other example of a political appointee taking on this responsibility. sandy was given no reason other than that mr. duffey wanted to be quote more involved in daily operations. end quote. during his deposition, sandy confirmed that he was removed from the funding approval process after he had raised concerns to duffey about whether the hold was legal under the empowerment control act. needless to say, omb has refused to turn over any documents or communications involving that decision to replace mr. sandy. why did duffey, a political appointee with no relevant experience in this area take over responsibility for ukraine funding approval. was the white house involved in that decision? was sandy removed because he had expressed concerns about the legality of the hold? by august 7th, people in our government were worried.

and when people in the government get worried, sometimes what they do is they draft memos because when they're concerned about getting caught up in something that doesn't seem right, they don't want to be a part of it. so on that day, mark sandy and other colleagues at omb drafted and sent a memo about ukraine military aid to acting director vought. according to sandy, the memo advocated for the release of the funds. it said that the military aid was consistent with american national security interests. it would help to oppose russian aggression and it was backed by strong bipartisan support. but president trump did not lift the hold. over the next several weeks, omb continued to issue funding documents that kept kicking the can down the road. supposedly to allow for more of this quote interagency process.

well, inserting those footnotes throughout the apportionment documents stating that the delay wouldn't affect the funding but here's the really shocking part. there was no interagency process. they made it up. it had ended months before. they made it up because nobody could say the real reason for the hold. in total, omb issued nine of these documents between july 25th and september 10th. did the white house respond to omb's concerns and recommendation to release the aid, did the white house instruct omb to continue creating a paper trail in an effort to justify the hold?

who knew what and when. omb documents would shed light on omb's actions as the president's scheme unravelled. did the white house direct omb to continue issuing the hold? what was omb told about the president's reasons for releasing the hold. what communications did omb officials have with the white house around the time of the release. as the president's scheme unravelled, did anyone at omb connected dots about the real reason for the hold? the omb documents would shed light on all of these questions, and the american people deserve answers. i remember what it feels like to not have the equipment you need when you need it. real people's lives are at stake. that's why this matters.

we need this information so we can ensure that this never happens again. eventually this will all come out. we will have answers to these questions. the question now is whether we'll have them in time and who here will be on the right side of history. >> mr. sobserved the balance of time for an opportunity to respond to the president. >> mr. sekulow. >> thank you, mr. chief justice members of the senate. manager crow, you should be happy to know that the aid that was provided to ukraine over the course of the president's

administration included lethal weapons. those were not provided by the previous administration. the suggestion that the ukraine failed to get any equipment is false. the security assistant was not for funding ukraine over the summer of 2019. there was no lack of equipment due to the temporary pause. it was future funding. the ukraine deputy minister of defense who oversaw u.s. aid shipments said the hold came and went so quickly, they did not notice any change. under secretary of state david hale explained the paused aid was future assistance, not to keep the army going now. so the made up narrative that security assistance was conditioned on ukraine taking some action on investigations is further disproved by the straightforward fact that the aid was delivered on september

11th, 2019, without ukraine taking any action on any investigation. it's interesting to note that the obama administration withheld $585 million of promised aid to egypt in 2013 but the administration's public message was that the money was not officially on hold as technically it was not due until september 30th. the end of the fiscal year. so day didn't have to disclose the halt to anyone. sound like this may be a practice of a number of administrations. in fact, to the president, this president has been concerned about how aid is being put forward. so there have been pauses on foreign aid in a variety of contexts. in september of 2019, the administration announced that it was withholding over

$100 million in aid to afghanistan over concerns about government corruption. in august of 2019, president trump announced that the administration and seoul were in talks to substantially increase south korea's share of the expense of u.s. military support for south korea. in june, president trump caught or paused over $550 million in foreign aid to el salvador, honduras, and guatemala because those countries were not sharing the burdens of prevents mass migration to the united states. this is not the only administration. as i said, president obama withheld hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to egypt. to be clear, and i want to be clear, ambassador yovanovitch herself testified that our policy actually got stronger under president trump. largely because unlike the obama

administration quote this administration made the decision to provide lethal weapons to ukraine to help ukraine fend off russian aggression. she testified in a deposition before your very committees, in actually i felt in the three years i was there partly because of my efforts but also the interagency team and president trump's decision to provide lethal weapons to ukraine that our policy actually got stronger. deputy assistant secretary kent name has come up a couple of times, agree that javelins are incredibly effective at stopping armored advance, and the russians are scared of them. ambassador volker explained that president trump approved each of the decisions made along the way, and as a result america's policy towards ukraine strengthened. when we want to talk about facts, go to your own discovery and your own witnesses that you

called. this all supposedly started because of a whistleblower. where is that whistleblower? i yield the rest of my time. >> the house managers have 35 minutes remaining. >> mr. chief justice, at wartime matters minutes and hours can seem like years so the idea that, well, it made it there eventually just doesn't work. and yes, the aid was provided. it was provided by congress. this senate in the house of representatives with the president's signature. the congress is the one that sends the aid.

in millions of dollars of this aid would have been lost because of the delay had congress not actually passed another law that extended that deadline to allow the funds to be spent. let me repeat that, the delay had jeopardized the expenditure of the money to such an extent that congress had to pass another law to extend the deadline so that the money and the equipment got to the people on the front lines. need i also reiterate, the supposed interagency process, the concerns that the president and his counsel continue to raise about corruption and making sure that the process went right, there was no interagency process. the whole thing was made up.

it was a phantom. there was a delay and delays matter. mr. chief justice, i reserve the balance of my time for mr. schiff. >> mr. schiff? >> thank you, mr. chief justice, just a few additional points i'd like to make on this amendment and on my colleague's arguments. first of all, mr. sekulow makes the point that the aid ultimately got released. they ultimately got the money, right? yes. they got the money after the president got caught. after the president was forced to relieve the hold on the aid, after he got caught, yes. but even then, even then they had held on to the aid so long that it took a subsequent act of

congress to make sure it could all go out the door. so what, is the president supposed to get credit for that that we had to intervene because he withheld the aid so long, and that's the only reason ukraine got all of the aid that we had approved in the first place. my colleagues have glossed over the fact that what they did was illegal, that the gao and independent watchdog agency found that hold was illegal. so it not only violated the law, it not only took an act of congress to make sure they ultimately got the aid, this is -- this is supposed to be the defense to why you shouldn't see the documents. is that what we're to believe? now, counsel also says, well, you know, he's not the first president to withhold aid and that's true. after all, counsel says well,

president obama withheld aid to egypt. yes at the urging of the members of congress, senators mccain and graham urged that that aid be withheld and why, because there was a revolution in egypt after it was appropriated. that wasn't something that was hidden from congress. that was a pretty darn good reason to think that we still want to give aid to this government after this revolution. we're not saying that aid has never been withheld. that's absurd. but i would hope and expect this is the first time aid has been withheld by the president of the united states to coerce an ally at war to help him cheat in the next election, i think that's a first. but what we do here, may determine whether it's the last. and one other thing about this pause in aid, right, the argument, well, no harm, no

foul, okay, he got caught. they got the aid, what's the big deal. well, as we heard during the trial, it's not just the aid. i mean, the aid is obviously the most important thing as mr. crow mentioned, you know, without it you can't defend yourself, and we'll have testimony about just what kind of military aid the president was withholding. but we also had testimony that it was the fact of the aid itself that was so important to ukraine, the fact that the united states had ukraine's back. and why? because this new presence of ukraine, this new untested former comedian, president of ukraine, at war with russia was going to be going into a negotiation with vladimir putin. with an eye to ending that conflict and whether he went

into that negotiation from a position of strength or a position of weakness would depend on whether we had his back. and so when the ukrainians learned and the russians learned that the president of the united states did not have his back, was withholding this aid, what message do you think that sent to vladimir putin. what message do you think is sent to vladimir putin when donald trump wasn't let zelensky, our ally in the door with the white house, but would let the russian foreign minister. what message does that send? so it's not just the aid, it's not just when the aid is delivered. it's not just if all of the aid is delivered. it's also what message does the freeze send to our friend, and even more importantly to our foe. and the message it sent was a disaster, was a disaster. now, you might ask yourself

because counsel has said, heir, president trump has given lethal weapons to ukraine. you might ask yourself if the president was so concerned about corruption, why did he do that in 2017 and why did he do that in 2018? why was it only 2019 that there was a problem? was there no corruption in ukraine in 2017, was there no corruption in ukraine in 2018? no, ukraine has always battled corruption. it wasn't the presence or lack of corruption in one year to another. it was the presence of joe biden as a potential candidate for president. that was the key change in 2019. that made all the difference. which gets back to one of the key moments in this saga. you know, a lot of you are

attorneys. you're probably much better attorneys than i am and i'm sure you had experience in cases you tried where there was some vignette, some conversation, some document, it may not have been the most important on it face but it told you something about the case that was much larger than that conversation. for me, one of those conversations was not on july 25th between president trump and president zelensky but on july 26th, the very next day. now, you may have watched some of the house proceedings and people watching may have seen it, maybe they didn't. but there's this scene in a ukrainian restaurant, a restaurant in kyiv, where gordon sondland, bear in mind, gordon sondland who said there was a quid pro quo, two plus two equals four. this is not a never trumper, this is a million dollar donor

to the trump inauguration. if there's a bias there, it's a million dollar bias in favor of the president, not against him. there's a scene in kyiv n thin restaurant and sondland has a cell phone sitting with david holmes a career diplomat in the ukraine embassy, and gordon sondland takes out his phone and calls the white house, gordon sondland holding for the white house, gordon sondland holding for the president. this isn't some guy with no relationship to the president. the president may say gordon sondland, i barely know him, but this is a guy who can pick up his cell phone and call the president of the united states from a restaurant in kyiv, and he does, and the president's voice is so loud that david holmes, this diplomat can hear it, and what does the president say? does he say, how is that reform coming, how is the attack on

corruption going? no. he just says is he going to do the investigation. is zelensky going to do the investigation, and sondland says, yes, he'll do anything you want. he loves your ass. this is the extent of the president's interest in ukraine and they go on to talk about other things, and then they hang up and david holmes turns to the ambassador and says in language which i will have to modify to remove an expletive, says something along the lines of does the president give a blank about ukraine. and sondland says no. he doesn't give a blank about ukraine. he only cares about the big

stuff. like the investigation of the bidens that giuliani wants. this is a million dollar donor to the trump inaugural admitting the president doesn't care about ukraine. he doesn't care whether they get military dollars to defend themselves. he doesn't care about what position zelensky goes into in these negotiations with putin. he doesn't care about that. isn't that clear? it's why he didn't care about corruption in 2017 or 2018 and he certainly didn't care about it in 2019. all he cared about was the big stuff that affected him personally. like this investigation that he wanted of the bidens. so when you ask do you want to see these documents, do you want to know if these documents

corroborate ambassador sondland, will the documents show as we fully expect they will that the only thing he cared about was the big stuff that affected him. david holmes' response was, well, you know there's some big stuff going on here, like a war with russia. this isn't withholding aid because of a revolution in egypt. this is withholding aid from a country in which 15,000 people have died fighting the russians. and as ambassador taylor said and others, you know, russia is fighting to remake the map of europe by military force. if we think that's just about ukraine's security, we are very deceived. it's about our security.

it's about the tens of thousands of troops that we have in europe, and if we undercut our own ally, if we give russia reason to believe we will not have their back, that we'll use ukraine as a play thing or worse, to get them to help us cheat in an election, that will only embolden putin to do more. you said it as often as i have, the only thing he respects is strength. you think that looks like strength of vladimir putin. i think that looks like something that vladimir putin is only too accustomed too, and that is the kind of corruption that he finds, that he perpetuates in his own regime, and pushes all around the world. my colleague val demings made reference to a conversation which i think is one of the other key vignettes in this whole sad saga, and that's that conversation that ambassador volker has with andre yermach,

one of the top aides to president zelensky, and this is a conversation in which ambassador volker is doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing, which is he's telling yermach, you know you guys really shouldn't do this investigation of your former president poroshenko because it would be for a political reason. you really shouldn't engage in political investigations and as representative demings said, what's the response from ukrainians, oh, like the one you want us to do of the bidens and clintons, threw it right back this his face. ukraine's not oblivious to that hypocrisy. mr. sekulow says what are we here for. you know, part of our strength is not only our support for our allies, our military might, it's what we stand for. we used to stand for the rule of

law. we used to champion the rule of law around the world. part of the rule of law is of course that no one is above the law. but to be out in ukraine or anywhere else in the world saying don't engage in political prosecutions and having them throw it right back in our face, like the one you want us to do. that's why we're here. that's why we're here. that's why we're here. i yield back. >>. >> majority leader is recognized. >> i send a motion to the desk to table the amendment and ask yays and nays. >> the clerk will call the roll. >> mr. alexander. >> aye. >> baldwin. >> mr. dras hill. >> i. >> mr. bennett.

>> no. >> mrs. buckburn. >> aye. >> mr. blumenthal. >> no. >> mr. blunt. >> aye. >> mr. booker. >> no. >> mr. boazman. >> aye. >> mr. brawn. >> aye. >> your ears are not deceiving you, the united states senate is moving more quickly to dispense with these requests made by the democrats for different avenues of evidence. i'm ari melber reporting from nbc headquarters, joined again by senator claire mccaskill, explaining what her former colleagues are doing in the bird's eye view, i'll mention it again, senator, rarely do we ever see this many united states senators seated together, listening to arguments, voting in this old fashioned way, and the pace is picking up. what do you see? >> yeah, they're tired of sitting there. and they don't want to sit there any longer. the hard thing about this is

when you go to the floor to vote, it is one of the few times that you can have conversations with other senators. so a lot of business gets done during votes. like let's say you're trying to get a senator to cosponsor a bill with you, and you know his staff is not, you know, you go directly to the senator with a vote, hey get on this bill with me. so a lot of business is done around votes. what's weird about this is they can't talk to each other. they're not doing business. they are just sitting there, and i guarantee you they are going nuts right now. sitting there that long without talking to one another, i know they're sneaking out for bathroom breaks, but they're catching a break on that because the camera is not showing the senate unless they're voting and of course they're all there for the vote so we're not seeing the senators who are sneaking out for bathroom breaks. >> the late day write up on this in the "new york times" depicted the senators as quote sworn to

silence. as you say, that is a rarity. what do you think is their view watching chief just roberts preside, trying to strike some sort of higher level while this is still right now, as we look at this vote officially on the request for the budget documents the democrats say are clear to proving the case against donald trump, clear to show the money was misused and yet we're watching another party line vote. >> i think they're all beginning to understand now that the chief justice is really just in a ceremonial position. the chief justice, it would surprise me if he ever gets engaged in any substantiative way in this process. maybe if there was a tie vote, you could see something. maybe later when we're voting on witnesses and documents after they've done a huge part of the trial. but they are -- this is very very difficult for them, and i

will say this. i think this has probably been painful for the republicans. there's a lot of good lawyers on the republican side. they have watched and participated in trials in their lives. they know that the house is out lawyered the white house today, and they really have. their presentations have been substantiative. they have been rich with evidence, documents, photographs, video clips, very well done. meanwhile, the white house lawyers just kind of get up and do rhetoric, you know, whine whine whine, and don't ever come with any facts or substance, and i think that's pretty obvious to everybody in the chamber. >> for people coming home at 7:30 p.m. here in washington, d.c. >> by the way, that wah wah was a technical term. >> you're the expert on parliamentary procedure. >> for people coming home, taking this in and saying okay it's the end of the day. they have been going all day, as you say, at times, there was a charlie brown quality to some of the droning. what would you say the

democratic side, the house managers and senator schumer and the way he's conducted this, what have they achieved by lining up a series of votes that they are narrowly losing as they request evidence from the white house, no, you can't have it. from the budget office, no you can't have it. from the state department, no, you can't have it. what are they achieving today? >> i think they have showed remarkable discipline, and frankly coordination in establishing a substantiative narrative about the wrong doing of this president. not, we don't like donald trump or donald trump is not a very good president. but rather this is what happened, and even though the president in historic fashion has blocked congress from its job of oversight, and has obstructed the ability of these senators to get to the bottom of what happened and to instruct the members of the house getting to the bottom of what happened, i think they've done a very

serious substantiative job of presenting a really good case. >> yeah, i would say that that's exactly what the house is doing. the house is laying out a case. they're not just arguing motions. >> right. >> they're laying out evidence in a cysystematic way, and what comes back from the president's defense is kind of random, really. i mean, you know, this thing and another thing, and by the way, obama did this, and years ago somebody else did that. it's not organized systematic at all, and it doesn't rebut what the house is saying. >> we're witnessing the clerk hand the votes to chief justice roberts. let's listen in. >> the motion is tabled. the democratic leader is recognized. >> mr. chief justice, i send an amendment to the desk to issue a subpoena to john michael mick

mulvaney, and i ask that it be read. >> clerk will report. l report >> the senator from new york mr. schumer proposing an amendment number 1287 at the appropriate place in the resolving clause insert the following section notwithstanding any other provision of this resolution pursuant to rules 5 and 6 of the rules of procedure and practice in the senate when sitting on impeachment trials, the chief justice of the united states through the secretary of the senate shall issue a subpoena for the taking of testimony of john michael mick mulvaney and the sergeant at arms is authorized to utilize the services of the deputy sergeant at arms or any other employee of the senate in serving the

subpoena authorized to be issued by the session. >> mr. chief justice. >> the majority leader is recognized. >> i ask for a 30 minute recess before the parties are recognized to debate the schumer amendment. following the debate time, i will once again move to table the amendment because votes on witnesses and evidence as i've repeatedly said are addressed in the underlying resolution. so i ask that the senate stand in recess until 8:00 p.m. >> without objection, so ordered, bang the gavel. >> without objection so ordered and with that, the chief justice of the united states presiding over the trial of president trump has just adjourned for recess. the united states senate, you see it there, the c-span cameras putting up that standard issue notification, but there's nothing standard about what we just witnessed.

if you have been following this trial at home, there were many debates over rules and debates over evidence. right now, 7:30 p.m. eastern time in washington, the first debate over bringing someone who works for president trump down to the senate to say what happened, what did he do. is it true. did they break any laws. this is an inflection point in this trial for the first time and we're seeing it. our entire panel here is with us at headquarters, a lot of experts, i want to go right to michael stooe michael steele, this is a big request, current acting chief of staff, also ran the budget office as we watched some of these senators depart. what does this mean? >> it means a lot because he straddles two worlds. he was part of the omb process, involved in what omb did and did not do with respect to documents as we just saw from the last portion where they were looking at trying to subpoena documents around omb. he's got his finger prints on a lot of that, and then of course

his acts chief of staff to the president. he has been involved in potential conversations with the president that directly touch on this. so his firsthand knowledge and information through testimony is critically important as a witness to sort of set the stage and the tone. so what you're seeing is starting with mulvaney, it's sort of starting this closeness to the president as possible and working their way out. if, you know, bolton being the big pride they like to get because bolton has largely said take me, i'm ready to talk. this next portion of the programming is really going to be focussing on the fundamental core of what they want to get at there, witnesses who were there in the room, on the phone, in the conversation with the president, knew his thinking, his mindset, what he wanted to do and can speak directly to that. >> and i would say not coincidentally, we're now just going into prime time, and i think you saw a tactical decision not to continue. there were other document

matters, document requests that they had sort of teed up, but i think you saw a tactical decision by the impeachment managers to bring on the question of witnesses and start with mulvaney and then perhaps go to bolton, right in the heart of prime time when you get the most viewers. >> gene, speak to the point you're making because folks who follow this day in and day out, news junkies, lawyers, senate parliamentary buffs. those documents, that's a treasure-trove, that's certainly true but you're making the point that for the court of the public opinion, the constituents of these senators, the very own questions, if it's donald trump's own guy, why wouldn't donald trump want him to go down and use a term that's very relevant, go down and acquit him. >> exactly, it confronts the question, what's a trial if you don't call any witnesses and why

would the president not want his witnesses to testify, his closest aides to testify if in fact, he had done nothing wrong and it was a perfect call, and everything was fine as he says, and i think it just lays out that question in a way that everybody can understand, and i assume that the impeachment managers will make that point, basically. why not. are you hiding something? is there something that mick mulvaney might say that would inculpate you? >> all great points, gene robinson, i want to bring in chuck rosenberg on the point that many people if they remember nothing else, john bolton hasn't spoken really. many people remember mick mulvaney for what lawyers might call his voluntary confession. get over it, we do it all the time. get over it, we do it all the time. do you think there is a stronger argument here for the house managers pressing this case that

if mr. mulvaney can address the question at a microphone and say these things and they don't look very privileged and they don't look very secret, chuck. >> logically, yes, but let me push the logic a little bit further. the major complaint that republicans had or one of the major complaints republicans had when the proceedings were in the house is that the witnesses that we heard that were very compelling, fiona hill, and ambassador bill taylor, and ambassador marie yovanovitch didn't speak directly to the president, and so what was his complaint, that they were putting in hearsay, they were speaking about something they had heard from someone else, they were relaying information through another party about what the president thought and said. how do you cure that? well, the one way to cure that is to put up as witnesses the people who spoke directly to the president. mick mulvaney, john bolton, mike pompeo, if you're really concerned that the proceedings

in the house were flawed because you didn't have direct evidence of what the president thought and said, here's an opportunity to get that. this is to me is an interesting vote. so far everything has been party line. 53 republicans to 47 democrats, tabling motions to put in documents. will they vote the same way to prohibit witnesses from testifying, given what they complained about in the house. that would be deeply unfortunate to me. i really am not very optimistic that it's going to change, but if they wanted to be logically consistent, it would. >> michael steele, washington is a town with its own logic. >> i have no idea. >> we're lifting the lid here on the senate to see how it thinks. several senators have been saying, well, we might want witnesses but we would only be able to make that decision five days from now, not today. >> not today. >> tonight, before we get to the period of time where there will be less control, chuck schumer

is using this moment to say, no, i want you on record right now. do you want to hear from mick mulvaney. >> yeah, i think it's an incredib incredibly smart strategy that's putting all of this in front of the jurors, the senators right now, and they have to do an up or down, what is turning into a party line vote as we have seen on documents. we'll see to chuck's point whether that plays out when it comes to witnesses. here's the catch 22 on the witness piece. when you bring these witnesses, if you say okay, i want this witness to come to the table. you're going to have to go back and revisit the documents. >> sure. >> because the documents then become a tool that either will, you know, give that witness some leverage, some room to say, well, this isn't quite the way it happened because here the documents show x, y and z, right? >> and to that point, when you are putting witnesses on in a criminal case, and i did that many times as a prosecutor, you don't just put in tudocuments a

just speak to witnesses. these things work together. you put a witness on the stand, she's sworn in. you show her a bunch of documents. you ask her to testify as to the meaning. these are symbiotic, a clunky latin word for saying one at a time. you do these things together. >> we were all thinking but you had the guts to say. >> i'm not sure i translated it properly from latin, but i think i'm close. it's 7:40 p.m. on the east coast. we are in the first lengthy recess of this first day of the trial of donald j. trump. you can see on the screen our cameras watching as some senators make their way. our panel stays right now as our live coverage continues. you have seen chuck rosenberg, michael steele, claire mccaskill. we are joined by chris hayes, the host of "all in" and lawrence o'donnell, the host of "last word," lawrence i go to you first, dealer's choice as someone who worked in the

senate. i want to read the language, sometimes we can go so fast, they're talking about mick mulvaney, i want your analysis what this is actually asking. it's pretty striking, lawrence, because what chuck schumer is now asking everyone to stand up and vote on is this formal request, which would, if it got the votes, require mick mulvaney to testify, and it says quote, the sergeant at arms is authorized to use the services of his deputies or any employee of the senate in serving the subpoena, authorized by this section to use the power of the senate, lawrence, to compel the testimony of this individual who as mentioned has spoken in public about these matters but not cooperated with the coequal branch, with the house or the senate. >> well, it would be the first time that we see those powers of the senate, those subpoena powers of the senate tested at the gate of the white house guarded by the secret service. to that could be a drama that we have never seen before.

it's obviously a very important -- they're starting with mick mulvaney as the witness. there's going to be more witnesses that they're going to ask for. these witness arguments will yet again give the democrats an opportunity to go through the evidence and they are already getting testimony. they have put up on video as testifiers already in the senate today. the house managers have. they have put donald trump up there. we have heard his voice in the senate trial. we have heard others that we've heard ambassador taylor already using his testimony from the house. so they are working testimony in already from some of the people they would like to hear from. i expect to see mick mulvaney's television quotes on video in this next argument that's coming up and the democrats have used ari, every single opportunity so well. the last argument that we just

heard was about a senate subpoena for documents from the office of management and budget. and if i just said that to you a year ago, we would agree that's going to be one of the most boring arguments we have ever heard. this argument was delivered by freshman jason crow, former army ranger, combat veteran, three tours of duty, and he said in that presentation that was simply about subpoenas for documents from omb, he talked about what this delay meant, what this delay in military aid meant in the middle of that war that ukraine is struggling with russia, and he said that in war, a minute feels like an hour, he brought dimensions to that argument that possibly no one else could have, and it is quite extraordinary to see in a senate impeachment trial of a president two, two freshmen members of congress. val demings and jason crow

making their presentations and standing up there as well as anyone has ever stood before the senate. >> chris hayes, your views as we get to this inflection point, a fight now over a witness. >> you know, mcconnell, it's not a bad strategy necessarily, but it is a little too cute by half, right because what he's trying to do is he's trying to set up her votes, in which susan collins can vote against john bolton, and mick mulvaney and vote against the state department documents. one of the things they wanted is this memo to file that kent wrote or a cable. there's circumstantiertainly no be surprised in there. the authors of the documents testified in closed session for a long time. it's almost a basic corroborative piece of evidence. it's not some explosive bomb shell. they're voting no no no, and setting up the no votes with the out that collins and others can yo use, when we get later, we can get to yes. what's going to happen later,

everyone on the democratic side and chuck schumer believe the only forced votes specifically on each of these things are going to be tonight. what the rules say is there's going to be one vote. >> that's right. >> after the end of the arguments about all other witnesses and testimony and they would attempt to shut the door on all of it, and so no one's going to have to get up later and say no, i don't want to hear from bolton and mick mulvaney. so this is the opportunity to force those votes now and get people on the record, and also as lawrence was saying, i mean, they have been making a substantiative case all day. every argument for every piece of evidence is embedded in the context of why that piece of evidence would shed more light on the corrupt scheme to extort a former government. >> when you lay it out like that, what's so important is there's so much talk about mcconnell defending donald trump which he publicly admitted he's doing. what you're excavating is how much this is designed to defend his members who might feel pressure when it's actually specifically why wouldn't you want this witness, why wouldn't

you want that. it's much harder to defend your vote against the best possible witness than ones people haven't heard of or don't care about, and the rules are revised in a way, while mcconnell backed off some of the efforts to squeeze the time line, he has kept an off ramp that would potentially protect possibly vulnerable senators from the hard votes. >> it's worth remembering, this play was run in the aca, there's a few ingredients to the recipe, one project confidence, two, attempt to steam roll your moderates through the projected confidence, and b, march them across the line to get to the final substantiative vote with a bunch of procedural votes you can whip to say stay with the team, stay with the team. he tried to do that at the aca. mccain voted with republicans on a variety of procedural in a run up to the 2:00 a.m., thumbs down, no vote on substance. if you bring someone along carefully, with the team, with

us on the procedural votes, don't worry about it. finally you get to the final vote and e he lost them on that, quite famous ri ovly overnight. just as the success of said strategy was not guaranteed in the aca, it's also not guaranteed here. >> let me say, i think what's going to end up happening, party line votes, arguments by the house and white house, and then you're going to have questions, and then you're going to have the moment where every senator is going to have to vote, should there be any witnesses, that's what the vote will be. not should it be mulvaney or bolton, but any witnesses. i could argue that that's harder for vulnerable senators to vote no on. basically what they're saying is i'm not interested in hearing anything. i don't want to hear bolton, i don't want to hear mulvaney, and then if that were to pass, if there were to be four republicans that would vote to hear some witnesses, then there

would be this protracted negotiation. >> but clearly mitch mcconnell thinks that the abstract vote is easier to sell than the specific one. >> i think it's -- i think he's -- i think it's riskier than he would ever let on. >> right. i agree with that. >> our experts stay with us. we turn to someone now who has a vote in all of this, u.s. senator chris coons, a democrat of delaware. thank you for stepping off the senate floor on your long day and jumping on television with us, sir. >> thank you for covering this. it's been a long and a challenging day. i've dedicated the last few hours to both listening to the arguments about the different motions to try and amend the rules that majority leader mcconnell is trying to ram through, and at times, reading back through the briefs of both sides and the record of the hearings in front of the house intelligence committee. for folks who may not have had hours to dedicate to this, it

really is galling to really square on look at the rules that majority leader mcconnell is trying to get adopted by the end of tonight. it really will produce a backwards process where the house managers will be presenting a case without the benefit of the additional evidence and witnesses that would allow us to really get to the truth. it raises the question whether my colleagues in the republican party want a fair trial or not. >> senator, you were one of the individuals we have watched seated here all day. you obviously are very close to it. do you have a viewer conclusion on what happened on why mitch mcconnell who is famously whipped many votes had to change this. do you view that as a genuine change or is there something else afoot? >> up the last minute hand scratched revisions from two to three days, and a slight tweak

to the evidentiary process. all i have heard is this is the result of a few republicans pressing him because he, when we came into session, he seemed determine to bowl ahead, giving the house managers just two days to make their entire case, and i think they were clear that that meant we would be here from 1:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., at least, and a number of my colleagues, i think, felt that that was overdoing it. as it is, i think the republican majority is still going to try and tear through this case in less than ten days from beginning to end. >> that's quite striking. senator, i have another question for you, and then our analysts and your former colleague, senator mccaskill is going to jump in if that's all right with you. my question goes to what's happening, there has been all of this wrangling over documents, party line votes, now there's this urgent request to use the powers of the senate to subpoena, to force the testimony of mick mulvaney, why are you

and your democratic colleagues leading with him, and do you think you can pick up any support for this vote? i hope we can but the votes so far today suggest that mitch mcconnell continues his iron grip on the republican majority and their caucus. mick mulvaney would be the most relevant witness to the question what was president trump thinking, why did he put a hold on vitally needed military assistance to ukraine as the acting chief of staff and the former omb director mulvaney was in the room for the conversations, was on the e-mail chains. i'll remind you, he famously came out and in a press conference blurted out there's going to be political influence in foreign policy, get over it, when pressed about whether there was a quid pro quo. as i have been going back through the record of the house intelligence committee hearings, it is really striking just how much senior members of the administration, folks from the national security council,

ambassadors, the ambassador to ukraine, the ambassador to the eu, step forward despite opposition from the white house, despite president trump's repeated efforts to block their testimony, and gave very clear evidence that there was a second whole foreign policy afoot that was being run by the president's personal attorney rudy giuliani. we heard smnippets of that, different pieces of those rules here, and so i went back and dug through all of it. i think the reason we're going after mick mulvaney is the first witness we're seeking is that his testimony would be most directly relevant and if he testified truthfully in front of the senate, i think it would be really important to making a decision here on the most important article of impeachment which is alleging that president

trump abused the power of his office for personal gain. >> chris, let's assume, let's be optimistic here and assume that when the time comes next wednesday that everyone votes on whether to allow any witnesses or any documents that there are four republicans that vote with the democrats for that concept. what procedurally do you think will happen then? will there be a negotiation between schumer and mcconnell or will you start seeing individual votes teed up for a bolton, for a mulvaney, for omb docs, how do you think that will play out if the four votes actually surface at that critical moment? >> well, that's something we're going to be talking about in the course of this week. the rules as i understand it, having just read over it earlier today that majority leader mcconnell is trying to get through tonight would require that there be a deposition first before anyone appears on the

senate floor. and that would slow up the process for at least another week i would believe, if we came to some agreement. as you know well, during the impeachment trial of president bill clinton, after a fair amount of back and forth, and negotiation ultimately the rules were adopted 100-0 on a bipartisan basis. that's not what's happening here. majority leader mcconnell did not share a draft of these rules with any senate democrat, not with senator schumer or anyone else until we got to the floor today. and he is not seeming to be in the mood to consult or try and reach any sort of a bipartisan compromise, so my hunch is that we will get exactly the result that four republican senators insist on and that they will be the only bull work between us and a sham trial that really has no evidence and no witnesses presented to the senate. >> and senator, just briefly, we have about 30 seconds, and i know you have to go back to the floor, but from what we have been watching, what has it been like in there?

has everyone been studious, has everyone been paying attention. give us a little sense of what it's been, it's been a historic day. >> it's a very somber mood. it's been a very heavy day. i will tell you that i think adam schiff, the congressman from california who leads the house managers has been very compelling in his statements, in his testimony. there's a number of other members of the house, val demings, jason crow have done a strong job. i found president trump's defense team more suited for cable tv presentation for sort of the seriousness of the senate, but that may be my response to the bombastic tone they took. >> senator, you're hurting my feelings. i know how hard and how long each and every member of this institution has been working today. we have been watching it. so i appreciate you taking a little bit of your scarce spare

time and spending it with us. i know from the comments you made, you care deeply about this, you shared your perspective and your view of the stakes. senator chris coons, thank you so much. the senator is going to return. we are going to return. this trial is supposed to resume shortly. our panel is here, experts are here, chris hayes is here. stay tuned, you're watching special coverage on msnbc of the senate trial of president donald trump. al of president donald trump. as a struggling actor, i need all the breaks that i can get. at liberty butchemel... cut. liberty mu... line? cut. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance so you only pay for what you need. cut. liberty m... am i allowed to riff? what if i come out of the water? liberty biberty... cut. we'll dub it. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance

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and good evening as we come up on 8:00, we are rejoining our special live coverage of what is the first full day in the third impeachment trial of a president in the republic's history, the impeachment trial of donald j. trump. the senate has taken a brief dinner recess, 30 minutes, although they have been running slightly behind. i'm chris hayes in new york, we have a bunch of folks with us at the table, chuck rosenberg, michael steele, claire mccaskill, ar ri mel burn. if -- ari melber. two amendments that have been proposed and both have been voted on, voted down in fact, to be tabled, specifically the first amendment proposed by the senate democrats was to subpoena documents from the white house. the second to subpoena documents from the state department. the third, which we just had was to subpoena documents from omb. a