Trump impeachment news: President gives 'chilling' defence as his legal team lay out furious response to Senate trial

On eve of trial, counsel and prosecution teams dispute grounds for removal as gun rights rally throttles Virginia

Donald Trump denies knowing Lev Parnas 13 times

The day before his impeachment trial is set to begin, Donald Trump's lawyers are urging the Senate reject the charges against him and are calling the hearings an "illegitimate partisan effort to take him down" by Democrats.

Meanwhile, the prosecution team from the House has filed a stern reply to the president's legal team, following their response to a summons request calling the impeachment articles "constitutionally invalid." House managers replied, calling the president's assertion that he can't be removed from the presidency "chilling" and "dead wrong".

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, who is on that prosecution team, has warned that the CIA and National Security Agency could be holding on to further key evidence regarding the Ukraine scandal that led to the president's impeachment, ahead of the commencement of the Senate trial on Tuesday.

The results of a CNN poll, released the day before the trial begins, revealed that 51 per cent of Americans support the president's removal, and nearly 70 per cent want witness testimony.

Lawyers preparing to defend Mr Trump took to the talk show circuit on Sunday to argue that he cannot be removed from office on abuse of power grounds, a position dismissed as “absurdist” and “arrant nonsense” by Mr Schiff and fellow leading Democrat Jerrold Nadler, who together have helped build the case against him.

Meanwhile, as Mr Trump prepared to leave for Switzerland to participate in the World Economic Forum, the White House had no scheduled events to recognise Martin Luther King Jr's memorial and birthday, breaking once more from previous administration's tradition of service and volunteering to honour the civil rights leader.

The president instead voiced his support for thousands of gun rights advocates carrying weapons in Virginia in protest of upcoming gun control legislation, while White House advisor Kellyanne Conway argued that Dr King would not support impeachment, which she said has "dragged Americans through the process" of considering the president's removal from office.

On Twitter over the weekend, President Trump continued to attack 2020 candidate Michael Bloomberg, revealed a surprise appreciation for Hollywood Golden Age star Cary Grant and tweeted an astonishing claim from Fox News host Mark Levin that: “In the House, the president got less due process than the 9/11 terrorists.”

Follow coverage as it happened:

Key Points

• Trump lawyers branded 'absurd' for dismissal of impeachment case
• President hails China trade deal in Texas, makes 2020 pitch to farmers
• Trump renews Twitter attack on Mike Bloomberg, pushes 9/11 comparison
• Adam Schiff says NSA, CIA withholding Ukraine documents
• Damning Trump, Alan Dershowitz attacks on Ken Starr resurface

[20 January 2020 19:03 · Alex Woodward]

He's calling Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker — the authors of A Very Stable Genius, a damning portrait of the inside of the White House that relies on more than 200 sources — "stone cold losers."

[20 January 2020 19:28 · Phil Thomas]

The president is also taking a few liberties with the latest Rasmussen poll, which puts his approval rating at 51%. This is much higher than other estimates – Gallup's early January poll suggests that 44% approve and 53% disapprove of his performance, while FiveThirtyEight has 42.5% in favour and 52.9% against.

But even the good news from Rasmussen isn't quite good enough for Mr Trump: he claims that an unspecified "they" has determined that you're allowed to add a random number to your approval rating – in this case between seven and 10%. Which would give him an excellent approval rating (just not one the American public necessarily agrees with).

[20 January 2020 19:55 · Alex Woodward]

The Trump administration's response to Dr Martin Luther King Jr's memorial and birthday on Monday has included using the murdered civil rights leader for a campaign ad, posting a photo taken in 2019, and a tweet from the First Lady that is bizarrely vague. The president himself is headed to Switzerland.

Asked how the president is observing the day, Kellyanne Conway said that Mr Trump "agrees with many of the things that Dr Martin Luther King stood for and agreed with for many years, including unity and equality." Then she pivoted to the impeachment, saying, "He's not the one trying to tear the country apart."

Ms Conway said Dr King's "vision" did not include "Americans dragged through the process where the president is not going to be removed from office".

[20 January 2020 20:41 · Alex Woodward]

 

[20 January 2020 21:15 · Alex Woodward]

A new poll finds that 51 per cent of Americans believe the Senate should vote to remove Donald Trump from office.

The CNN/SSRS poll of 1,156 Americans found that nearly 70 per cent of respondents believe the Senate trial should include new witness testimony, though Republican respondents are divided. Forty-eight per cent say yes to witnesses, while 44 per cent say no.

Still, a partisan divide remains between Democrats and Republicans on the question of removal, with nearly 90 per cent of Democrats agreeing the president should be removed from office and only 8 per cent of Republicans believing the same.

The poll also asked respondents about the passage of the USMCA deal, Iran and the killing of Qassem Soleimani, and threats posed by Russia and North Korea.

[20 January 2020 21:30 · Alex Woodward]

We're wrapping up live coverage for today

Stay tuned with The Independent for more coverage of the Trump administration.