Trump news: Rape accuser asks for president's DNA, as impeachment judge foils attempt to reveal whistleblower on Senate floor

✕

Close

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox

Get our free Inside Washington email

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

Donald Trump has lashed out at lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff, again calling him “mentally deranged”, as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell claims to have seen off the threatened Republican rebellion on subpoenaing new witnesses and hopes to press ahead with the president’s acquittal on Friday after a final question-and-answer session in the upper chamber today.

Mr Schiff ripped into the president's defence team after the president's lawyer Alan Dershowitz argued that his client couldn't be impeached for an action he thought might get him re-elected.

"It's astonishing on the floor of this body someone would make that argument", Mr Schiff said. "It didn't begin that way in the beginning of the president's defence. What we have seen over the last couple of days is a descent into constitutional madness because that way madness lies."

Mr Schiff also was furious with Senate Republican efforts to attack and name the whistle-blower whose report of Mr Trump's 25 July phone call is at the heart of the impeachment charges. Chief Justice John Roberts, who presides over the trial, refused to ask a question submitted by Senator Rand Paul that the chief justice believed would out the whistle-blower and other national security staffers.

The Senate could vote to acquit the president on Friday, despite Democrat attempts to inject a witness deposition process, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Mr Trump can't be acquitted "if you don't have a trial."

E Jean Carroll, who accused Mr Trump of raping her in the 1990s, is requesting a DNA sample from the president to determine whether it matches genetic material she wore. Lawyers for the columnist — who filed a defamation suit against Mr Trump last year after he said she was lying about the allegation — sent a notice to the president's attorneys demanding a sample be returned by 2 March.

Meanwhile, US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross is in hot water after saying during an interview with Fox Business, with a staggering absence of basic compassion, that China being struck by the coronavirus “will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America”.

The president said all "only five" people have contracted the virus in the US and are "all in good recovery", though a sixth case was confirmed in Chicago on Thursday. He spent his afternoon in Michigan at a White House event celebrating passage of the USMCA trade deal before a campaign rally in Iowa.

In a further embarrassing development for the president, a section of his US-Mexico border wall – which he once promised would be “impenetrable” – has been blown over in El Centro, California, after being hit by strong desert winds.

Follow live coverage as it happened: