Don Lemon Cartoons

China counts 106 virus deaths as US, others move to evacuate

BEIJING (AP) — China’s death toll from a new viral disease that is causing mounting global concern rose by 25 to at least 106 on Tuesday as the United States and other governments prepared to fly their citizens out of the locked-down city at center of the outbreak.

The total includes the first death in Beijing, the Chinese capital, and 24 more fatalities in Hubei province, where the first illnesses from the newly identified coronavirus occurred in December.

Asian stock markets tumbled for a second day, dragged down by worries about the virus’s global economic impact.

The U.S. Consulate in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where authorities cut off most access Jan. 22 in an effort to contain the disease, was preparing to fly its diplomats and some other Americans out of the city on Wednesday. Japan and South Korea said they would send planes to Wuhan this week to evacuate their citizens. France, Mongolia and other governments also planned evacuations.

China’s increasingly drastic containment efforts began with the suspension of plane, train and bus links to Wuhan, a city of 11 million people. That lockdown has expanded to 17 cities with more than 50 million people in the most far-reaching disease-control measures ever imposed.

China extended the Lunar New Year holiday by three days to Sunday to reduce the risk of infection by keeping offices and factories nationwide closed and the public at home. Authorities in Shanghai, a global business center and home to 25 million people, extended the holiday in that city by an additional week to Feb. 9.

U.S. health officials expanded their recommendation for people to avoid non-essential travel to any part of China, rather than just Wuhan and other areas most affected by the outbreak.

Mongolia closed its vast border with China and North Korea said it was strengthening quarantine measures. Hong Kong and Malaysia are barring visitors from Hubei. Chinese travel agencies were ordered to cancel group tours nationwide.

There were 1,771 new cases confirmed in China on Monday, raising the national total to 4,515, according to the National Health Commission. It said 976 people were in serious condition.

The government has sent 6,000 extra medical workers to Wuhan from across China, including 1,800 who were due to arrive Tuesday, a commission official, Jiao Yahui, said at a news conference.

A baby boy was delivered by surgery in Wuhan after his 27-year-old mother was hospitalized as a “highly suspected” virus case, state TV reported. The mother, who has a fever and cough, was 37 weeks pregnant, or two weeks less than a standard full term.

Doctors wore protective masks and clothing for the delivery Friday at Union Hospital.

“It was unlikely for her to be able to give natural birth,” said the hospital’s deputy director of obstetrics, Zhao Yin. “After the baby was born, the mother would suffer less pressure in her lungs and she could get better treatment.”

Also Tuesday, the Education Ministry canceled English proficiency and other tests for students to apply to foreign universities. The ministry said the new semester for public schools and universities following Lunar New Year was postponed until further notice.

The Hong Kong government announced some government offices would remain closed until at least Monday and non-essential public employees were allowed to work from home.

Chinese financial markets were closed for the holiday, but stock indexes in Tokyo, Seoul and Sydney all declined.

Beijing’s official response has “vastly improved” since the 2002-03 SARS outbreak, which also originated in China, but “fears of a global contagion are not put to bed,” said Vishnu Varathan at Mizuho Bank in Singapore.

Airlines, resorts and other companies that rely on travel and tourism suffered steep losses. Prices of gold and bonds rose as traders moved money into safe haven holdings.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange, one of the world’s busiest, announced it was postponing the resumption of trading after the holiday by three days to Monday.

Scientists are concerned about the new virus because it is closely related to other diseases including SARS, which killed nearly 800 people.

So far, the new coronavirus doesn’t seem to spread as easily among people as SARS or influenza. Most of the cases that spread between people were of family members and health workers who had contact with patients. That suggests the new virus isn’t well adapted to infect people.

China has reported eight cases in Hong Kong and five in Macao, and more than 45 cases have been confirmed elsewhere in the world. Almost all involve mainland Chinese tourists or people who visited Wuhan.

On Tuesday, Taiwan said two 70-year-old tourists from Wuhan had been confirmed to have the disease, raising its total to seven cases. Thailand reported six members of a family from Hubei were new cases, raising its total to 14.

Germany confirmed its first case late Monday. Infections also have been confirmed in the United States, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, France, Canada, Australia and Sri Lanka.

The five American cases — two in southern California and one each in Washington state, Chicago and Arizona — are people who had recently arrived from central China. Health officials said they had no evidence the virus was spreading in the United States and they believe the risk to Americans remains low.

During the SARS outbreak, Chinese authorities were criticized for reacting slowly and failing to disclose information. The government has responded more aggressively to the latest outbreak.

Wuhan is building two hospitals, one with 1,500 beds and another with 1,000, for the growing number of patients. The first is scheduled to be finished next week.

The coronavirus family includes the common cold but also more severe illnesses such as SARS and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. The new virus causes cold- and flu-like symptoms, including cough and fever, and in more severe cases, shortness of breath and pneumonia.

The virus is thought to have spread to people from wild animals sold at a Wuhan market. China on Sunday banned trade in wild animals and urged people to stop eating meat from them.

Longtime Bolton confidant: 'Heads should roll' if bombshell book manuscript was leaked from NSC

Former CIA analyst and ex-National Security Council staffer Fred Fleitz spoke out about his longtime friend, former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, telling "The Ingraham Angle" in an exclusive interview Monday that the ex-official should withdraw his forthcoming book until after the election.
Host Laura Ingraham noted Fleitz served under Bolton twice in government office and has known him for 30 years. She added that Bolton has appeared on her show multiple times.
"John is an old friend and I didn't take any pleasure in writing this piece today," Fleitz said of a column he published on FoxNews.com that called for Bolton to withdraw his manuscript.
He said he takes Bolton and his staff at their word that they did not leak the book's manuscript
The New York Times exclusively reported the manuscript included a claim that Trump explicitly linked a hold on Ukraine aid to an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden. Trump told Bolton in August, according to a transcript of Bolton's forthcoming book reviewed by the Times, "that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens."
Fleitz said presidents of both parties should be able to confide in their national security advisors and that the best confidants are the ones who give the officeholder peace of mind that their ideas and musings will not appear in the press or in books.
He reiterated that he believes Bolton didn't leak anything to the Times, but warned that if some rumored sourcing is true, the people involved should be punished.
"[S]ending something so sensitive to the White House during impeachment hearing and all the bureaucrats [could] review -- I'm afraid it was an invitation for a leak. There is a report now that there are many paper copies made at the National Security Council. If that is true, heads should roll at the NSC," he said, adding that the Bolton team should have been more judicious than to send his book draft to the NSC in the first place, if they had.
Later in the interview, Ingraham joked that a previous political critic of Bolton's, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., appeared to want the ex-Bush administration ambassador to be put on the "Mount Rushmore of heroes in the modern political age," in the host's words.
"There seems to be a giant cover-up among so many of the leading people in the White House," Schumer said. "If it was ever even a shred of logic left to not hear witnesses and review the documents, Mr. Bolton's book just erased it."
In his FoxNews.com column, Fleitz wrote that executive privilege exists for people exactly like Bolton -- in sensitive positions and in close collaboration with presidents on national security matters where privacy is necessary.
He also pointed to former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who delayed the publication of his book that Fleitz said "detailed the incompetence of Joe Biden and the Obama [NSC] staff" for several years so as not to affect the 2012 presidential election.
"There will be a time for Bolton to speak out without appearing to try to tip a presidential election," Fleitz wrote.
Fox News' Gregg Re and Gillian Turner contributed to this report.

CNN Don Lemon panel faces intense backlash for mocking Trump supporters as illiterate 'credulous rubes'

Idiot

A CNN panel is facing intense backlash on Monday night for mocking Trump supporters as "credulous boomer rubes," even sparking fierce condemnation from President Trump and his presidential campaign.
The panel, which originally aired on Saturday night during special live coverage of the impeachment trial, featured CNN anchor Don Lemon, New York Times columnist and CNN contributor Wajahat Ali, and ex-GOP strategist Rick Wilson discussing the heated exchange Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had with an NPR reporter, where he allegedly challenged the journalist to point out Ukraine on a blank map.
Wilson used the topic to mock President Trump as well as his supporters.
"[Pompeo] also knows deep within his heart that Donald Trump couldn't find Ukraine on a map if you had the letter U and a picture of an actual physical crane next to it," Wilson began, causing Lemon to chuckle. "He knows that this is, you know, an administration defined by ignorance of the world. And so that's partly him playing to the base and playing to their audience. You know, the credulous boomer rube demo that backs Donald Trump."
As Lemon began crying with tears of laughter, Wilson went on to depict what he thought a typical Trump supporter sounded like.
"'Donald Trump's the smart one- any y'all elitists are dumb!'" Wilson said with a heavy southern accent.
"'You elitists with your geography and your maps- and your spelling!'" Ali chimed in during the mockery.
"'Your math and your reading!'" Wilson added. "'All those lines on the map!'"
The CNN anchor almost lost his breath from laughing, wiping tears from his eyes with a tissue.
"That was good," Lemon reacted. "That was a good one. I needed that."
The clip was spotted by former CNN digital producer Steve Krakauer, who blasted the panel.
"The arrogance, the dismissiveness, the smug cackling, the accents," Krakauer reacted. "If Donald Trump wins re-election this year, I’ll remember this brief CNN segment late one Saturday night in January as the perfect encapsulation for why it happened."
Trump knocked Lemon, who he called "the dumbest man on television" as well as his "terrible ratings."
Several members of the Trump campaign slammed the liberal network for mocking the president's supporters.
"Deplorables. This Deplorable is ready," Trump campaign director Brad Parscale shot back with a flexing arm emoji.
"This is a real segment from an actual program on a cable news network that asks to be taken seriously. Not subtle message to huge parts of America: THEY HATE YOU," Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh wrote.
"The media hardly ever hides their contempt for @realDonaldTrump supporters but this clip is featuring CNN’s @donlemon, The New York Times’ @WajahatAli, and @TheRickWilson is ludicrous. This is one of the most offensive segments I’ve seen in a while," GOP rapid response director Steve Guest reacted.
CNN received strong condemnation across social media.
"The smug political class hates the tens of millions of Americans who comprise our movement. They can cackle and grandstand...as we build a country based on sovereignty, economic nationalism, and the diffusion of power," former CNN commentator Steve Cortes reacted.
"This isn't disdain or disagreement. What Wajahat, Don, & Rick showed was a disrespect, hatred, & mockery for their fellow man who disagree. I don't want to hear @JakeTapper, @AndersonCooper, @BrianStelter, @ChrisCuomo, or anyone on @CNN lecture about their higher level of decency," NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck wrote.
"Don Lemon will laugh for a minute straight over Rick Wilson and Wajahat Ali mocking Trump supporters and calling them stupid, but don't you dare make a meme or he will freak out," Washington Free Beacon media analyst Cameron Cawthorne quipped.
"If you want to give people a reason to vote Trump as a screw you to the media, keep airing segments like these," Daily Caller editor Peter Hasson said.
Lemon was recently handed a lawsuit by a man who alleges he was a victim of a sexually-charged assault by the CNN anchor. The accuser, Dustin Hice, said Lemon offered a six-figure settlement before talks broke down and the formal complaint was filed.
He is currently competing in the first annual "Smug Industries Liberal Hack Tournament." Lemon defeated Vox journalist Aaron Rupar in the first round and will face off against BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith in the second round.
Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report. 

Dershowitz calls out House Dems in Trump's Senate impeachment trial after Bolton shock waves

Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz, delivering a spirited constitutional defense of President Trump at his Senate impeachment trial Monday night, flatly turned toward House impeachment managers and declared they had picked "dangerous" and "wrong" charges against the president -- noting that neither "abuse of power" nor "obstruction of Congress" was remotely close to an impeachable offense as the framers had intended.
In a dramatic primetime moment, the liberal constitutional law scholar reiterated that although he voted for Hillary Clinton, he could not find constitutional justification for the impeachment of a president for non-criminal conduct, or conduct that was not at least "akin" to defined criminal conduct.
"I'm sorry, House managers, you just picked the wrong criteria. You picked the most dangerous possible criteria to serve as a precedent for how we supervise and oversee future presidents," Dershowitz told the House Democrats, including head House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
He said that "all future presidents who serve with opposing legislative majorities" now face the "realistic threat" of enduring "vague charges of abuse or obstruction," and added that a "long list" of presidents have previously been accused of "abuse of power" in various contexts without being formally impeached.
The list included George Washington, who refused to turn over documents related to the Jay Treaty; John Adams, who signed and enforced the so-called "Alien and Sedition Acts"; Thomas Jefferson, who flat-out purchased Louisiana without any kind of congressional authorization whatosever; John Tyler, who notoriously used and abused the veto power; James Polk, who allegedly disregarded the Constitution and usurped the role of Congress; and Abraham Lincoln, who suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and others would also probably face impeachment using the Democrats' rules, Dershowitz said.
"Abuse of power," he argued, has been a "promiscuously deployed" and "vague" term throughout history. It should remain a merely "political weapon" fit for "campaign rhetoric," Dershowitz said, as it has no standard definition nor meaningful constitutional relevance.
Dershowitz then said he was "nonpartisan" in his application of the Constitution, and would make the same arguments against such an "unconstitutional impeachment" if Hillary Clinton were on trial -- passing what he called the "shoe on the other foot" test.
"Purely non-criminal conduct such as abuse of power and obstruction of Congress are outside the range of impeachable offenses," Dershowitz said.
He quoted Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis -- one of the two dissenters in the notorious 1857 "Dred Scott v. Sandford" decision and counsel for President Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868 -- as saying there can be no impeachable offense "without a law, written or unwritten, express or implied."
Johnson, Dershowitz observed, was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act -- a statute essentially designed to create the pretext to impeach Johnson. By passing the law first, lawmakers expressly recognized that criminal-like conduct was needed for impeachment, Dershowitz argued. (No president had ever been impeached for non-criminal conduct until Trump's impeachment last year.)
Indeed, a "close review of the history" near in time to the founding of the United States, Dershowitz said, revealed that the founders explicitly wanted to avoid making impeachment so arbitrary and powerful that it effectively created a "British-style parliamentary democracy," in which presidents served at the pleasure of the legislature.
Dershowitz further suggested that the "rule of lenity," or the legal doctrine that ambiguities should be resolved in favor of defendants, also counseled toward acquitting the president. The Constitution permits impeachment and removal of presidents for "treason," "bribery," and "high crimes and misdemeanors," but does not clearly define the terms.
Responding to reports that former national security adviser John Bolton has written in his forthcoming book that Trump told him he wanted to link Ukraine aid to an investigation of the Bidens, Dershowitz argued that even an explicit "quid pro quo" would not constitute an impeachable "abuse of power."
"Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power, or an impeachable offense," Dershowitz said. "That is clear from the history. That is clear from the language of the Constitution. You cannot turn conduct that is not impeachable into impeachable conduct simply by using terms like 'quid pro quo' and 'personal benefit.'"
"It is inconceivable," Dershowitz said, that the framers would have intended such "politically loaded terms" and "subjective'" words without clear definitions to serve as the basis for impeachment.
Fearing a partisan impeachment process, the framers had rejected the offense of "maladministration" as a basis for impeachment, Dershowitz noted, and "abuse of power" was similarly vague.
Dershowitz wrapped up his argument, steeped in historical and textual analysis of the constitution and founding documents, by urging senators to reject the "passions and fears of the moment," as the framers had similarly warned.
A series of Republican senators lined up to shake Dershowitz's hand after his presentation concluded.
Separately, Pam Bondi, in a methodical presentation earlier Monday at the impeachment trial, took the fight directly to Hunter Biden -- underscoring, again and again, how even media outlets with a left-wing "bias" questioned the younger Biden's lucrative service on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings while his father oversaw Ukraine policy as vice president.
A 2014 Washington Post report, Bondi noted, asserted that the "appointment of the vice president's son to a Ukrainian oil board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst."
A 2014 Buzzfeed News article stated that "serious conflict of interest questions" were raised by Biden's appointment.
A June 2019 ABC News report called it "strange" that Burisma, which was widely accused of corruption, had agreed to pay Hunter Biden's company "more than a million dollars a year," just after Biden was kicked out of the Navy allegedly for cocaine possession.
It was hardly surprising given all the media attention, Bondi went on, that career State Department official George Kent flagged Biden's apparent conflict of interest, but was told essentially not to bother the vice president's office -- or that the Obama administration had prepped former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch for questions about Burisma ahead of her Senate confirmation.
Bondi's point-by-point defense of Trump's concerns about the Bidens' potential corruption impressed even some left-of-center commentators. CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, for example, disputed Dershowitz's core argument, but acknowledged Bondi "did an effective job of showing how sleazy the hiring of Hunter Biden was."
"He was given a great deal of money for a job he was unqualified for, and the only reason he got it was he was the vice president's son," Toobin said.
Fox News has been told that Trump's defense team will wrap up on Tuesday within a few hours after the trial resumes at 1 p.m. ET. “Everyone should be able to go home for dinner,” a source close to the team told Fox News.
The next phase of the trial, involving 16 hours of written questions that the senators can submit to be answered by Democratic House managers and Trump's lawyers, will not start until Wednesday. Then, there will be a vote on whether to hear more evidence or witnesses.
The written questions could focus either on legal issues, like the theoretical ones raised by Dershowitz, or factual matters that could prove uncomfortable for Democrats.
"Hunter Biden was paid over $83,000 a month, while the average American family of four during that time each year made less than $54,000," Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, said incredulously in her remarks.
In his own comments to the Senate, Trump lawyer Eric Herschmann argued that Burisma couldn't even get its story straight concerning Biden's duties.
In a May 2014 Burisma news release, the company claimed Biden would head up the country's "legal unit," Herschmann observed. "But, on October 13, 2019, Biden's lawyer said that 'at no time' was he in charge of Burisma's legal affairs."
Even Hunter has admitted, speaking to ABC News, that he "probably" would not have been on the board of Burisma if he were not the vice president's son, Bondi noted.
Bondi and Herschmann were arguing that Trump did nothing wrong when, in a July call with Ukraine's leader, he called for the country to look into Joe Biden's on-camera admission that he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor by withholding $1 billion in U.S. assistance to Ukraine.
What Biden didn't reveal, Bondi said, was that the prosecutor was investigating Burisma at the time -- or that Hunter Biden was serving in a highly lucrative role on Burisma's board.
The Trump team's aggressive arguments on Monday heartened Republicans both inside and outside the Senate chamber.
"Pam Bondi is on the Senate floor nailing Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, and the Obama White House for their role in/handling of Ukrainian corruption," North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows tweeted. "If it wasn’t obvious already... President Trump was right to press for reform" in Ukraine, he wrote.
In a heated news conference, Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said the proceedings had offered just the "beginning" of "serious evidence of corruption" involving Burisma. Reporters repeatedly interrupted Cruz, and at one point a questioner suggested that Cruz's children had also benefited from nepotism in obtaining lucrative board roles -- even though they're in elementary school.
Using Democrats' logic, a stronger case for impeaching former President Obama could be made, Herschmann argued later. He noted that Obama had been caught on camera promising Russia's president that he would have more "flexibility" on missile defense issues after the 2012 election -- an apparent instance of a "quid pro quo" involving politics influencing foreign affairs.
"The president exercises official power. In his role as head of state during a nuclear security summit after asking the Russian president for space, he promised him missile defense can be solved? What else can that mean than in a way that can be solved for the Russians?" Herschmann asked. "He was asking an adversary for space for the express purpose of furthering his own election purposes... 'after my election, I have more flexibility.' Obama knew the importance of missile defense in Europe but decided to use it as a bargaining chip."
Herschmann accused Democrats of overreach by attempting to remove the president by a vote of the Senate.
"We, on the other hand, trust our fellow Americans to choose their candidate... and let the American people choose," he said. "Maybe they're concerned that the American people like historically low unemployment, maybe the American people like that their 401(k)s have [grown]."
Also speaking on behalf of the president, Ken Starr, whose independent counsel investigation into then-President Bill Clinton resulted in his impeachment, bemoaned what he called an “age of impeachment." Impeachment, he said, required both an actual crime and a “genuine national consensus" that the president must go. Neither existed here, Starr said.
"It's filled with acrimony and it divides the country like nothing else," Starr said of impeachment. "Those of us who lived through the Clinton impeachment understand that in a deep and personal way."
Trump's team further challenged Democrats' claims that Trump's fears of Ukraine meddling were a "conspiracy theory" -- noting that Schiff, D-Calif., had spent years accusing the Trump team of colluding with Russia without any evidence.
Although Democrats -- and some news outlets, including The Associated Press -- repeatedly claimed that the idea of Ukraine meddling was a "conspiracy theory," a Ukrainian court has ruled that officials in the country did illegally meddle in the U.S. election. Additionally, a 2017 investigative report by Politico found extensive efforts by Ukrainians to hurt Trump's presidential campaign.
Biden campaign rapid response director Andrew Bates shot back quickly in a statement to Fox News.
"We didn’t realize that Breitbart was expanding into Ted Talk knockoffs," Bates said. "Here on Planet Earth, the conspiracy theory that Bondi repeated has been conclusively refuted. The New York Times calls it ‘debunked,’ The Wall Street Journal calls it ‘discredited,’ the AP calls it ‘incorrect,’ and The Washington Post Fact Checker calls it ‘a fountain of falsehoods.’ The diplomat that Trump himself appointed to lead his Ukraine policy has blasted it as ‘self serving’ and ‘not credible.’ Joe Biden was instrumental to bipartisan and international anti-corruption victory. It’s no surprise that such a thing is anathema to President Trump."

"We didn’t realize that Breitbart was expanding into Ted Talk knockoffs."
— Biden campaign rapid response director Andrew Bates

Democrats have accused Trump of seeking to "make up dirt" on the Bidens, and alleged that Trump himself delayed sending aid to Ukraine until the country took a public look at the issue.
Meanwhile, senators faced mounting pressure Monday to summon Bolton to testify at the trial, after an excerpt from the former national security advisor's forthcoming book apparently leaked. According to the manuscript, Trump told Bolton he had suspended aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation of the Bidens. The White House strongly denied the claim.
"We deal with transcript evidence, we deal with publicly available information," attorney Jay Sekulow said. "We do not deal with speculation, allegations that are not based on evidentiary standards at all."
Prior to his presentation Monday, Dershowitz said that the Bolton issue wouldn't affect his presentation, centering on constitutional law.
Republican senators have faced a pivotal moment, and pressure was mounting for at least four to buck GOP leaders and form a bipartisan majority to force the issue. Republicans have held a 53-47 majority, and a mere majority vote would be required on the question of witnesses.
"John Bolton's relevance to our decision has become increasingly clear," Utah GOP Sen. Mitt Romney told reporters. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a key moderate swing vote, said she has always wanted "the opportunity for witnesses" and the report about Bolton's book "strengthens the case."
At a private GOP lunch, Romney made the case for calling Bolton, according to multiple reports. Other Republicans have said that if Trump's former national security adviser is called, they will demand reciprocity to hear from at least one of their witnesses. Some Republicans have wanted to call the Bidens.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared unmoved by news of the Bolton book, telling Republicans they would take stock after the defense team concluded its arguments.
McConnell's message at the lunch, said Indiana GOP Sen. Mike Braun, was, "Take a deep breath, and let's take one step at a time.”
Fox News' Brooke Singman, Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

John Bolton Cartoons

GOP senators upset by Schiff remark, Dems claim ‘diversion’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans said lead impeachment prosecutor Adam Schiff insulted them during the trial by repeating an anonymously sourced report that the White House had threatened to punish Republicans who voted against President Donald Trump.

Schiff, who delivered closing arguments for the prosecution on Friday evening, was holding Republican senators rapt as he called for removing Trump from office for abusing his power and obstructing Congress. Doing anything else, he argued, would be to let the president bully Senate Republicans into ignoring his pressure on Ukraine for political help.

“CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that key senators were warned, ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’ I don’t know if that’s true,” Schiff said.

After that remark, the generally respectful mood in the Senate changed. Republicans across their side of the chamber groaned, gasped and said, “That’s not true.” One of those key moderate Republicans, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, looked directly at Schiff, shook her head and said, “Not true.”

Hearing the Republican protests about the reference to the report, and with an eye toward Collins, Schiff paused and said: “I hope it’s not true. I hope it’s not true.”

Collins in a statement said she knows of “no Republican senator who has been threatened in any way by anyone in the administration.”

Democrats, meanwhile, gave Schiff’s closing speech rave reviews and dismissed the Republican outrage as an attempt to distract from the facts of the case against the president.

“They’re always looking for a diversion,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on MSNBC.

And Schiff said Saturday of the criticism: “If the worst they could point to is that I referred to a public report by CBS, that’s pretty thin gruel.”

Collins’s views are being closely watched because Democrats need support from at least four Republicans to win a vote on calling witnesses. She is one of the few Republican senators who has expressed an openness to calling witnesses in the impeachment trial.

She had been listening intently to Schiff’s presentation and writing down some of his points. When he made the “pike” comment, she looked directly at Schiff and slowly and repeatedly shook her head back and forth. When he finished his speech and the trial adjourned, GOP Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming made a beeline for her seat. Collins again shook her head and said, “No.”

Another moderate who could be a key vote on witnesses, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, said Schiff’s invocation of the report “was unnecessary.”

“That’s when he lost me” with his speech, Murkowski said, according to her spokeswoman.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told reporters that the CBS report is “completely, totally false.”

“None of us have been told that,” he added. “That’s insulting and demeaning to everyone to say that we somehow live in fear and that the president has threatened all of us.″

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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

Defense resumes in key impeachment week; Dems seek witnesses

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial enters a pivotal week as his defense team resumes its case and senators face a critical vote on whether to hear witnesses or proceed directly to a vote that is widely expected to end in his acquittal. The articles of impeachment charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

Those decisions on witnesses may be complicated by reports that Trump said he wanted to maintain a freeze on military assistance to Ukraine until it aided political investigations into his Democratic rivals, That’s from former national security adviser John Bolton in a draft of his forthcoming book. The report by The New York Times was later confirmed by The Associated Press. The revelation challenges the defense offered up by Trump and his attorneys in his impeachment trial.

The Capitol Hill maneuvering will be complemented by high-stakes efforts on both sides of the aisle to claim political advantage from the proceedings as the presidential nominating season kicks off in Iowa on Feb. 3.

More on impeachment

What to watch as the Senate impeachment trial resumes Monday at 1 p.m. EST:

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STAR TURN IN DEFENSE

After a two-hour opening argument Saturday, Trump’s defense team will lay out its case in depth beginning Monday. White House counsel Pat Cipollone said Trump’s lawyers don’t expect to take the full 24 hours allotted to them, but there will be arguments from some familiar faces. 

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, former independent counsel Ken Starr and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi will speak on specific topics.

Dershowitz said Sunday he would argue that the charges against Trump are too minor to warrant the president’s removal from office under the Constitution. “Even if true, they did not allege impeachable offenses,” Dershowitz told “Fox News Sunday.”

The Trump team has also teased the notion that it would draw attention to Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukraine gas company Burisma, while the elder Biden was vice president. An extended focus on Joe Biden, one of the leading Democratic presidential contenders, could mean blowback from even some of the GOP members of the Senate.

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QUESTION TIME

Once Trump’s team concludes, senators will have 16 hours to ask questions of both the House impeachment prosecutors and the president’s legal team. Their questions must be in writing.

Chief Justice John Roberts will read the questions aloud. He is expected to alternate between both sides of the aisle. Many senators have been talking copious notes throughout the trial in preparation for the question-and-answer time.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., told reporters Saturday that Republicans expected to get together on Monday to start formulating a list of questions. “We will meet as a conference and decide what questions we want to pose, what the order may be of those of those questions,” he said.

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WILL THEY OR WON’T THEY

Under the Senate rules passed last week, senators will get another chance to vote whether to consider new witnesses and evidence after the Q&A time is elapsed. Four Republicans would have to break ranks to join Democrats in the GOP-controlled Senate to extend the trial for an undetermined amount of time.

If that happens, expect a bitter fight over which witnesses might be called and which documents might be subpoenaed. Democrats have called for testimony from Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, and his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. An attempt to call either probably would lead to a showdown with the White House, which claims both men have “absolute immunity” from being called to testify before the Senate, even in an impeachment trial. Still, Bolton has said he would appear if issued a subpoena by the Senate.

While Republicans have hoped for a speedy trial, Trump has called for the testimony of the Bidens and the intelligence community whistleblower whose summer complaint about Trump’s July telephone call with Ukraine’s leader instigated the impeachment inquiry.

But some Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have expressed resistance to calling those witnesses.

If the vote fails, the Senate could move swiftly to its vote on whether to remove or acquit Trump, giving the president the result he’s been looking for as soon as the end of the week.

Senate rules also call for four hours of deliberations before voting. Since senators are required to sit silently during the trial, expect a closed session where they can deliberate in private.

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A NEW TAPE

Trump’s lawyers argued Saturday that no one knows what Trump’s motives were on holding up military assistance to Ukraine. A recording obtained by The Associated Press hours later suggests the president well understood that assistance was a point of leverage over Ukraine.

The recording is of 2018 meeting at the Trump Hotel in Washington that Trump had with donors. including two now-indicted associates of his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The audio portion includes Trump inquiring about Ukraine, “How long would they last in a fight with Russia?” He later calls for the firing of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.

The recording contradicts the president’s statements that he didn’t know the Giuliani associations, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. They are key figures in the investigation who were indicted last year on campaign finance charges.

If new evidence and witnesses are allowed, the recording could take center stage in the Senate proceedings.

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THE POLITICS

The trial is resuming with one week to go until the Iowa caucuses, and is again keeping four Democratic contenders — Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bennet and Amy Klobuchar — in Washington instead of campaigning at a critical point in the race.

While they are trapped in Washington, Trump will venture outside the capital as he seeks both to exert political retribution on Democrats who impeached him and reward a party-switching lawmaker who backed him in the House.

Trump will hold a rally Tuesday in New Jersey to repay the favor to Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who became a Republican last month after voting against the articles of impeachment as a Democrat. And Trump is set to appear in Iowa on Thursday, days before the caucuses.

Meanwhile, Trump is already looking ahead to his likely acquittal, whenever it may come, promising that Democrats will face consequences for trying to remove him from office. “Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!”

Schiff, D-Calif., is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead impeachment manager. Asked on NBC’s ``Meet the Press″ whether he viewed the tweet as a threat, Schiff replied, “I think it’s intended to be.″

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NADLER ABSENT

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, one of the House managers for the Senate trial, will miss Monday’s proceedings because of his wife’s illness.

In a statement, the New York Democrat said he would be in New York that day to discuss with doctors his wife’s ongoing treatment for pancreatic cancer. As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Nadler has been a key member of the Democratic team investigating and prosecuting the case against the president.

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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Eric Tucker, Laurie Kellman and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.