US President Donald Trump's defenders on Tuesday completed the presentation of arguments as part of the impeachment procedure against the American leader at the Senate, TASS reported.

Advocates and prosecutors will start to answer senators' questions. A total of 16 hours are allocated, but this process is not limited to the number of working days. According to the Politico newspaper, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell agreed with the head of the Democratic minority of the upper house, Chuck Schumer, that on Wednesday and Thursday exactly eight hours will be allotted to questions.

Lawmakers will vote on the need to call witnesses to the process and provide any additional documents on Friday. If no witnesses are called, the Senate will vote on each of the two charges: abuse of power and obstruction of the investigation conducted by Congress.

In September 2019, the House, with the filing of Democrats, announced the launch of the impeachment proceedings against Trump. The reason for the start of the proceedings was the assumption that he would put pressure on the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a July phone talks in order to encourage Kyiv to help the head of the American administration get elected for a second term in 2020. According to political opponents of the US leader, Republican Trump tried to convince Zelenskyy to start an investigation into the activities in Ukraine of Hunter Biden (the son of the former US vice president) in exchange for providing financial and military assistance to Kyiv. Two articles of indictment against Trump were approved by the Democrats on December 18.

The Senate is now acting as a jury, and the House of Representatives is the prosecution. The head of the US Supreme Court is John Roberts. To remove the president from office, support is needed for at least two-thirds of senators (67 people). With the current composition of the Senate, the likelihood of such a development of events is virtually zero, since the Republicans occupy 53 out of 100 seats in the upper house.