Trump's defense team finished its arguments at 3:16 p.m. ET. They used just 2 hours and 32 minutes of speaking time, leaving behind the vast majority of the 16 hours that had been allotted to them.

After a 15-minute break, the next part of the trial allows senators to ask both sides questions about their arguments and evidence. 

Both sides will eventually have the opportunity to deliver closing arguments. 

A senior aide to the House managers said Trump's lawyers were wrong to accuse the managers of manipulating Trump videos and tweets. 

Trump's attorneys also took Democrats' comments out of context when playing video clips during the trial, the aide said.

"Somewhere in between repeatedly showing video of comments from Democrats cut entirely out of their context, Trump’s attorney leveled a false accusation of selective editing at the House managers, and in doing so, selectively edited the managers’ presentation to make his point," the aide said.

Attorney David Schoen, for example, claimed that the Democratic managers played a clip from Trump's Jan. 6 speech in which he told the crowd they would "walk down" to the Capitol, alleging Democrats cut off the president's comments about going "peacefully and patriotically" to make their voices heard and cheer on some members of Congress. Schoen suggested that was an attempt by Democrats to make it look like Trump had incited the crowd.

"Schoen’s statement is incorrect.  Rep. Dean showed this entire portion of President Trump’s speech —twice," of Trump saying it and also from the crowd's perspective, the aide said.

The aide also said Trump's Twitter account had been suspended, requiring them to recreate some of his tweets graphically, which led to a blue verified badge to be added erroneously to one of the images.

Republicans senators appear to be more focused, with less multi-tasking much less during the defense presentation. There was some notetaking at points by GOP Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Tim Scott of South Carolina during the lawyers' presentations (though not during the videos quoting Democrats talking about "fighting.") 

Someone on the GOP side also chuckled during that video when Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio was shown saying that the only way Stacey Abrams would lose the 2018 gubernatorial race in Georgia is if the election was stolen. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced that they would recess for 15 minutes. 

This is the first break in the trial Friday.

The Constitution specifically creates stronger protections for the speech and actions of lawmakers engaged in their duties. Contained in Article I, it is colloquially called “the speech or debate clause.”

The clause, according to the Congressional Research Service, “serves chiefly to protect the independence, integrity, and effectiveness of the legislative branch by barring executive or judicial intrusions into the protected sphere of the legislative process.” It says that members of Congress cannot be held to account for their speech or debate in any other forum but Congress.

There is no such constitutional provision protecting the president’s speech or public acts. The standard for protection of legislative speech is, therefore, higher than that of presidential speech. And, of course, the Senate is not making a law prohibiting free speech in the impeachment case.

In presenting the former president's First Amendment defense, Michael T. van der Veen said Trump's rally speech on Jan. 6 "deserves full protection" under the Constitution and mocked the House managers as forming an argument based on "total intellectual dishonesty."

Van der Veen then presented a textbook slippery-slope argument — that if Trump could be convicted over his speech and actions in connection to the riot at the Capitol, no political speech would be safe, and that politicians would now face the threat of impeachment for any speech.

"You can see where this would lead," he said.

Before replaying a heavily edited clip of Democrats making incendiary remarks, van der Veen said: "This is not whataboutism."

"I am showing you this to make the point that all political speech must be protected," he said. "I did not show you the speech to balance out the speech of my client."

"All robust speech should be protected, and it should be protected evenly for all of us," he said.

Meanwhile, nearly 150 leading First Amendment lawyers and constitutional scholars from all over the political spectrum wrote a letter saying the Trump team's First Amendment argument is "legally frivolous," The New York Times reported.

"In other words, we all agree that the First Amendment does not prevent the Senate from convicting President Trump and disqualifying him from holding future office," the attorneys and scholars wrote.

In his defense of Trump, van der Veen also cast doubt on Russian interference in the 2016 election, a routine false claim made by Trump himself.

“The entire Democratic party and national news media spent the last four years repeating, without any evidence, that the 2016 election had been hacked,” he said. “Speaker Pelosi herself said that the 2016 election was hijacked, and that Congress has a duty to protect our democracy.”

U.S. intelligence agencies are in broad agreement that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including breaching the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign.