forthcoming book that president trump told him he wanted to freeze u.s. assistance to ukraine until ukrainians committed to investigate the bidens. here are senate democrats response from their briefing this morning. >> this is a win. i'll tell you one little thing. when i was reading about the vietnam war i thought there were two liters of vietnam, nguyen loitered about and -- though i'd read about because nguyen in vietnamese is nguyen which is a common name, pronounced when. thank you for listening. [laughing] >> this is the humor moment. >> okay. thank you all for coming. i'm joined by my great colleagues here. now, it seems like every day

some new revelation emphasizes our request for relevant witnesses and documents in this trial and gives it momentum. there's been a steady drip, drip, drip of information. the truth leaking out in one explosive article after another. in that sense this is reminiscent of watergate. e-mails were released over the christmas break showing the delight on military assistance was placed 91 minutes after the president's july 25 call with president zelensky. e-mails from michael duffey revealed he had quote clear direction from the president to continue to hold on military assistance. and yesterday the "new york times" reported on several stunning chapters from ambassador bolton's book, including the admission by mr. bolton that he was ordered by the president to continue freezing military assistance to ukraine until it was announced

-- until it announced the political investigations it was seeking. the detail from ambassador bolton gets at the very heart of the first article of impeachment. the same "new york times" story places mick mulvaney at the stint of this clock. he's a more important witness probably than bolton, , and e-mails from duffey and valero, and two of the witnesses we seek are even more relevant as this information comes out. so i understand why leader mcconnell and president trump wanted a very short, incredibly rushed trial. because the longer, longer it goes on, the more likely that new evidence and more new evidence will come out that further implicates the president. just look at the other "new york times" report last night about ambassador bolton book. several members of the administration had concerns

about the president's dealings with autocrats, particularly president xi of china and erdogan of turkey. did the president have financial interest at stake when he was talking to erdogan or banshee and others? made maybe his kids have some economic interests at stake. and did did, in fact, our natis foreign policy with those countries? those questions are not the subject of the president impeachment trial, but this report should be a warning sign to any republican in the senate. if you vote with the white house to suppress and cover up evidence, the odds are strong that the truth, the truth will eventually come out here in a few weeks or a few months to my republican collets want to pick up the paper and read one of the what is a block at crucial information about the president's this conduct?

the document bigger to hide turned out to shed real damning light on the truth? at this point how can senate republicans not vote for the witnesses and documents we are seeking? the president flatly denies ambassador bolton's account. maybe my republican colleagues will grasp that the president's denial is a reason we don't need to hear from bolton, let me repeat, president trump and ambassador bolton diametrically opposed things. only one of them is willing to testify under oath. who do you believe? went only bolton is willing to testify under oath and trump isn't, who is right? who do we think is right? who do most republicans think is right in their minds? another response we've heard is that senate republicans and the

president's lawyers may respond to our requests for relevant witnesses with the request for hunter biden to testify. of course, what can hunter biden tell us about the president's conduct with ukraine? what can hunter biden tell us about the president's obstruction of congress? nothing obviously. the bottom line is very simple. they are always looking for shiny object to divert attention from the facts and the law against the president. it's anything, it's anything. one day it's nancy pelosi gave out pins. one day it's jerry nadler said something they didn't like. now it's hunter biden. there's always a diversion. hunter biden has nothing to do with the facts of this trial. and it sort show something it confirmed something. president trump is so obsessed with joe biden and hunter biden that he's willing to risk our

elections and our national security to go after them, and now the president and his lawyers are willing to risk the purpose of an impeachment trial to go after them. sort of says the same thing. one of the great moments yesterday that was amazing after the revelations about bolton had come out, there is mr. sekulow pointed to the four think so prove and the third one is there are no eyewitnesses to what resident trump did that have testified. give me a break. he has the nerve, the gall, the belief that he can deceive by putting that as one of the things up on his chart when it's been revealed that hunter biden does have eyewitness testimony and is willing to testify. wow. bolton.

what did i say? let me say that again. he has the nerve and the gall to get up there and say that there are no eyewitness testimony when we know that john bolton has eyewitness testimony and is going to testify here sorry about that. so the request to call hunter biden are an intentional misdirection, a distraction. there are attempts to use the singapore to accomplish the president of ukraine could do. the fact some republicans are proposing hunter biden as one of the witnesses just goes to show they have no one to defend the president on the merits, plain and simple. the bottom line remains, it is on the shoulders of four republican senators to ensure that john bolton, mick mulvaney

and the others with direct knoe of the president's actions testify in a senate trial. senator stabenow. >> thank you. we all know this was a very serious time and it deserves a very serious and fair trial. and that means relevant witnesses, people who talk directly to the president like john bolton who know exactly what happened to have the opportunity to testify. i do want to say though yesterday, i was quite appalled at what we sat through all day. we started by hearing ken starr lecture us about how divisive impeachment is. really? i mean, i was in the house when you've and effort on president clinton. we heard the rudy giuliani was a great american hero. and then we finally heard a summation from jeffrey epstein's attorney, someone laying out a congressional constitutional theory that is not agreed to buy

virtually any constitutional law professor saying that it did matter what the president did, didn't matter was not john bolton talked to him, didn't matter what, there was no way to impeach a president for abuse of power. so that's what we heard yesterday, but what we did here is a rebuttal of the facts of what happened. and the truth is, if four people, four republican senators stand with us, we will know. we will know from those directly in the room, directly on the e-mails come directly in conversations with the president, exactly what happened. and so that's the task, and the question is do they want to hear the truth or do they want to hide the truth? >> thank you, senator stabenow. senator wyden. >> thank you, leader schumer. to me, the bottom line is the president's allies have run out of real estate for putting up

there we don't need witnesses sign. and if you look at what we heard yesterday, for example, one of the president's lawyers only on, ms. raskin, said that the president had been done in by hearsay. there was nobody with first-hand information. now, evidently the president's lawyers believe that senators are incapable of reading a newspaper or watching the news about mr. bolton's book, which apparently says the president made very clear the link between security assistance and investigating biden in the 2016 election interference. now, the president has been tweeting these news reports that bolton is wrong. well, i say there's some good news in that.

it can all be cleared up by hearing from the witnesses directly, by ms. raskin logic, if senators need to hear from people who have talked directly from the president, the answer is to get testimony, testimony from people who know firsthand, and they are the very four people that we've asked for as witnesses. so this is a crucial moment. i think the administrations case that you don't need witnesses gets weaker and weaker every single day. what i did, and i will close with this, right before we started is i had community meetings in oregon in communities donald trump one at in communities hillary hillaryn

won. what they agree on and both areas, both communities is you need a fair trial and that meant you had to have witnesses and documents. >> c-span, your unfiltered view of government. created by cable in 1979 and brought to you today by your television provider. >> it is day eight of the senate impeachment trial against president trump and the proceedings are expected to get underway any minute now. one p.m. eastern time. this is what we are expecting from today's proceedings. the president's defense team is wrapping up the opening argument. they have 15 hours and 33 minutes remaining. however however, we are learning that there expected to only go about two to three hours this afternoon. then it is possible that senators would start