Trump impeachment: Chief Justice John Roberts and senators sworn in as trial begins – as it happened

Live politics coverage continues on Friday’s blog:

Today, the Senate opened the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, nearly four months after Nancy Pelosi first announced an impeachment inquiry.

Here’s a timeline of key events leading up to this moment:

Susan Collins, a moderate Republican senator from Maine, said she’s “likely” to vote to call additional witnesses.

Collins, who could be a swing vote in the impeachment trial, has criticized both Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and Elizabeth Warren for prejudging impeachment evidence, suggested that lawmakers should follow the model of the 1999 Clinton impeachment trial.

In a statement, she said she had not decided on “any particular witnesses” she’d like to call and would like to hear “both sides” before deciding. “Prior to hearing the statement of the case and the Senators asking questions, I will not support any attempts by either side to subpoena documents or witnesses,” she said.

Even the oath is controversial

“Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws: so help you God?

Chief Justice John Roberts swore he would. The senators swore they would.

But in the lead-up to today, both Democrats and Republicans have been accusing each other of lacking impartiality. The Guardian’s Lauren Gambino reports:

Report: Federal prosecutors are investigating whether former FBI director Comey leaked information to reporters.

The Justice Department is reportedly investigating a years-old leak of classified information about a Russian intelligence document, the New York Times reports, focusing on whether former FBI director James Comey was involved:

The case is the second time the Justice Department has investigated leaks potentially involving Mr. Comey, a frequent target of President Trump, who has repeatedly called him a “leaker.” Mr. Trump recently suggested without evidence that Mr. Comey should be prosecuted for “unlawful conduct” and spend years in prison.

The timing of the investigation could raise questions about whether it was motivated at least in part by politics. Prosecutors and F.B.I. agents typically investigate leaks of classified information around the time they appear in the news media, not years later. And the inquiry is the latest politically sensitive matter undertaken by the United States attorney’s office in Washington, which is also conducting an investigation of Mr. Comey’s former deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, that has been plagued by problems.

The Guardian has not independently verified the Times’ reporting.

Mike Pence: Parnas’ allegation is ‘completely false’

The vice-president reportedly said Lev Parnas’ charge that he knew that the White House’ pressure on Ukraine was “about the Bidens” is false.

Pence spoke with the LA Times’ Eli Stokols at a campaign event in Florida.

Pence also denied knowing Parnas.

More from Donald Trump’s religious freedom event at the White House this afternoon, where he addressed the Lev Parnas allegations and impeachment trial:

Now that the impeachment trial procedures are out of the way, Tuesday marks the day action will begin in earnest. That includes a seemingly outdated tradition where at the beginning of each day, sergeant-at-arms Michael Stenger will declare, “Here ye! Here ye! Here ye! All persons are commanded to keep silent, on pain of imprisonment.”

Details on the odd warning were reported by Roll Call, which dug into the history of the ceremony around threat of Senate jail.

In the past, the Senate has preferred to expel the senator from office, rather than send him or her to jail, so as not to deprive a state of its full representation. Such confrontations have occurred so infrequently in the Senate’s history that ambiguity is more readily available than specifics.

No senator has ever been imprisoned by Senate officials, but in the past, the threat of arrest and jail has silenced even the most agitated senators.

The president weighs in:

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump said he doesn’t know Lev Parnas, the businessman who in the past 24 hours has repeatedly stated the president knew about his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political rival.

Trump acknowledged the two have a photo together, but said: “I meet thousands of people.”

Trump also said he is “probably” going to the Davos economic forum this week, though there has been speculation he could cancel the trip because of the trial.

The Ukrainian government has opened an investigation into the possible illegal surveillance of Marie Yovanovitch when she was the US ambassador to Kyiv, following the publication of messages about her between two associates of Donald Trump’s personal lawyer.

The state department has yet to make any statement on the possibility that Yovanovitch had been put under surveillance, after WhatsApp messages were released on Tuesday by the House intelligence committee between Trump donor Robert Hyde and Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born Florida businessmen.

Both men had ties to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney and adviser, who the president had assigned to take the lead in persuading the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into his political rival former vice-president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

And just like that, the Senate trial is adjourned until Tuesday at 1pm ET, following the the Monday Martin Luther King Jr federal holiday.

Before wrapping up the day’s mostly ceremonial events, senators signed an oath book. They all used the same pen (for the Clinton impeachment, senators used individual souvenir pens that were printed with typos).

Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, also ticked through the procedures.

Chief justice John Roberts has landed in the Capitol and the Senate quorum call is taking place.

After justice Roberts is sworn-in, he will swear-in the senators.

The next set of impeachment trial procedures is due to begin at 2pm ET – about 15 minutes from now.

That’s when the chief justice of the supreme court, John Roberts, will walk from the courtroom to the Capitol building across the street. Once in the building, he’ll be flanked by four Senators who will escort him to the chamber. Roberts, who is presiding over the trial, will then take an oath before swearing-in the 99* gathered senators.

This is what it looked like for Bill Clinton’s trial:

*Senator Jim Inhofe is with a family member with a medical issue and plans to be sworn-in on Tuesday, with no delay for the trial, according to his office.

Details from inside the Senate chamber from Guardian senior political reporter, Lauren Gambino:

Green has pursued the impeachment of Donald Trump since May 2017, five months after the president took office. He said then that the president should be impeached because of his hateful rhetoric and said he incites violence.

In the first of three impeachment resolutions Green introduced, the representative from Texas said Trump “with his statements done more than insult individuals and groups of Americans, he has harmed the society of the United States, brought shame and dishonor to the office of President of the United States, sowing discord among the people of the United States by associating the majesty and dignity of the presidency with causes rooted in white supremacy, bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism, white nationalism, or neo-Nazism.”

Schiff has just concluded reading the final paragraph of the resolution:

Wherefore, President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. President Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

The impeachment managers have left the Senate and the proceedings will resume in about an hour and a half (2pm ET), when the chief justice is sworn-in.

The seven House impeachment managers have completed their (second) ceremonial walk to the Senate to deliver articles of impeachment. Yesterday, they were told to come back today to present the documents.

They have been escorted to the Senate floor and a proclamation was made by the seargant-at-arms.

We have a live feed of the trial at the top of the blog. Lead impeachment manager, Adam Schiff, has taken the podium.

Mixed reactions from Senate Republicans to the nonpartisan GAO report which found the White House broke the law by withholding military aid:

Matt Wolking, a deputy director of communications for the Trump 2020 campaign, responded by highlighting how many times the GAO found Barack Obama’s administration violated the law: four.

(one, two, three, four)

A complicating factor for Wolking’s argument is that these charged Obama’s agencies with breaking the law, not the White House directly, as today’s GAO report does. And incident two violated the law because the president was not involved.

More from Pelosi on impeachment.

She said the trial “is not without risk” and said the revelations in the Lev Parnas documents, and what he has been saying in interviews, would normally warrant a special prosecutor.

But not in this White House. “Does anybody think the rogue attorney general is going to appoint a special prosecutor?” Pelosi said. “No, because he’s implicated in all of this.”

When asked again about US attorney general, William Barr, Pelosi said: “I don’t know who is the puppet – Trump or the Attorney General.”

Asked about the credibility of Lev Parnas, Pelosi said the documents were important. “He would be a credible witness if what he is testifying to is about the issue at hand, the president’s behavior.”

This morning, Pelosi’s office said she raised a record-breaking $87m for Democratic candidates in 2019.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi is speaking to reporters and said the impeachment trial is needed because “every day new, incriminating information comes forward.”

She responded to the independent government watchdog report released this morning which found the White House violated the law by withholding military aid to Ukraine, a central part of the impeachment inquiry. “This reinforces, again, the need for documents and eyewitnesses in the Senate,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi then spoke about a poster in her grade school classroom which said: “What a tangle web we weave when we first practice to deceive,” and said with this White House, you see that happen “more and more.”

She also spoke about the House’s other matters, specifically the need for disaster aid in Puerto Rico. The White House has delayed distributing aid to the island allocated by Congress after Hurricane Maria in Sep 2017 and it is under increased pressure to make those funds available after a string of earthquakes hit the island in the past month.

An eight-page report by the independent government watchdog GAO said the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) “withheld funds for a policy reasons” in the Ukraine affair, which violated the law.

The GAO’s central argument is the White House can’t unilaterally decide to withhold foreign aid that has been appropriated by Congress. An OMB spokesperson said the office disagreed with the watchdog’s findings.

“The president not only undermined our diplomatic relationships for his own personal, political gain – he also broke the law,” Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted in response to the findings. “He must be held accountable or he will continue breaking the law and putting the country at risk.”

Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said on the Senate floor that the GAO’s findings should get a “full hearing” in the impeachment trial.

The White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, just spoke with Fox & Friends about Lev Parnas and said the Trump administration was “not too concerned” about his allegations. She also questioned Parnas’s trustworthiness and his motives.

Lev Parnas said while he did not speak directly with Donald Trump about efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating the former vice-president Joe Biden, a political rival, he had met with the president several times. Parnas also said Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, told Parnas he was updating Trump in an interview with the New York Times.

Parnas is facing criminal charges in federal court, so he is not the most reliable witness, but a trove of his documents released to House investigators provided fresh evidence of the close relationship between Parnas and Giuliani ahead of the Senate trial. Trump has denied misconduct.

“My biggest regret is trusting so much,” Parnas said. “I thought I was being a patriot and helping the president,” he said, adding that he “thought by listening to the president and his attorney that I couldn’t possibly get in trouble or do anything wrong”.

Parnas’s statements to the Times echo a similar interview he gave to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday and Anderson Cooper on CNN.

Giuliani and Trump’s efforts were “all about 2020”, Parnas told CNN.

“That was the most important thing,” Parnas said, “for him to stay on for four years and keep the fight going. I mean, there was no other reason for doing it.”

Hello and good morning

A key player at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, Lev Parnas, has told reporters Donald Trump was fully aware of his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the president’s political rivals, just as the Senate prepares to be sworn-in for the trial.

Parnas, a businessman and GOP donor, told MSNBC Trump “knew exactly what was going on”. He told the New York Times: “I am betting my whole life that Trump knew exactly everything that was going on that Rudy Giuliani was doing in Ukraine.”

Trump has denied misconduct, and it’s unclear how much this new material will be absorbed into the Senate impeachment trial.

House prosecutors are expected to arrive at the Senate midday to complete a set of procedural rituals that will formally open the third impeachment trial in the Senate in US history.

Trump, meanwhile, has a quiet schedule for the day besides an announcement about prayer in schools in the afternoon.

We’ll have live updates from the Capitol as well as from the presidential campaign trail.