In some 11th hour drama worthy of Perry Mason, the House Saturday morning (Feb. 13), including five Republicans, voted 55 to 45 to potentially subpoena witnesses--or at least one witness--and documents in the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump.

That will mean depositions will need to be set up, witnesses agreed on, and almost certainly no vote Saturday (Feb. 13) on the former President's guilt or innocence.

Also Read: Trump Impeachment Team Calls Democrats Real Inciters

The Impeachment managers and Trump lawyers had ended their cases Friday and were expected to present closing arguments, followed by a vote Saturday. But late Friday, the story broke of a phone call between Trump and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy in the midst of the Capitol insurrection during which McCarthy asked for the President's help in quelling the riot and the President's response was: "Well Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are."

That call details were revealed by Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who Impeachment managers asked to be subpoenaed, along with her contemporaneous notes, saying it was material to their case. Trump's attorney said it was immaterial since it came after the insurrection began and the impeachment article is only about speech that allegedly incited the initial attack.

There was some confusion about what the vote on a witness/witnesses meant, but one thing it appeared to mean was that the trial will not end for a few more days and could include multiple witnesses.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny, describing the confusion around a hasty quorum call and 11th hour request for a witness (or witnesses) a "C-SPAN moment." 

The 11th hour witness request was prompted by the following statement from Rep. Herrera Beutler.

Also Read: Senate Receives Trump Impeachment Articles

“In my January 12 statement in support of the article of impeachment, I referenced a conversation House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy relayed to me that he’d had with President Trump while the January 6 attack was ongoing. Here are the details:

“When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol. McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’

“Since I publicly announced my decision to vote for impeachment, I have shared these details in countless conversations with constituents and colleagues, and multiple times through the media and other public forums.

“I told it to the Daily News of Longview on January 17. I’ve shared it with local county Republican executive board members, as well as other constituents who ask me to explain my vote. I shared it with thousands of residents on my telephone town hall on February 8.

“To the patriots who were standing next to the former president as these conversations were happening, or even to the former vice president: if you have something to add here, now would be the time.”

On the second day of the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, tweets and video a central evidentiary role.

House impeachment managers repeatedly used Donald Trump's tweets and video clips from PBS NewsHour, CNN, NBC, ITV News, Fox News Channel, C-SPAN and many others of speeches and statements to build the case that he had assembled the Capitol insurrection mob, summoned the mob, and incited the mob.

Also Read: Donald Trump Makes First Amendment Impeachment Defense

That included the then-president's tweets that the election was being stolen and his supporters had to fight to "stop the steal."

Impeachment manager Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said Trump for months inflamed his supporters by fueling the lie that the only way he could lose the election was via massive fraud. Then, when he lost, said Swalwell, he doused the flames with kerosene.

Also Read:  Senate Receives Trump Articles of Impeachment

The impeach managers painted a portrait of Trump as "inciter-in-chief," suggesting he was like a fire chief who was also an arsonist, fanning the flames then watching the result gleefully on TV.

House Impeachment managers started their argument in the Senate trial of former President Donald Trump Tuesday afternoon (Feb. 9) with a video montage of the President's speech to supporters and the Capitol Insurrection that followed, filled with F-word expletives' that broadcast nets ran with "explicit content" warnings.

There is a general exemption for news broadcasts from the FCC's rules against profanity during daytime hours.

Also Read: Donald Trump Makes First Amendment Impeachment Defense

The montage was interspersed with interstitial text, like "Trump's Mob Breaches the Capitol," that linked the former president directly to the actions that followed, which the unsparing video did not leave to the imagination. 

Following the sobering video, lead impeachment manager Rep. James Raskin (D-Md.) said that if that was not an impeachable offense, "then there was no such thing."

In Washington, the ABC, CBS and NBC  affiliates and owned stations all preempted special programming for their respective network's live coverage of the opening of the trial, while Fox's WTTG-TV instead aired regular programming. Fox had pointed out that it would provide its affiliates broadcast coverage, but that they could also livestream it if they wanted to also offer regular programming. 

By three and a half hours into the arguments, only CBS affiliate WUSA-TV was still going live with the trial. The other stations had switched to their local news.

Also Read:  Senate Receives Trump Articles of Impeachment

The House has already impeached Trump for inciting the mob, the second time the former President has been impeached. 

Initial arguments are on whether the Senate trial is constitutional because the President can no longer be removed from office since he is already gone.

President Trump's defense team, led by Bruce Castor, pushed back on the video, but not on "the violence of the rioters and those that breached the Capitol." He said to have the seat of government attacked is repugnant and the loss of life horrific. 

Castor said it was natural to recoil and desire retribution for that "awful thing," suggesting the prosecution's 13-minute video was meant to provoke that emotional response, just as people can be overcome by events and act without reflective thought.

Trump attorney David Schoen said Democrats had created, manufactured and spliced together a package designed to frighten, as though impeachment was a "blood sport," and that it would serve to tear the country apart, suggesting it would have no precedent except in one case, obviously a reference to the Civil War.

Both Castor and Schoen argued that the impeachment was a political exercise to eliminate Donald Trump as a political opponent and, as Schoen put it, disenfranchise  75 million voters.

Trump's team presented their own video montage of Democrats calling for Trump's impeachment almost from the day he was sworn in, resulting in the fastest impeachment inquiry in history and a rush to judgment, though Schoen called that an understatement.

Democratic impeachment managers used clips from various video streams in arguments for how the rules for the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump should be drawn up, including that there should be access to White House documents.

The trial began "in earnest" Tuesday (Jan. 21), itself streamed across multiple platforms.

Impeachment manager Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) played testimony from news streaming site CBSN and USA Today online impeachment coverage to argue that the White House has significant documents that the Senate should get access to.

Republicans want the trial to be confined to documents that the House was able to use in its impeachment inquiry and witnesses that appeared in the House hearings. Democrats say the trial must include new documents and witnesses, particularly since the reason some of that material and testimony was not in the House inquiry was that the White House blocked it.

As it did for the House impeachment inquiry, Fox-owned WTTG TV Washington chose to use online streaming for its live news coverage of the Senate trial, while running regular syndicated and network fare on the broadcast signal.

That starts with a streamed hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Justice Department Inspector General's report on alleged abuses of the foreign surveillance act in the investigation of the 2016 election (10 a.m.).

The report, released this week, concluded there was not bias in the launch of the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign and its impact on elections, but did find that the FBI made mistakes.

But likely the bigger draw could be at 6:30 p.m. House Judiciary Committee meeting the members will debate the two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.

Fox News finished the first full week of December as the most watched network in primetime and total day, Nielsen said Tuesday.

The news network averaged 2.8 million viewers during the week of Dec. 2 to Dec. 8, besting ESPN’s 2.7 million viewers, reported Nielsen. Fox News was aided by its coverage of the Dec. 4 House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearing, for which the network topped all cable coverage during the 10 a.m.-6:30 p.m. time period.

Hallmark Channel finished in a tie for third with MSNBC with 1.8 million viewers, followed by A&E Network and TBS with 1 million viewers each. HGTV (981,000 viewers), History (936,000), Discovery Channel (922,000) and Freeform (903,000) rounded out the top 10 most watched cable networks in primetime.

Fox News topped all cable networks on a total day basis for the 48th consecutive week, besting MSNBC, Hallmark Channel, ESPN and CNN, according to Nielsen.

FedNet, which provides multimedia coverage of Congress, has tapped TVU Grid from TVU Networks, to provide live IP-based live video to the Web of impeachment hearings and possible Senate trial of President Donald Trump.

It will be FedNet's first foray into live video streaming, according to TVU.

TVU Grid provides video switching, routing and distribution of live video streams.

FedNet will provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House Judiciary hearings, which started today, Dec. 4, as well as live interviews with members of Congress, which it supplies to schools and media clients, then a Senate trial if the House votes to impeach.

FedNet's clients have included CQ Roll Call, The Los Angeles Times, Tribune Publishing, McClatchy Newspapers, The Washington Post, National Academies of Science, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“We needed an infinitely scalable set up,” said FedNet president Keith Carney of the decision to go with TVU. “With TVU Grid, we can scale to any number of locations to our network without increasing bandwidth requirements at each site. And we can route live video streams using TVU Grid anywhere in the world with sub-second latency. It’s an extremely fluid system, which is perfect for us. And we’re very confident in the robustness of the platform with the number of national media companies currently on TVU Grid.”

More viewers tuned into Fox News’ coverage of Wednesday’s impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump than any other cable or broadcast channel, according to early Nielsen Media Research.

Fox News averaged more than 2.8 million viewers on Nov. 13 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. during the hearings, according to Nielsen. MSNBC was second with 2.6 million viewers, followed by ABC’s 2 million viewers.

Among adults 25-54, ABC drew 496,000 viewers to top Fox News, NBC and CNN.

Related: Media Matters Targets Fox News Carriage Fees

In primetime Fox crushed its cable network competitors, averaging 3.9 million viewers to MSNBC’s 2.8 million viewers and CNN’s 1.3 million watchers. Fox News also topped MSNBC and CNN among adults 25-54 during the time period, according to Nielsen.