Capitol Police said they arrested 41 demonstrators, charging most of them with crowding, obstructing or incommoding.

The demonstration involved groups such as Public Citizen, Women’s March, Center for Popular Democracy Action, Stand Up America, March for Truth, Demand Justice and the Poor People’s Campaign.

Protesters first met for a silent protest in the Hart Senate Building before moving to Capitol Building’s steps shouting for more witnesses in impeachment trial.

“The Republicans are rigging this trial and the one force that could actually change this equation is the power of the people coming out in the streets and demanding witnesses, demanding evidence and demanding conviction and removal,” said Rafael Kadaris, a protester with RefuseFacism.org.

Need to Impeach, another group that participated in the protest, delivered certificates and presented trophies to the offices of all Senate Republicans for their “participation in covering up” Trump’s actions.

“By not allowing witnesses and holding Trump accountable, they are breaking their oaths of office. They are betraying the American people and our constitution,” said Nathaly Arriola, the group’s executive director. “They are covering up for Donald Trump’s crimes. Voters will not forget this in the months ahead”, The Hill reported.

Similar protests were also planned for Wednesday in Anchorage, Alaska, Phoenix, Denver, Lexington, Ky., Portland, Maine, and Salt Lake City, organizers said.

The Senate is expected to vote Friday on whether to allow more witnesses and documents. If Republicans rebuff Democratic efforts to call witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton, the Senate will likely proceed to a vote to convict or acquit.

Senate Republicans have become increasingly confident they will avoid a messy floor fight over witnesses and vote to acquit Trump.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – Closing out their case, House Democrats warned in Trump impeachment trial that the president will persist in abusing his power and endangering American democracy unless Congress intervenes to remove him before the 2020 election.

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“Trump wants to be all-powerful,” Nadler said. “He doesn’t want to have to respect the Congress, he does not have to respect the representatives of the will of the people.”

Democrats have accused Trump of abusing his power by using US resources in the form of military aid to Ukraine to pressure a foreign government to investigate business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Only his will goes,” Nadler added. “He is a dictator. This must not stand and that is another reason he must be removed from office,” The Hill reported.

Earlier this week Nadler struck a nerve with Senate Republicans after accusing the Republican members who voted against bringing in additional witnesses to the trial of being part of a “cover-up”.

After his comments, several Republican senators, including key moderates Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), said they were “offended” and “stunned” by Nadler’s comments.

Democrats have until Friday evening to make their case to Republican senators. Starting on Saturday, Trump’s legal defense team will begin presenting its case to the Senate.

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – Republicans and Democrats battled over summoning high-level White House witnesses Tuesday in a marathon first day of arguments in US President Donald Trump trial for abuse of power.

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Four months after the Ukraine scandal exploded and went on to overshadow the end of Trump’s term, and 10 months before Americans go to the polls to decide whether to re-elect him, the 100 members of the Senate will gather at 1 PM (1800 GMT) with chief justice John Roberts presiding over the trial.

The job of these lawmakers, sworn in last week as jurors, is to decide if Trump abused his office and obstructed Congress as charged in two articles of impeachment approved last month by the House of Representatives.

Part of the scandal centers on a July 25 telephone call in which Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, Trump’s potential opponent in the November vote.

Democrats, who control the House of Representatives and led the investigation, accuse Trump of manipulating Ukraine by withholding nearly $400 million in military aid for its war against Russian-backed separatists and a White House meeting for Zelensky until the latter announced a Biden probe.

“President Trump abused the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in our elections for his own personal political gain, thereby jeopardizing our national security, the integrity of our elections, and our democracy,” the House managers said Saturday in a memorandum.

They said the president’s behavior “is the Framers’ worst nightmare,” referring to the authors of the US Constitution, and that Trump deserves to be removed from office.

But, as the impeachment trial comes closer, Trump looks more certain to be acquitted because of the 53-47 Republican majority in the Senate.

He will be abroad as his trial opens; Trump left late Monday for the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The first order of business Tuesday will be to set the rules, such as how long they will hear the arguments of the House managers, or prosecutors, and whether they will call witnesses or seek other evidence.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell late Monday proposed rules calling for each side to have 24 hours over two days to present their arguments. The chamber will debate and vote on the proposed rules Tuesday.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said McConnell is rushing the trial and also making it harder for witnesses and documents to be presented.

The Democrats want key Trump administration officials to testify, such as former national security adviser John Bolton, in the belief that they know a lot about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Bolton has said he is willing to testify if subpoenaed.

The White House has said it expects the trial to be over in two weeks.

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Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, lashed out at Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, his Republican counterpart, on Sunday night in a news conference, accusing him of planning to conduct an abbreviated, unfair trial.

“Whether it’s because McConnell knows the trial is a cover-up and wants to whip through it as quickly as possible, or because he’s afraid to even more evidence will come out, he’s trying to rush it through,” Schumer said. “That is wrong. And it is so wrong that no one even knows what his plan is a day and a half before one of the most momentous decisions any senator will ever make.”

McConnell has so far refused to reveal details about the resolution he will seek to pass on Tuesday setting up the rules of the trial. But Senator David Perdue, Republican of Georgia, said on Sunday that McConnell was considering a plan that would give each side 24 hours to present arguments on the floor of the Senate, but with the requirement that they do so over the course of two days.

“Twenty-four hours of presentation by the House managers over two days, then 24 hours of presentation by the president’s team over two days and then 16 hours of questions submitted by the members in writing to the chief justice,” Perdue said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” adding, “That’s our proposal.”

Democrats reacted with alarm to that idea on Sunday. One aide working on the impeachment trial noted that it was scheduled to start each day at 1 p.m. and said that forcing the House managers to deliver 12 hours of arguments in a single day could push the trial into the early hours of the next morning when few people would be watching.

In his news conference, Schumer said the president and his Republican allies were eager for a short trial because they did not want the president’s actions to be put on display for everyone to see.

“He’s afraid of what the American people might hear,” Schumer said of McConnell, The New York Times reported.

The House managers, who will serve as prosecutors in the trial, met for several hours on Sunday to strategize and refine their presentations, according to congressional aides working on the trial. Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the managers, said Sunday that the Senate must seek testimony from additional witnesses.

“It’s not negotiable whether you have witnesses,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And this whole controversy about whether there should be witnesses is really a question of, does the Senate want to have a fair trial, or are they part of the cover-up of the president?”

But several Republican senators on Sunday dismissed the idea of calling additional witnesses, saying it was up to the House to conduct those interviews before approving the articles of impeachment and sending them to the Senate.

“If the House isn’t prepared to go forward with the evidence that they produced in the impeachment inquiry, maybe they ought to withdraw the articles of impeachment and start over again,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said on “Face the Nation,” adding that it was not the Senate’s responsibility to do work that the House failed to do before voting to impeach Trump.

“This, to me, seems to undermine or indicate that they’re getting cold feet or have a lack of confidence in what they’ve done so far,” he said.

Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, said his early assessment of the case against the president was that the House had not proved Trump was guilty of abuse of power or obstruction of Congress. He said senators should hear the arguments from both sides before making a decision on witnesses.

“If the case looks so flimsy, as some people say, if it’s nothing to it, it doesn’t rise to impeachable offenses, like a court of law, the court disposes of it,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Some Democrats have suggested that the Senate should hear from Lev Parnas, an associate of the president’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Parnas, who is under indictment on criminal campaign finance charges, was involved with Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Ukraine on Trump’s behalf and has provided texts, emails and other documents to House investigators.

Perdue dismissed Parnas, calling him a “distraction” and insisting that he had only secondhand information about the president’s actions.

“This is a person that’s been indicted right now. He’s out on bail,” Perdue said. “He’s been meeting with the House Intel Committee — if the House felt like this information was pertinent, I would think they would have included him in this, and his testimony in this.”

Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who is the lead manager in the impeachment trial, said the idea of refusing to call witnesses would be like a judge in a criminal case working with the defendant to make sure the prosecution could not call witnesses.

“No juror has ever heard that kind of thing from a judge because it would be absurd,” Schiff said on “This Week.” “It would be a mockery of a trial, not a trial, but that is what Senator McConnell to date is proposing.”

If the senators agree to seek the testimony of additional witnesses that would most likely extend the impeachment trial for at least several weeks. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of the president’s closest Republican allies, said Trump was confident about the outcome of the trial but eager to have it over as quickly as possible — if possible before he delivers his State of the Union address, scheduled for Feb. 4.

“His mood is to go to the State of the Union with this behind him and talk about what he wants to do for the next — rest of 2020 and what he wants to do for the next four years,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.” “He is very much comfortable with the idea this is going to turn out well for him. He believes politically this has helped him.”

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TEHRAN (Iran News) – US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needled President Donald Trump in an interview Friday night saying ‘You are impeached forever’, noting that the stain of impeachment will always live on his presidency regardless of the outcome of the Senate trial.

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Senior Democrats said they would include phone records and other documents provided by Florida businessman Lev Parnas when they make their case that Trump abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival, Democratic former Vice President Joe Biden.

Parnas was an associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who says Parnas helped him investigate Biden. The Ukraine-born Parnas has pleaded not guilty to federal campaign-finance violations in a separate criminal case.

The late inclusion of Parnas’ records, which were only made available to investigators in the last few days, suggested Democrats were trying to further substantiate their case before it heads to the Senate for trial.

Trump became only the third US president to be impeached when the Democrat-majority House last month approved charges that he abused the powers of his office and obstructed Congress in its investigation into his conduct.

The House will vote on Wednesday to send the impeachment charges to the Republican-controlled Senate, kicking off a trial that could last through early February. It will also name the House lawmakers who will prosecute the case against Trump.

Those lawmakers will walk in a procession through the US Capitol to the Senate to present the articles of impeachment to the secretary of the Senate around 5 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) on Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office said in a statement.

The Senate is expected to acquit Trump, as none of its 53 Republicans have voiced support for ousting him, a step that would require a two-thirds majority in the 100-member chamber.

Pelosi had delayed sending the impeachment charges to the Senate in an unsuccessful effort to get Republicans who control the chamber to agree to include new witness testimony that could be damaging to the Republican president.

Republicans mocked Pelosi for the delay, saying it undercuts her argument that Congress needed to impeach Trump because he was inviting foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election.

Democrats said the delay allowed new evidence to emerge through government records requests – and now, the material provided by Parnas.

Democrats said Parnas’ phone included a screenshot of a previously undisclosed May 10, 2019, a letter from Giuliani to then-President-elect Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine.

“In my capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent, I request a meeting with you,” Giuliani wrote, Reuters reported.

WITNESSES?

One of the most contentious issues that have yet to be resolved is whether to have witnesses in the Senate trial.

Democrats want to hear from current and former White House officials, such as former national security adviser John Bolton, whom they believe could provide insight into Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has resisted the idea of calling witnesses or digging up new evidence in the trial, saying his chamber should only consider evidence that has been collected by the House.

Wednesday’s House vote would allow the Senate to begin considering the charges against Trump next week, McConnell said. All the senators present will act as the jury at the trial, which will be overseen by the head of the US Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and has dismissed his impeachment as a partisan bid to undo his 2016 election win as he tries to win re-election in November.

“It’s just to try and smear this president because they know they can’t beat him at the ballot box,” White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told Fox News.

The case against Trump is focused on a July 25 telephone call in which he asked Zelenskiy to open a corruption investigation into Biden and his son Hunter, as well as a discredited theory that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 US election.

Joe Biden, whose son served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, is a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination to face Trump in the Nov. 3 election. Both Bidens have rejected the allegations and no evidence has emerged to substantiate them.

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