Impartial Justice: Newly released documents and notes reveal more details about President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine to investigate Vice President Joe Biden, feeding the argument that President Trump’s impeachment trial should include documents and witnesses.

  The new evidence involves the efforts made by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his now-indicted associate Lev Parnas. The records include handwritten notes on a sheet of hotel paper at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Vienna about getting President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.

  The House of Representatives is set to vote today on sending the two articles of impeachment against Trump over to the Senate for a trial that would begin next week.

  “The American people deserve the truth, and the Constitution demands a trial,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after holding on to the articles for nearly a month. She was bargaining for the establishment of rules to be set in advance, but appears to have accomplished nothing except to highlight Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s desire to kill this thing as fast as possible.

  Despite working with the President’s lawyers on his defense, McConnell plans to take an oath promising “impartial justice.”

In the Dark: Capitol Hill reporters are protesting the rules for covering the transition of the articles of impeachment from the House to the Senate. The impeachment managers are supposed to walk them from one chamber to the other, but just one video camera and no still photographers will be allowed to document the historic moment. No audio recording at all will be permitted, leaving radio reporters with nothing.

  The Senate sergeant-at-arms and Capitol Police claim the limits are for security, but they are limiting the same reporters and camera crews that wander the halls every day.

Debatable: Six democratic candidates for president debated last night for 2 ½ hours about which one of them should be their party’s nominee. It’s impossible to cover all the fine points of differing plans and opinions and what usually takes over in press coverage are the flareups.

  Going into last night was the brewing fight between Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren about her claim that Bernie once told her a woman could never be elected. Sanders denies it, but Warren isn’t letting it go.

  Last night Warren said: “Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie. But, look, this question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised, and it’s time for us to attack it head-on. And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people’s winning record. So, can a woman beat Donald Trump? Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women.”

  At the end of the evening the two were seen having an animated discussion before Sanders abruptly turned and left.

Toll Free: Supreme Court justices on both sides of the ideological line seemed skeptical yesterday in arguments about the conviction of New Jersey officials who closed lanes on the George Washington Bridge to punish the mayor of Ft. Lee, New Jersey for not supporting Christ Christie to be re-elected as governor.

  The scandal was dubbed “Bridgegate” after the infamous Watergate scandal.

  The justices seemed to be hung up on the question of personal gain by the people who carried out the plot. They didn’t make money or get a reward other than to keep their jobs when Christie won.

   Christie associates Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni were convicted of wire fraud for inventing a fictional “traffic study” that caused extreme delays for motorists crossing the bridge. The two big legal questions are whether it can be considered a crime for public officials to lie about their motives, and whether the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was defrauded of anything. 

   It seems incredible that thousands of motorists could be held hostage to politics and no one would go to prison for it.

  Justice Stephen Breyer said, “Maybe it should be a crime. But 30 years in prison? That, I’m not sure.” 

The Greatest: Know-it-all Ken Jennings last night won  the “Jeopardy!” Greatest of All Time Tournament, winning a $1 million prize and bringing his winnings over 15 years to $4.5 million.

The Bulletin Board: More than two years after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has moved to withdraw his plea, claiming prosecutors of “bad faith” in his sentencing deal — Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora has been fired for being part of the 2017 Houston Astros sign-stealing plot. Cora was bench coach with the Astros that year. — Los Angeles is in an uproar after a Delta airliner that turned around for an emergency landing dumped its fuel, hitting an elementary school when the kids were outside. Some of the children complained of eye, skin and throat irritation.

January Thaw: The temperature hit 66 degrees in the Hudson River Valley on Saturday. New York City is headed into the 50s today.

  In the past week temperatures in some areas of the northeast have hit 70 and daily high records have been broken from Columbus, Ohio, to Pittsburgh and Bangor, Maine.  A “January thaw” is not unusual, but usually it’s just 10 to 20 degrees above normal. This is a little scary.

  It’s hardly a thaw. December was unusually warm, and this is just warmer.

  The warm spell was blown in by the jet stream pushing hot air northeast from the Gulf of Mexico. Meteorologists caution that this is weather, not global warming, but it’s still hot out there.

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