"Adam Schiff's basement" was back in the impeachment spotlight as senators began a trial that will decide whether Donald Trump becomes the first president to be removed from office.

Mr Trump for months mocked what is known officially as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, where House Democrats and Republicans for weeks late last year heard from current and former Trump administration officials about just what the president wanted from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky during a 25 July phone conversation.

Now the world's most famous safe space, the room on the bottom floor of the Capitol Visitors Centre designed to allow administration officials and politicians from both parties to discuss highly classified state secrets was described by the president as the House conducted its probe as a den of shady shenanigans by Mr Schiff and his House Democratic colleagues.

White House officials and GOP lawmakers backed him up, describing the room built with funds approved by Democratic and Republican members alike as a "dungeon" and a "basement bunker". White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham last year called Mr Schiff nothing but a "basement blogger".

But they all were taking their cues from Mr Trump. The transformation, at least in conservative circles, of a room designed to safeguard America's national security into a hotbed of partisanship and the anti-Trump movement is merely the latest example of how the president has brought his unique brand of slash-and-burn marketing to the Oval Office.

All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment

All the president's lawyers: The team fighting Trump's impeachment

  • 1/6 Alan Dershowitz

    Dershowitz is a controversial American lawyer best known for the high-profile clients he has successfully defended. Those clients have included OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. One longtime Harvard Law associated told the New Yorker Dershowitz "revels in taking positions that ultimately are not just controversial but pretty close to indefensible."

    Getty Images

  • 2/6 Ken Starr

    Starr became a household name in the 1990s as the independent counsel who led the investigation that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment. That investigation began as a look into a real estate scandal known as Whitewater, and eventually led to impeachment after Mr Clinton lied under oath about having an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

    AP

  • 3/6 Jay Sekulow

    Sekulow is the president's longtime personal attorney, and, now, personal lawyer in the White House. He has been accused by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas of being "in the loop" during the Ukraine scandal.

  • 4/6 Pam Bondi

    Bondi is the former attorney general in Florida, and a longtime backer of the president's. She made a name for herself in Florida for taking hyper partisan stances on issues, and her penchant for publicity. She is likely to be a prominent public-facing figure during the trial.

    AFP via Getty Images

  • 5/6 Pat Cipollone

    Cipollone is the White House counsel, and leading the president's defence team.

    Getty Images

  • 6/6 Rudy Giuliani

    While not officially named as one of the president's impeachment lawyers, it is hard to ignore Giuliani's outsized role in this process. The former mayor of New York has been making headlines for months as he defends his client, and for his apparent role in the effort to compel Ukraine to launch the investigation into Joe Biden. We'll see how he figures in the actual trial, which he has said he would like to be a part of.

    Reuters

White House counsel Pat Cipollone borrowed his client's strategy of trying to use the secure room's basement location to describe it as the perfect space for Democrats to continue trying to kick the New York businessman and former reality television star out of the executive mansion.

Mr Cipollone lauded his boss for ordering the release of his 25 July call with the Ukrainian president, saying "how's that for transparency?" (The White House's own document, however, notes it is merely a summary of the call and not a verbatim transcript. Trump and his surrogates continue falsely calling it a transcript.)

Then the White House's top lawyer went full Trump, saying Schiff oversaw his part of the Democrats' investigation "in a basement of the House of Representatives".

"The president was forbidden from attending. The president was not allowed to have a lawyer present," Mr Cipollone said on the Senate floor. "In every other impeachment proceeding, the president has been given minimal due process. Nothing here. Not even Mr Schiff's Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF."

Adam Schiff throws Trump's own words back at him

With the latter statement, Mr Cipollone echoed his client in another way: He uttered a false statement. The Washington Post's Fact Checker staff concluded Mr Trump uttered or tweeted 16,241 false or misleading statements during the first three years of his term.

Transcripts of those Intelligence Committee closed-door sessions with current and former Trump administration officials – as well as hours of video footage showing them entering – show some House Republicans did join Mr Schiff in the secure basement room.