Forget everything that judge told you. The rules here are whatever a majority of the Senate says they are, and everything I say below are based on current Senate rules, which can be changed by a majority vote.
It's a trial only in the sense that they will decide whether or not the allegations in the Articles of Impeachment have been proven, but things like rules of evidence and procedure don't necessarily follow court rules because it's neither a criminal nor a civil procedure.
The Chief Justice is there to basically be a traffic cop; he doesn't control the trial the way a judge does in court. He can rule on procedural issues, but whatever he says can be overridden by a simple majority vote, so he'll probably just defer those questions to the Senate. Technically, if there's a tie vote on a procedural issue, he can cast the tie-breaking vote.
The only thing the Senators cannot do is mill around, wander in and out of the chamber, and chat the way they normally do on the Senate floor - they have to sit there quietly and behave. Every day, at the start of the trial session, the sergeant-at-arms makes this pronouncement: “Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons are commanded to keep silent, on pain of imprisonment.”
Would they actually be jailed? No; Roberts would probably just gavel them down and tell them to sit down and shut up. The Senate tends to be a lot more reserved than the House. You don't have a Matt Gaetz or a Doug Collins or a "Gym" Jordan grandstanding in the Senate the way they do in the House.
Any questions the Senators have will be quietly passed in a note to Justice Roberts, who will then read it aloud.
There are no restrictions on discussing the trial with anyone, including the media, but the Senate is trying to make that as difficult as possible by restricting media access.
|