Lawyer: Impeachment is refusal to accept election

President Donald Trump's lawyers brushed past extraordinary new allegations from Trump's former national security adviser Monday and focused instead on historical arguments for acquittal. Attorney Robert Ray said the charges do not hold weight and that if Trump is not acquitted, it will set a precedent for future impeachments "as long as a partisan majority in the House says so."

Ray said the impeachment was the result of Democrats' "refusal to accept the results of the last election in 2016."

Outside the Senate chamber, Republicans grappled with claims in a forthcoming book from Bolton that Trump had wanted to withhold military aid from Ukraine until it committed to helping with investigations into Democratic rival Joe Biden.

That assertion could undercut a key defense argument — that Trump never tied the suspension of security aid to political investigations.