WASHINGTON — House impeachment managers began laying out the case against President Donald Trump on Wednesday, exhorting senators to save American democracy by sending an unmistakable warning to future presidents that they cannot abuse their power for personal gain.

“Should the American people just come to expect that our presidents will corruptly abuse their office to seek the help of a foreign power to cheat in our elections? Should we just get over it?” demanded Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the intelligence committee chairman and lead prosecutor in this historic trial, only the third of a U.S. president.

“We cannot allow a president to withhold military aid from an ally, or to elicit help in a reelection campaign,” he said. “Are we really prepared to say that the only answer to presidential misconduct is we just need to get over it?”

For 24 hours spread over three days, the prosecution side will proceed without knowing whether the Senate will review any evidence or hear from any witnesses before voting on whether to convict the president and remove Trump from office. A contentious 13-hour Tuesday session that lasted until nearly 2 a.m. on Wednesday — an endurance test for senators, some as old as 86 — ended with a complete shutout for Trump’s accusers on those points.

House managers slipped some of that material into their arguments by playing video clips from weeks of hearings and from Trump’s comments at campaign rallies and White House events.

Schiff laced his summary with an appeal to conscience, framing the decision senators face as one not solely about the corrupt conduct of one president but about the survival of the American republic. Vindicating Trump would invite future presidents to operate as if they are above the law, he warned.

His use of the phrase “get over it” echoed acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s insistence at an Oct. 17 news conference that there was nothing unusual, or wrong, about withholding $391 million in military aid meant to help Ukraine deter Russian aggression on its borders.

Trump froze the funding at a time when he and his agents were prodding Ukraine to announce a corruption probe aimed at tarnishing Joe Biden, the former vice president and leading Democratic contender for president in 2020.

“They can’t contest the facts. The president was the key player in a scheme. Everyone was in the loop. He directed the actions of his team. He personally asked the foreign government to investigate his opponent,” Schiff said. “If this conduct is not impeachable, then nothing is.”

Trump’s defense team will have three days to lay out his case after the House managers are done.

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The outlines of the allegations are well known, as are the arguments from Trump and his allies that impeachment isn’t justified, and that House Democrats ran an unfair inquiry with a preordained outcome.

“It’s a total hoax. It’s a disgrace. …They had no case. It’s all a hoax. It’s a con job,” Trump said in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum.

He lashed out at his leading tormentors, calling Schiff a “corrupt politician” and House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, a fellow New Yorker who addressed the Senate later Wednesday, “a sleazebag.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Trump ally, described the House manager’s case as “an awful lot of repetition…. The longer they talk at this point, the weaker their case is getting.”

He needled Democrats for arguing that Trump’s quest for a corruption probe focused on Hunter Biden was baseless because Biden’s lucrative post with Ukrainian energy firm Burisma while his father served as vice president is “prima facie evidence of corruption.”

Hunter Biden’s testimony has become “critical,” given the allegation that Trump’s motives were suspect, Cruz said during the dinner break. “That was a question not only about Ukrainian corruption but a question about American corruption.”

Schiff, the lead prosecutor, took the first shift in the well of the Senate, the 100 jurors seated at their desks and the Chief Justice John Roberts seated behind him, presiding.

He depicted a president courting foreign interference in the U.S. election, based on debunked conspiracy theories and, worse, in a way that jibed with Kremlin interests.

“Russia almost certainly was looking for information related to the former vice president’s son, so that the Kremlin could also weaponize it against Mr. Biden, just like it did against Hillary Clinton in 2016,” he said.

Unethical tapestry

Houston Rep. Sylvia Garcia, one of the seven House impeachment managers, highlighted Trump’s backchannel efforts to wrest a political favor from Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy — the Biden probe.

It was part of a tapestry meant to show Trump’s eagerness to smear a political rival and to use levers of presidential power to advance personal interests even at the expense of national security.

Garcia played a May 2 clip of Trump, a week after Biden launched his 2020 campaign, calling Biden’s Ukraine connections a “major scandal, major problem.” One week later, she noted, The New York Times published an article in which Rudy Giuliani, discussed his plan to press Zelenskiy, in his capacity as Trump’s private lawyer, to investigate Biden.

“Giuliani said, `We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do.’ Giuliani even went so far as to acknowledge that his actions could benefit President Trump personally,” Garcia said. “He was not doing this on behalf of the government. He was doing this for the personal interests of his client, Donald J. Trump.”

She also played a clip of Trump telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on June 12 that if a foreign government offered dirt on a political rival, “I would take it” without calling the FBI. “There’s nothing wrong with listening,” he said.

Garcia called it a “shocking video.”

Trump defenders shrug off the frozen Ukraine aid, arguing that Trump eventually released it, three weeks before it would have expired on Sept. 30. House managers scoffed, insisting that Trump gets no credit for lifting a freeze after he’d gotten caught, especially one the Government Accountability Office deemed unlawful last week.

House manager Jason Crow, D-Colo., an Army veteran, noted that the aid represented about 10% of Ukraine’s military budget. “It’s safe to say that they can’t fight effectively without it,” he said.

Another long day

Just before the dinner break, as House manager Rep. Hakeem Jeffries was speaking, a man burst into one of the visitor galleries above the Senate floor, shouting “Jesus Christ!” and something else that got garbled as security officers dragged him outside.

He was the first protester to disrupt the trial. Roberts banged his gavel and called for order.

For the jurors, the physical demands of being sedentary for so long was taking a toll.

Several senators were seen briefly nodding off during the first mid-afternoon break. By the time Schiff assured senators he had just 10 minutes left in opening remarks — signaling an impending 20-minute recess — over 20 GOP senators were missing from their seats, along with four Democrats.

Some were simply stretching their legs at their desks but many had left the chamber, despite Senate rules requiring attendance at all times during the trial.

Tuesday’s session stretched well past midnight. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to hold sessions six days a week. With three days per side, that means opening arguments would end late Tuesday. Two days of written questions would follow.

His goal has been to end the trial before Trump returns the Capitol on Feb. 4 to deliver a State of the Union address.

In party-line votes on Tuesday, 53-47, Republicans quashed Democrats’ efforts to pry loose records from the White House, Pentagon and State Department for the trial, along with subpoenas for key witnesses Trump barred from cooperating with the House inquiry, including Mulvaney, his acting chief of staff and budget chief, and John Bolton, his former national security advisor.

The votes “reveal the charade” of the Senate trial, asserted the Democratic minority leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. “It’s a question of conscience. Senate Republicans have the power in their hands to make it a fair trial. Will they use it when it matters?”

Trump allies used the same terminology.

“What we’ve seen is just a rehashing of yesterday’s charade,” said Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who accused Democrats of wasting time with a redundant presentation aimed mainly at putting vulnerable incumbents on the spot. “The goal of this entire process is not to remove the president from office. It’s simply to remove certain Republican senators from Colorado, North Carolina, Iowa, Maine and Arizona.”

POLITICS

As Trump impeachment trial opens, Republicans unite to quash demands for Bolton, Mulvaney and other witnesses

BY TODD J. GILLMAN

With the trial under way, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton joined 20 other Republican attorneys general in a letter urging the Senate to end the impeachment trial immediately. They assert that the House impeachment effort is “lacking in any plausible or reasonable evidentiary basis” and is ” fundamentally flawed as a matter of constitutional law.”