Trump impeachment trial live updates: Biden says charge 'not in dispute' in 1st comments on acquittal

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., asked both the House managers and Trump's defense council, "if the Senate's power to disqualify is not derivative of the power to remove a convicted president from office, could the Senate disqualify a sitting president, but not remove him or her?"

The House managers and Trump's defense team had starkly different answers to the constitutionality of this question.

"No," Bruce Castor, Trump's lawyer, said. He then proceeded to attack Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and other House managers on the process and grounds of their case.

"That was profoundly inaccurate and irrelevant to what the question is, so I'm going to get back to the question," Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said in response to Castor's answer.

"Under Article Two, Section Four, a president who is in office must be convicted before removal. And then must be removed before disqualification, OK? But if the president is already out of office, then he can be separately disqualified."

Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, went on to explain that senators could vote to convict and then vote not to disqualify if they didn't want to prevent Trump from reelection.

"If they felt that the evidence demonstrated that the president was guilty of incitement to insurrection, they could vote to convict," Raskin said. "But if they felt that they didn't want to exercise the further power established by the Constitution to disqualify, they wouldn't have to do that."

Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., asked House managers about how the former president's false allegations of election fraud led to the "radicalization" of Trump supporters and led to the attack on the Capitol.

House manger Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Calif., argued that the former president's persistent claims about election fraud caused his supporters to buy into the "big lie" that the election was stolen, which incited them.

"That was the purpose behind Donald Trump saying that the election had been rigged and that the election had been stolen, and to be clear, when he says 'the election is stolen,' what he’s saying is that the victory, and he even says one time, the election victory is being stolen from them. Think about how significant that is to Americans, again, you’re right, over 70 million -- I think 74 million -- people voted for Donald Trump, and this wasn't a one-off comment. It wasn't one time," Castro said. "It was over and over and over and over and over again, with a purpose."

Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio asked the House managers what message it will send if the Senate does not convict Trump.

"Our actions will reverberate as to what are the future consequences," House manager Del. Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands said. "The extremists who attack the Capitol at the president's provocation will be emboldened, all our intelligence agencies have confirmed this."

Plaskett, using Trump's own words, warned that "this is only the beginning."

"There are long-standing consequences decisions like this that will define who we are as people, who America is," Plaskett continued.

A clerk momentarily took over for presiding officer Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., president pro tempore of the Senate, in reading a wordy question from Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Mike Crappo on the Framers' intentions surrounding whether a former officer can be impeached.

"The Framers were very smart men and they went over draft after draft after draft on that document and they reviewed all the other drafts of all of the state constitutions -- all of them -- and they picked and chose what they wanted and they discarded what they did not. And what they discarded was the option for all of you to impeach a former elected official," Trump attorney Michael van der Veen said.

However, the Senate voted on Tuesday 55-45 to affirm its power that Trump trial's is constitutional and its within their authority to proceed. Impeachment managers have argued it's the correct course, rather than a criminal court.