Takeaways from the Senate impeachment trial

WASHINGTON — After closing arguments Monday in the historic Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, it’s all over except for the voting.

Senators will cast their final votes at 4 p.m. Wednesday, when both sides agree that Senate Republicans will ensure that neither article of impeachment — abuse of power or obstruction of Congress — gets the 67 aye votes needed for Trump’s conviction and removal from office.

Still, Democratic House managers and the president’s lawyers each spent two hours Monday trying to persuade the voting public and wavering senators to break with their party on at least one of the impeachment articles — to claim bipartisan support for their side.

After the Senate trial session ended, senators began going to the floor to explain how they will vote Wednesday. Senators can make their statements on the floor or by inserting it into the Congressional Record.

Here are highlights of the closing arguments.

Defense: Trump did no wrong

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow and White House counsel Patrick Cipollone closed their arguments by blasting Democrats for waging a three-year campaign to impeach Trump and a plea to let the voters make the final decision in November. “This entire campaign that started from the very first day that the president was inaugurated — it was a partisan one and it should never happen again,” Sekulow said. “The president has done nothing wrong, and these types of impeachment must end,” Cipollone said. “You will vindicate the right to vote, you will vindicate the rule of law by rejecting these articles. And I ask you to do that on a bipartisan basis this week and end the era of impeachment once and for all.”

Democrats: Trump won’t change

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead House manager, challenged Republicans, especially those who suggested Trump had learned his lesson and would not do it again. “He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again,” Schiff said. “He has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters little to him. What’s right matters even less, and decency matters not at all.” Schiff then made his final plea. “I do not ask you to convict him because truth or right or decency matters nothing to him, but because we have proven our case, and it matters to you,” he said. “Truth matters to you. Right matters to you. You are decent. He is not who you are.”

Starr cites Irving Berlin on Long Island

Trump lawyer Ken Starr started a long and winding argument that House Democrats failed to offer “fundamental fairness” to Trump in their impeachment proceedings by citing the composer Irving Berlin. At the end of World War I, Starr said, Berlin composed a song for a musical revue at “his Army camp out on Long Island, Suffolk County. The song was ‘God Bless America,’ ” Starr said, and it was meant to be “above politics, above partisanship … a song for all America.”

Crow paraphrases Albus Dumbledore

Meanwhile, House manager Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) paraphrased a quote from Hogwarts Professor Albus Dumbledore from the Harry Potter book series. The quote is hanging in his son’s room. “My wife and I have tried to teach our kids that what we can always control are our choices,” Crow said. “The quote is from Professor Dumbledore, who said, ‘It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.' ” To the senators deciding how to vote on impeachment, Crow said, “More than our words our choices will show the world who we really are.”