Bruce Castor, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, is pictured on a break in the third day of the Trump's impeachment trial at the Capitol.

Bruce Castor, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump, is pictured on a break in the third day of the Trump's impeachment trial at the Capitol. / Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Updated on Saturday at 1:46 p.m. ET

The impeachment managers and the defense in former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial moved to closing arguments on Saturday after an unexpected vote on witnesses threatened to push the proceedings into uncharted territory.

Listen to special coverage of the trial at the audio link above.

The Senate voted to allow witnesses earlier Saturday, only to reverse course just a few hours later, avoiding what could have turned into days or even weeks of further proceedings.

Reports about what Trump might have known about — and how he responded to — the danger to Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers during the riot led the House impeachment managers to initially seek at least one witness.

The Senate began Trump's second impeachment trial on Tuesday, hinged on the charge that he incited a deadly mob to storm the U.S. Capitol last month.

The historic second trial comes just a month after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection that left five people, including a police officer, dead. Two additional police officers who responded to the scene have died by suicide since.

The House managers acting as the prosecution in the trial blamed Trump for stoking the crowd and directly endangering hundreds of lawmakers.

Trump's defense has been that his remarks ahead of the riot should be protected under the First Amendment and that the impeachment effort itself is flawed and highly partisan.

Watch the trial below and follow our liveblog here.

Editor's note: Some of the videos shown during the trial contain profanity and violence.

This story originally published on Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET.

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