The Senate has heard the arguments of the nine house impeachment managers and the president’s defence team in president Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Senators are now asking questions of the two parties amidst a looming battle of whether or not to hear from witnesses including former national security advisor John Bolton.

“The Senate is controlled by a republican majority, and even though the crimes brought against the President are constitutionally correct, and he has committed these crimes he has been accused of, the senate will ignore this because they are going to side with the party they associate with. They don’t care about the facts with Trump,” junior Hayden Grone said.

With ten hours of questioning remaining before Thursday’s session, the question of whether or not the senate will call witnesses has been looming since new information about the information contained within the book was made public detailing Bolton’s firsthand knowledge about the holding up of the military aid to Ukraine to encourage an investigation of the Bidens.

“The senate is mostly Republican so I would say it would be hard to convince them to impeach Trump,” senior Daniel Baumgartner said.

Currently two of the necessary four republican senators have revealed that they will vote to call witnesses in the trial — senator Mitt Romney of Nevada and senator Susan Collins of Maine. Assuming all senators caucusing with the democrats vote for witnesses, two more republicans must vote for witnesses. If there is a tie, then Chief Justice John Roberts as presiding officer of the trial will break the tie, though he is expected to abstain.

“Even though I hope so, I say he will not be impeached because a majority of the senate is republican, so they would be on his side,” freshman Caitlin Graslie said.