Questioning of legal teams continues as GOP moves to block witnesses in Trump impeachment trial

WASHINGTON, DC -- Senators returned Thursday for a second day of questions to House managers and President Donald Trump’s legal team in his impeachment trial as attempts by Democrats to rally votes for new witnesses appear to have stalled.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated to Republican senators he believes he now has the votes to defeat any Democratic motion that the Senate consider new witnesses when the Senate decides that question on Friday, according to two GOP sources. That would allow him to skip to the final stages of the trial, the sources said.

Multiple Republicans told ABC News they hope to move quickly to acquit the president within the next two days, ahead of his State of the Union address next Tuesday.

ABC News caught up with McConnell at the Capitol on Thursday. Asked if he had the votes he needs to win the day Friday on witnesses, he responded, “We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

Then, when asked if he felt confident about the vote, he turned his head and with a sly grin and said, “I always do.”

On the Senate floor Thursday, GOP Sen. James Inhofe asked the president’s defense team: If additional witnesses are called, would you ever envision the House managers agreeing there has been a fair Senate trial if it ends in the president's acquittal?

The president's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow took this question on, declaring “the answer’s no.”

“Now they will not agree that it's fair because what will happen is if there's a discussion of witnesses, and if we go to witnesses, Mr. Schumer's laid out the four he wants and he tells me I can have anybody we can have anybody we want,” Sekulow said.

“But the reality is that also includes documents. And that includes other witnesses that it may lead to. So at some point you'll say, because this cannot go on forever and we will be at the election, this body will say this has to come to an end. And they will say ‘aha, it's been brought to an end as we were about to get the key evidence.’”

Interestingly, House manager Rep. Adam Schiff at one point was essentially negotiating on the Senate floor -- appearing to address the prospect raised repeatedly by Trump's lawyers -- that bringing in witnesses could tie up the Senate for weeks or more and delay senators from addressing other important business.

He offered to cap depositions of potential witnesses to a week, similar to the Clinton depositions which happened over a three-day period.

"Let's cap the depositions to one week," Schiff said. "In the Clinton trial there was one week of depositions and you know what the Senate did during that week? They did the business of the Senate. The Senate went back to its ordinary legislative business while the deposition were being conducted. You want the Clinton model? Let’s use the Clinton model. Let's take a week let's take a week to have a fair trial. You can continue your business we can get the business of the country done is that too much to ask in the name of fairness -- that we follow the Clinton model that we take one week?

"I mean are we really driven by the timing of the State of the Union (set for Tuesday) should that be a guiding principle can't we take one week to hear from these witnesses? I think we can I think we should I think we must," he said.