Your holiday impeachment catch-up: Senate wrangling and new details on Ukraine aid

Happy New Year! While the holidays brought two weeks of relative quiet, preparations for the looming Senate impeachment trial have continued -- though no one seems to know yet when that will begin, or what it will look like.

Posted 6:05 a.m. Jan 3, 2020 — Updated 6:05 a.m. Jan 3, 2020

Analysis by Paul LeBlanc

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Zachary B. Wolf, CNN

CNN — Happy New Year! While the holidays brought two weeks of relative quiet, preparations for the looming Senate impeachment trial have continued -- though no one seems to know yet when that will begin, or what it will look like.

More on that in a moment. First, here's what you may have missed over the holidays:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ended 2019 by declining to send the two articles of impeachment to the Senate until Democrats receive assurances about the structure of the trial. She hasn't made public remarks about her plans since, but on Thursday the California Democrat tweeted that Trump engaged in an "unprecedented, total obstruction of Congress" following a new report further implicating the President in the order to hold Ukraine aid.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear that the decision to withhold the articles will do little to open him up to negotiations over the trial.

Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Republican moderates who are always closely watched, raised concerns about McConnell's comments regarding his close coordination with the White House counsel's office. Collins made clear she is "open to witnesses." But neither explicitly broke with the Kentucky Republican.

On New Year's Eve, Trump suggested he held no position on whether he wanted a trial to proceed -- "I don't really care. It doesn't matter," he said -- though privately he is eager for vindication from the GOP-controlled Senate, according to aides.

The President's legal advisers have held off making firm decisions about how to handle the Senate trial until more details are known about how it might proceed. White House counsel Pat Cipollone is still expected to lead the President's defense, along with the help of his deputies, with private counsel led by Jay Sekulow playing a more limited role.

Report: Documents show order to hold Ukraine aid came from Trump

In the face of warnings from the Pentagon that the hold on military aid to Ukraine could be illegal, an official from the Office of Management and Budget made it clear that the order to keep the freeze in place came directly from Trump, according to unredacted documents reviewed by Just Security's Kate Brannen.

The documents, including emails from officials at the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget that were released under court order last month but were either partially or completely blacked out, offer new details about tensions between the two agencies tasked with carrying out Trump's unexplained hold on the aid to Ukraine.

CNN's Zachary Cohen, Sara Murray and Ryan Browne note the documents also raise serious questions about why the newly revealed contents were redacted by the Trump administration in the first place amid congressional oversight efforts and court orders in Freedom of Information Act litigation.

All eyes on McConnell

The Senate reconvenes Friday, and McConnell is likely to speak on the floor. His speech will mark a return to the impeachment drama after a holiday period in which little was learned about how and when Trump's trial will begin even as more details about his administration's attempts to withhold aid to Ukraine were revealed.

But the prospects for any answers on when a Senate trial will begin or what its parameters will be appear to remain slim.

More on what to expect tomorrow from CNN's Kevin Liptak, Phil Mattingly and Pamela Brown.

Judge dismisses subpoena challenge from former White House official

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit filed by former Trump national security official Charles Kupperman challenging a House subpoena for him to testify in the impeachment inquiry. That move came after the House withdrew its subpoena. Judge Richard Leon wrote in a 14-page opinion that there is no expectation that the House will reissue the subpoena, therefore the lawsuit is unnecessary.

The important thing is this: By ruling the case is moot, Leon was able to sidestep the thorny issue of separation of powers and whether the White House could claim that some administration witnesses have immunity.

Leon, however, noted that things could change:

"Have no doubt though, should the winds of political fortune shift and the House were to reissue a subpoena to Dr. Kupperman, he will face the same conflicting directives that precipitated this suit. If so, he will undoubtedly be right back before this Court seeking a solution to a Constitutional dilemma that has long-standing political consequences: balancing Congress's well-established power to investigate with a President's need to have a small group of national security advisors who have some form of immunity from compelled Congressional testimony."

Fact-checking claims the process hasn't been fair to Republicans

Throughout the impeachment inquiry, one of the talking points from House Republicans has been that Democrats violated congressional rules by denying the minority a day of hearings.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, reiterated this argument on "Fox News Sunday," saying, "There was not a fair trial in the House, and I think that was very clear, and you see what Pelosi did there, literally shutting down the ability for the minority to even have a day of hearings, which is required under the House rule. They broke that rule."

Facts First: It's misleading to say Democrats broke House rules, which do not guarantee a full day of minority hearings. House Rule XI only requires that the minority be allowed to call witnesses during at least one of the hearing days.

Though House Republicans have the right to complain that not all of the witnesses they requested were called, witnesses requested by the Republican minority did testify in the impeachment hearings conducted by the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees: Tim Morrison, David Hale and Kurt Volker in front of the Intelligence Committee and Jonathan Turley for the Judiciary Committee.

Another Trump-Putin holiday call

Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone Sunday from his Mar-a-Lago retreat. According to the Kremlin readout of the call, the two discussed counterterrorism efforts and "matters of mutual interest."

This most recent call with Putin comes amid fresh scrutiny of Trump's phone calls with foreign leaders and the White House's handling of those conversations, including recent attempts to limit the number of people who can listen in.

It also occurred as Putin's influence on Trump -- particularly his views toward Ukraine -- is being closely examined.

Reminder: The Washington Post reported that former Trump administration officials feared Putin had planted a conspiracy that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 US election. One of the officials told the Post that Trump considered the theory credible because "Putin told me."

Trump credits impeachment for reelection fundraising haul

The President's 2020 campaign announced Thursday that it had raised $46 million in the final quarter of 2019, noting in a statement that the period represents "the best fundraising quarter for the campaign in the 2020 election cycle."

The Trump campaign has argued that the impeachment proceedings have emboldened the President's supporters and bolstered campaign contributions. There's evidence that's true: On the day in October that the House of Representatives voted to formally launch the impeachment inquiry, the campaign raised $3 million online.