday evening – as a key Republican senator, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, backed away from supporting Democratic calls to extend the impeachment trial by calling new witnesses.

Alexander issued a 15-part thread on Twitter overnight, declaring there is "no need" for more evidence as to the president's conduct, which he admitted was "inappropriate", because it was not, in his view, impeachable.

Here is it's opening and end - you can read the full statement here.

His decision appears to represent a hammer blow to Democratic hopes of finding four GOP senators with a conscience to overcome the 53-47 deficit in the chamber that would have allowed them to force the issue and subpoena the likes of ex-national security adviser John Bolton or current White House aides Mick Mulvaney, Rob Blair and Michael Duffey.

It followed Susan Collins of Maine coming forward to pledge that she would support such a motion - Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska might still join her but three would not be enough.

The reaction against Senator Alexander has been nothing short of vitriolic:

Senators issue tough questions on Giuliani, Roberts and president's lies at trial

The Senate finished taking questions from senators yesterday, with Rudy Giuliani and even presiding Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts coming under fire, and will today move on to closing arguments.

In the first bipartisan question of the two-day session, four senators asked whether Trump would pledge to stop using private citizens to conduct foreign policy without being formally designated by the president and the State Department - an implicit condemnation of his private attorney, who was running off the leash in Ukraine last spring in pursuit of dirt on Joe Biden and engineered the removal (and surveillance) of US ambassador to Kiev Marie Yovanovitch.

Patrick Philbin, a deputy counsel on the president's legal team, denied anything like that had taken place.

Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator running for the White House asked, explosively: “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?”

Democratic impeachment manager Adam Schiff answered that Justice Roberts had "presided admirably" over the trial.

Susan Collins and three GOP colleagues wanted to know if there was a proper means of approaching Ukraine for an investigation into Biden (as opposed to extorting Volodymyr Zelenksy by phone and withholding congressionally-approved military aid). Schiff said the Justice Department should have drafted a mutual legal assistance treaty if it was serious about thwarting corruption.

Democrats Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden asked: "If President Trump remains in office, what signal does that send to other countries intent on interfering with our election s in the future and what might we expect from those countries and the president?"

Impeachment maganger Hakeem Jeffries answered: "This is not a banana republic. It's the democratic republic of the United States of America. It's wrong."

California's Kamala Harris cited the notorious Access Hollywood tape to ask: “President Nixon said, ‘When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.’ Before he was elected, President Trump said, ‘When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.’ After he was elected, President Trump said that Article II of the Constitution gives him ‘the right to do whatever [he] want[s] as president.’

“These statements suggest that each of them believed that the president is above the law - a belief reflected in the improper actions that both presidents took to affect their reelection campaigns. If the Senate fails to hold the president accountable for misconduct, how would that undermine the integrity of our system of justice?”

“If you look at the pattern in this president’s conduct in his words, what you see is a president who identifies the state as being himself,” Schiff said in his response.

Bernie Sanders went in on Trump for lying: “Republican lawyers have stated on several occasions that two people, Senator [Ron] Johnson and Ambassador [Gordon] Sondland, were told directly by President Trump that there was no quid pro quo in terms of holding back Ukraine aid in exchange for an investigation into the Bidens.

“Given the media has documented President Trump’s thousands of lies while in office, more than 16,200 as of January 20, why should we be expected to believe that anything President Trump says has credibility?”

But one man whose question went unanswered was Kentucky senator Rand Paul.

John T Bennett has more on that one.

Trump mocks rivals, warns farmers their land will 'go to hell' without him

The president was on jubilant form at his latest Keep America Great rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday night, mocking his potential 2020 challengers and bizarrely warning his rural audience that the opposition “want to kill our cows” and that their farms would “go to hell” unless he is re-elected in November.

“During this campaign season, the good people of Iowa have had a front row seat to the lunacy and the madness of the totally sick left,” he said, speaking from the basketball court on campus at the city's Drake University.

“This November we’re going to defeat the radical socialist Democrats that are right down the street... America will never be a socialist country. We can’t.”

He also said he was not worried about his impeachment, insisting: "This is a happy period."

Largely playing the hits, Trump mocked Biden's failing memory, called Warren "Pocahontas" and Mike Bloomberg "Mini" and took on Pete Buttigieg in unoriginal fashion: "“How about But-Edge-Edge? They call him Mayor Pete. You know why? Nobody can pronounce his name.”

His weird bovine warning and scaremongering were part of a broad appeal to local farmers, who he said would be “driving bigger tractors and owning more land” if they voted for four more years of Trump.

In a nod to the state’s large number of social and religious conservatives, he talked about his appointment of conservative judges and attacked late-term abortion, all of which earned loud applause.

Here's Andrew Buncombe's report.

Trump wheels out Sarah Sanders in play to red state base but protesters out in force

Trump was introduced on stage last night by veep Mike Pence and his former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and was largely playing to a crowd of crazed MAGA zealots...

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

(Leah Millis/Reuters)

(Evan Vucci/AP)

(Sue Ogrocki/AP)

(Kerem Yucel/AFP)

(Rick Wilking/Reuters)

...but there were some protesters out in force.

(Sue Ogrocki/AP)

(Sue Ogrocki/AP)

John Bolton defends officials who testified against president in impeachment inquiry

The former hawk and regime change advocate currently represents something of a shadowy rogue agent operating on the fringes of Trump World as we await a possible subpoena from the Senate (increasingly unlikely, alas) and his forthcoming memoir, The Room Where It Happened.

He has though been speaking out in praise of those State Department officials who testified to the House impeachment inquiry in November.

Interestingly, Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade - of all people - broke ranks to insist that Bolton is "not a liar" after the conservative echo chamber went into overdrive this week to discredit his Ukraine claims after they were published in The New York Times.

Zoe Tidman has this report.

Lindsey Graham was ‘in the loop’, says Lev Parnas​

While the Republicans continue to turn their noses up at the idea of hearing from fresh witnesses, new evidence and the rule of law, Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is still out there begging for a chance to testify.

He was on Anderson Cooper's show last night and dragged a certain senator from South Carolina into the mud...

Here's Clark Mindock with a reminder of his suprise appearance on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

Alan Dershowitz distances himself from own argument

The president's celebrity defence attorney - who has previously represented OJ Simpson, Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein - was on Chris Cuomo's show last night and distanced himself from his most derided argument on the Senate floor on Wednesday that anything a sitting present does as part of a bid to get re-elected is kosher and not impeachable.

Dershowitz reacted impatiently to the CNN host's questioning and insisting the point had been wilfully misinterpreted and "taken out of context".

Graig Graziosi has this on Adam Schiff's comments on Dershowitz during yesterday's session in the Senate.

“It’s astonishing on the floor of this body someone would make that argument. It didn’t begin that way in the beginning of the president’s defence. What we have seen over the last couple of days is a descent into constitutional madness because that way madness lies,” he said. 

Mazie Hirono: 'It's a really sad day when you can only find three courageous Republicans'

A little more reaction to the Lamar Alexander bombshell, with Hawaii Democratic senator Mazie Hirono putting the boot in in her customary style.

Former White House ethics chief Richard W Painter had an even more devastating assessment of the development.

President attempts to reassure Americans on coronavirus as epidemic declared global emergency

Trump was not entirely convincing on the subject of the deadly flu yesterday, attempting to reassure crowds in both Warren, Michigan, and later in Iowa that everything was under control.

"We're working very strongly with China on the coronavirus. That's a new thing that a lot of people are talking about. Hopefully, it won't be as bad as some people think it could be, but we're working very closely with them and with a lot of other people, in a lot of other countries," Trump said at a Dana Incorporated manufacturing plant in Michigan on Thursday afternoon.

"We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment - five and those people are all recuperating successfully. "

It was all worryingly light on specifics but he has set up a task force to tackle it and his thoughts were at least noticeably more humane than those of his commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, whose economic assessment of the crisis when interviewed on Fox Business yesterday was jaw-dropping.

There was also this tweet from the Situation Room of the White House, which is a great deal more presidential than most of his output (very much the point of the exercise).

Here's Vincent Wood with the latest from the World Health Organisation after the first case was discovered in Britain, fittingly, on Brexit morning.