Politics

Watch: Senate questions House managers and Trump's legal team in impeachment trial

[The stream is slated to start at 1 p.m. ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a player above at that time.]

President Donald Trump's impeachment trial resumes Wednesday, with the Senate poised to question his legal team and the House managers.

The defense, led by White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow, completed oral arguments on Tuesday, having used only about half of its allotted 24 hours to lay out the case for acquittal and urge senators not to call additional witnesses.

Sekulow on Tuesday addressed for the first time a bombshell report revolving around former national security advisor John Bolton, whom House Democrats are pushing to have subpoenaed as a witness.

In Monday's arguments, Trump's lawyers ignored the news, based on an unpublished manuscript of Bolton's forthcoming memoir.

"You cannot impeach a president on an unsourced allegation," Sekulow said, calling the report "inadmissible" as evidence, though he did not deny the allegation.

According to Bolton's upcoming memoir, "The Room Where It Happened," Trump told him in person last summer that he planned to withhold nearly $400 million in U.S. foreign aid to Ukraine until the country agreed to launch investigations into Trump's political rivals, most notably, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump has denied the report. Wednesday morning, the president attacked Bolton in a series of tweets, at once calling the former official's new book "nasty & untrue" while implying that it contains "All Classified National Security" material.

TWEET

In light of the Bolton revelations, moderate Republicans such as Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine expressed more willingness to calling for new testimony. The GOP holds a 53-47 majority in the Senate. Democrats need four Republicans to join with them in a vote to call new witnesses.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., after the proceedings on Tuesday said a preliminary vote count among senators indicated that the GOP does not have enough votes to block witnesses or additional documents.

Following the question period, the Senate will vote on whether to call witnesses or produce additional documents.

Subscribe to CNBC on YouTube.