What’s Next: The Trial Continues Wednesday, February 5

PBS NewsHour is covering the Senate Impeachment Trial. You can watch that coverage on this page, on channel 39.4 as it happens, or on feeds from NewsHour on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

The Senate is expected to hold its final vote on whether to acquit the president on Wednesday at 4p.m. After Friday’s vote not to call witnesses in the trial, Trump’s acquittal appears all but ensured.

For a complete rundown from PBS NewsHour of what has happened since the start of the impeachment trials, click on this link…

In the beginning

The seven House Democrats selected as the managers of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial officially walked the articles of impeachment across the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, January 16 at noon to formally deliver them to the U.S. Senate.

The managers already walked over the articles on Wednesday, January 15, but only to notify the Senate that the articles would be delivered.

The move came after the full House voted on Wednesday afternoon to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate and after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi named the managers Wednesday morning. Pelosi named Rep. Adam Schiff, Rep. Jerry Nadler, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. Val Demings, Rep. Jason Crow and Rep. Sylvia Garcia as the managers, who will serve as the prosecutors for the Senate trial.

President Trump was impeached last month when the House voted to approve two articles of impeachment–abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

Pelosi delayed delivering the articles to the Senate as Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell disagreed over whether additional witnesses would be called to testify during the Senate trial.

BACKGROUND: Takeaways from the articles of impeachment:

Two Articles

The two articles released by the House Judiciary Committee total nine pages. They are entirely focused on Trump’s efforts to have Ukraine investigate Democrats as the U.S. also withheld military aid to the country and denied Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy a White House meeting.

The first article, abuse of power, says Trump “used the powers of the presidency in a manner that compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process.” It says he “corruptly” solicited Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden and a “discredited theory” about the interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The second article, obstruction of Congress, says that Trump “directed the unprecedented, categorical and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas” issued by the House, and calls that behavior “offensive to, and subversive of” the Constitution. It lists subpoenas from Congress for documents and testimony that were ignored.

“In the history of the republic, no president has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the second article reads.

PBS39 will air PBS NewsHour’s live anchored coverage of the impeachment proceedings going forward as hearings and trials are scheduled. The trials will be aired live as it happens, on channel 39.4. Regularly scheduled programming for 39.4 will be pre-empted for the duration of the proceedings, each day.

PBS39 Explore/Channel 39.4 is broadcast over the air. In addition, it can be viewed on:

  • Frontier FiOS channel 473 in Frontier’s northeast Indiana services areas;
  • Comcast/Xfinity channel 243 and 1039 in the the Fort Wayne, Huntington, Wabash/Peru, Portland and Redkey service areas;
  • Mediacom channel 120 in Mediacom’s Auburn, Columbia City, Kendallville, Angola, LaGrange, North Manchester, Bluffton and Rome City service areas;
  • MediaCom North Webster channel 12
  • Channel 56 on Warren Cable in Warren, Indiana.

This programming will be anchored by NewsHour anchor and managing editor Judy Woodruff and will include contributions from NewsHour correspondents including Capitol Hill correspondent Lisa Desjardins, White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor, and Foreign Affairs and Defense correspondent Nick Schifrin, among others.

In addition, Woodruff will be joined by Michael Allen, Managing Director at Beacon Global Strategies, LLC and Mieke Eoyang, Vice President at Third Way.

Allen served as the Majority Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Republican leadership from 2011-2013. Allen also served in George W. Bush’s White House for seven years in various national security policy and legislative roles, including as Senior Director for Counter-proliferation Strategy at the National Security Council, Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs, and in the Bureau of Legislative Affairs at the Department of State.

Eoyang was the Subcommittee Staff Director on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Democratic leadership from 2007-2010, and a Professional Staff Member on the House Armed Services Committee, as well as Chief of Staff to Representative Anna Eshoo (D-Ca.) and Defense Policy Advisor to Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.)