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On 2/10/2021, As the Democratic lawmakers closed their first of two days of arguments, Lee (R-Utah) rose to his feet and demanded they strike from the record an account the House impeachment managers gave of a phone call Trump mistakenly placed to Lee during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. “They are not true! They were false!” Lee said of the House managers’ arguments. “I ask them to be stricken.” Media reports citing unnamed sources saying Trump called Lee during the riot when he had been trying to reach freshman Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama were used during the trial.
According to the reports, as the siege was ongoing, Lee handed his phone to Tuberville and Trump urged the Republican to file additional objections to the Electoral College vote which Congress was certifying before the riot. It’s unclear what exactly Lee was protesting but he became flustered as he repeatedly urged an equally confused Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who is presiding over former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, to strike the “false” remarks from the record.
After a kerfuffle over whether a roll call vote had been requested, and for what purpose that would have been, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) interceded. After a few moments of off-mic discussion between the leader and the House team, lead impeachment manager, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, agreed to strike the remarks saying they were “much ado about nothing” because it had “nothing to do with our case.”
“The impeachment manager Mr. Cicciline correctly and accurately quoted a newspaper account which the distinguished senator has taken objection to on the grounds that it is not true,” Raskin said. “We are going to withdraw it this evening,” he said.
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Day 2 ends in procedural chaos as Senator Mike Lee asks for his name to be struck from the prosecution’s arguments.
An emotional second day of the trial ended in procedural chaos as a Republican senator objected to testimony that cited him as a source for a conversation former President Donald J. Trump had during the Capitol attack that is at the heart of the case.
In the final hour of arguments on Wednesday, Representative David Cicilline, Democrat of Rhode Island and one of the impeachment managers, spoke of Mr. Trump mistakenly calling Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, in an effort to reach Senator Tommy Tuberville, Republican of Alabama. In describing the call, which was detailed in news reports, Mr. Cicilline asserted that Mr. Lee had stood by as Mr. Trump asked Mr. Tuberville to make additional objections to the certification of President Biden’s electoral votes.
As Mr. Cicilline spoke, Mr. Lee could be seen writing furiously on a notepad in large letters: “This is not what happened.” When Democrats concluded their arguments for the day, Mr. Lee invoked an impeachment rule that allows senators to raise questions during the trial, including about the admissibility of evidence, and asked that the statements about him be struck as false.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the presiding officer for the impeachment trial, ruled the request as out of order. Mr. Leahy, who consulted with the Senate parliamentarian, pointed to a rule specific to this impeachment trial that allows the House managers to include elements in their oral arguments that were not in their original pretrial submissions.
A visibly outraged Mr. Lee demanded an appeal.
“My point was to strike them because they were false,” he said.
As some lawmakers, including Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, demanded that Mr. Lee explain why the description was false, the murmuring and confusion among senators and staff temporarily derailed the final moments of the day’s proceedings.
After a series of intense huddles on the floor, where Mr. Lee could be heard insisting that he did not make those statements, Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, agreed to take back the words. But he reserved the ability to bring the issue up again and litigate it later in the trial.
“We’re going to withdraw it this evening and without any prejudice to the ability to resubmit it, if possible,” Mr. Raskin said. “We can debate it if we need it. But it’s not — this is much ado about nothing, because it’s not critical in any way to our case.”
As Mr. Raskin spoke, Mr. Lee could be heard across the Senate chamber: “You’re not the one being cited as a witness, sir.”
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Mike Lee: “Statements Were Attributed To Me Are Not True, Strike Them” 2/10/2021 https://t.co/QrBNTRrxfs
— HYGO News (@HygoNews) February 11, 2021