Trump news: Ken Starr blasted for hypocrisy for bemoaning 'political impeachment' as key Republicans signal they could turn on president
President's trial defence continues with arguments from former Clinton prosecutor as legal team attacks Joe Biden
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Twenty years after leading the impeachment efforts against Bill Clinton, Ken Starr made his debut on the Senate floor in defence of Donald Trump, while two Republican senators admit that John Bolton's testimony is becoming "increasingly likely" following bombshell revelations in the former national security chief's book.
The president reacted angrily after the manuscript Mr Bolton's book was leaked in which the former aide claims the president told him the decision to withhold military assistance to Ukraine last summer was explicitly tied to demands for an investigation into Joe Biden.
"If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book," Mr Trump tweeted, arguing that the House should have subpoenaed Mr Bolton when it was gathering evidence in November (it did), prompting impeachment manager Adam Schiff to say the revelation "blasts another hole" in his counsel's defence.
Senator Mitt Romney said Mr Bolton's revelations are "relevant" and that he would like to hear them on the Senate floor.
Susan Collins of Maine echoed Mr Romney's concerns and said that Mr Bolton's claims "strengthen the case for witnesses and have prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues".
All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment
Show all 6
Mr Starr was widely criticised for his defence and accused of contradicting his own arguments he made as a prosecutor. He derided the impeachment of Mr Trump over a lack of bipartisan support and claimed that the president was afforded executive privilege allowing him to withhold documents and testimony from subpoenas.
The president's defence also attacked Joe Biden and his son Hunter for what they argued was his corrupt role on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Meanwhile, Fox host Chris Wallace railed against a contributor he told to "get your facts straight" on air as the talking heads squabbled over the admission of evidence in the Clinton trial compared to the Trump proceedings.
Back at the White House, Mr Trump hosted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his opposition counterpart Benny Gantz for briefing on his plans to bring peace to the Middle East.
The president intends to announce those plans on Tuesday amid widespread criticism and calls for boycotts from Palestinians, who have largely been ignored from US-led discussions over the region's future.
Follow live coverage as it happened:
The Trump campaign liked Ken Starr's argument that the president can withhold documents and evidence from subpoenas.
Asked for his best defence if he's brought up at the impeachment trial, Joe Biden tells CBS News says he has "nothing to defend. This is all a game."
"The reason he's being impeached is he tried to get a government to smear me, and they wouldn't. Come on."
The White House's spiritual adviser is defending her sermon in which she calls for "Satanic pregnancies to miscarry."
From John T Bennett in Washington:
The president’s lawyers started their second day of case-making by attacking the very nature of a presidential impeachment, with one of his lawyers telling senators it is “tantamount to domestic war”.
Still, the bold rhetoric showed again how the president’s lawyers are taking cues from the always-tough-talking Donald Trump.
The House Intelligence Committee's live-debunking of the president's impeachment counsel includes this handy chart, contradicting one of the big Republican attacks of the Congressional impeachment process.
Here's Mark Meadows telling CBS News that Republicans will face political repercussions if they break from their party to oust the president.
Pam Bondi is on the Senate floor presenting the corruption conspiracy between the Bidens and Burisma, which the president had asked Ukraine to investigate, a request at the heart of his abuse of power charge.
Here's archconservative Andrew McCarthy writing in the National Review that John Bolton's recent revelations have "blown up" the president's legal defence strategy.
He writes: "You always want the foundation of your defense to be something that is true, that you are sure you can prove, and that will not change ... Instead, the president and his team decided to make a stand on ground that could not be defended, on facts that were unfolding and bound to change. Last night, that ground predictably shifted.”
Trump's defence team is arguing that Hunter Biden benefited from nepotism without any experience in the energy sector under control of a corrupt oligarch.
They also claim that Biden's corruption was active under the Obama administration, when Republicans controlled both chambers, though they never investigated. Trump also didn't tell the Justice Department or ask for any legal recourse when he took office.
We're closing down live coverage for today.
Stay tuned with The Independent for more from the Trump administration.
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