Republican senator calls CNN reporter a 'liberal hack' when asked about considering new evidence in Trump's impeachment trial

• A Republican senator on Thursday called a CNN reporter a "liberal hack" when asked a straightforward question regarding President Donald Trump's impeachment trial.
• CNN reporter Manu Raju asked Sen. Martha McSally if the Senate should consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial. McSally responded: "You're a liberal hack, I'm not talking to you."
• The House earlier this week released explosive new evidence that documented the extent to which Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his associates were involved in a scheme to pressure Ukraine to investigate the president's political rivals.
• Trump's impeachment trial is expected to begin next Tuesday.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

GOP Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona called CNN reporter Manu Raju a "liberal hack" on Thursday as he questioned her on whether she'd be open to considering new evidence that's emerged in President Donald Trump's impeachment trial.

McSally, who is up for re-election this year, later doubled-down on her remarks on Twitter and shared a video of the exchange.

Raju asked: "Sen. McSally, should the Senate consider new evidence as part of the impeachment trial?"

The senator responded: "You're a liberal hack, I'm not talking to you."

The House Intelligence Committee earlier this week released explosive new evidence that documented the extent to which Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and one of Giuliani's Ukrainian associates, Lev Parnas, were involved in a scheme to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations into the president's political rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden.

The new evidence included documents and text messages, including a handwritten note from Parnas that said "get [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky to announce that the Biden case will be investigated."

Text messages between Parnas and his associates also suggested that Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, was under heavy surveillance. Giuliani led a smear campaign against Yovanovitch before she was abruptly recalled from her diplomatic post in May. Yovanovitch, who's widely respected in the State Department, was seen as an impediment to the investigations Trump and Giuliani desired.

"I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way," Giuliani told the New Yorker in December. "She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody."

Among the evidence released this week was also a letter written to Zelensky by Giuliani, which undermines one of Trump's central defenses in the Ukraine scandal.

"Just to be precise, I represent him as a private citizen, not as President of the United States," Giuliani wrote. "This is quite common under American law because the duties and privileges of a President and a private citizen are not the same."

As Insider political correspondent Sonam Sheth recently reported: The president has said his request for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens was linked to an interest in rooting out corruption, which would be in the US's national interest. But Giuliani's letter directly undercuts that because it specifies he was acting in his capacity as Trump's private attorney; in other words, he was representing the president's personal political interests and not the country's interests.

Trump's impeachment trial is expected to begin next Tuesday.