[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 156 (Thursday, September 26, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5734-S5735]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                          Trump Administration

  Mr. JONES. Mr. President, I have to admit that I haven't had a heck 
of a lot of sleep the last few nights, and I don't think anyone has. If 
anyone has rested well the last few nights, it is because they are 
either not paying attention or they are here for the wrong reason.
  We are in some troubled times. Events of the past 2 weeks have been 
nothing short of stunning. They have been stunning in the speed in 
which they have unfolded. They have been stunning and disturbing in the 
allegations that have been made regarding the conduct of the President 
of the United States. These are allegations that go to the heart of 
national security and allegations that go to the heart of whether or 
not the President is upholding his oath to the Constitution of the 
United States or abusing the power of the Presidency.
  We have to remember in this body, and we have to remind our 
colleagues, we have to remind the media, and we have to remind the 
public that we are just now beginning this process. The facts have not 
come out. We are just now beginning to see facts and determining what 
happened over the course of this past summer--where things were, what 
happened, what was said, and who said it. We have to determine the 
allegations and whether or not they have merit based on the facts that 
come out, not just reports in the media or even the allegations in a 
complaint. I am a lawyer. Allegations in a complaint are just simply 
allegations made, but they have to be proven.
  The reason I rise today is that already we are seeing this becoming 
political. People are going to their political corners. The partisan 
tribalism is taking over already, and that is unfortunate. It is a sad 
commentary when a process that is so rooted in the Constitution of the 
United States--something so fundamental to our democracy--is almost 
immediately cast in political terms. My colleague and friend, Senator 
Sasse from Nebraska, used the term ``partisan tribalism'' in today's 
world that is ``insta-certain.'' No matter what you see, no matter what 
you read, it doesn't matter because you are going to take a side, and 
when we take sides, the American public immediately take sides and no 
one listens to the facts.
  We are called as Senators, we are called as Members of the House, and 
we are called as Members of this body to a much higher duty than that--
a much higher duty. Our duty is to carefully analyze and review the 
facts--facts, not mere allegations; facts, not reports or leaks; facts, 
not what some political talking head on the television says their 
opinion might be. Our duty is so much higher than that.
  We have seen already some of what appear to be very disturbing facts. 
We have seen a summary of a telephone call between the President of the 
United States and the President of Ukraine. Ukraine is a country 
dependent on countries like the United States. The balance of power 
between the United States and Ukraine is not balanced at all. We have 
so much more power, and in the summary of that call, the President of 
the United States noted that to the President of Ukraine. He said, 
essentially: You are dependent on us. No one else helps you, but you 
can count on the United States of America. And, by the way, I need a 
favor. I need you to do me a personal political favor.
  In that conversation, he talked about not only having his personal 
lawyer but also utilizing the Attorney General of the United States to 
help benefit them politically. Those are initially the facts, and they 
are very disturbing. For anyone to say that they are not is shirking 
their responsibility to their constituents, to the public, to the 
Constitution, and to the very oath that we took when we came into this 
body.
  But again, it is but one piece of a puzzle. We have now also seen the 
contents of the so-called whistleblower complaint. ``Whistleblower'' is 
a term of art. A whistleblower is just simply somebody who has come 
forward, but they are given the name whistleblower because they are 
given legal protections. These people who come forward are concerned 
citizens of the United States. It is a concerned citizen of the United 
States who saw something happening that disturbed him so much that he 
felt compelled to bring it to someone's attention. They are documented 
fairly well, but again, these facts have not come out. They are just 
statements in an allegation in a complaint that have to be determined.

  I have been asked over and over by the media in the last 2 days: Do 
you support the House doing this? Do you support impeachment? Do you 
support this or that?
  My comment is always the same: I want to know the facts. It doesn't 
matter to me what the House of Representatives, in their prerogative, 
calls their processes. I want to know the facts. The American people 
deserve to know the facts. This body deserves to know the facts, 
whether or not anything comes over from the House of Representatives. 
We deserve to know whether or not the President is abusing his office. 
We deserve to know whether or not he is placing our national security 
at risk because, remember, Ukraine is under threat from Russia every 
day. Every day they are looking over their shoulder. Every day they are 
looking over their shoulder. That puts us at risk, as well. We have to 
make sure that we are deliberate, that we move forward with a process 
that is deliberate. We owe it to the American people to be deliberate, 
to be somber, to be making sure that we know the facts before we make 
our judgments.
  It doesn't matter what side of the aisle you are on. This is not a 
Republican process. This is not a Democratic process. And for God's 
sake, it is not a socialist agenda. That is about the dumbest thing 
that I have heard people say over the last two days. Good Lord, we are 
talking about a process that is rooted in the Constitution of the 
United States. It is rooted in the Constitution of the United States 
for a purpose--part of the checks and balances that seem to be going 
out the window these days in our society and in our government and here 
in Washington, DC. This is an American agenda to make sure that we know 
the facts and that we understand those facts so people who are around 
here watching this today know and can be secure in the fact that their 
Congress is doing their job, that the President is doing his job, that 
the courts are doing their job.
  This is not the time to circle the wagons around the President, but, 
likewise, it is not the time to make a judgment already that this 
President should be removed from office or even for articles of 
impeachment voted on by the House. This is not the time to do that. We 
are beginning a process

[[Page S5735]]

that we have to take our time on. I say that knowing that when we say 
``take our time,'' we just need to be deliberate, but we need to move. 
This is not something that needs to drag on. This is not something 
through which the American public needs to be dragged over the course 
of too long a period of time. This can be determined.
  If you look at that whistleblower complaint that was filed, this is 
something that should easily be able to be done in a relatively short 
period of time if the administration will cooperate and if we get that 
instead of the stonewalling that we have seen in the past.
  Cooperate with us. Do your job. Do your duty and let us do ours. That 
is all that we ask. That is all that anybody should ever ask of anyone 
in this body or anyone in the House of Representatives. Let us do our 
job.
  We are about to leave this place for a couple of weeks. The House is 
leaving, though they may still do a little work. We are going to be 
leaving for 2 weeks. We are going back home to our States. We are going 
to be talking to the media. We are going to be talking to constituents. 
I guarantee you that when I go back to Alabama, a lot of people will 
have already made up their minds. When I go to a townhall or whatever, 
they will have made up their minds without any facts. They make up 
their mind based on the media.
  My friends in the media need to pay attention too. Don't ask me 
whether or not this is going to affect my election in 2020. Don't ask 
me if it is going to affect Joe Biden or Donald Trump, or ask me if it 
is going to affect the Presidential race. Ask me about what is going to 
happen to the Constitution and what is going to happen to the rule of 
law. Let's talk about the seriousness of what we have and not the 
politics of it, for goodness' sake.
  But every time I turn around, when I walk out of these doors, the 
first thing they are going to ask me is this: How do you think this is 
going to affect your race?
  That is not my job. That is not my oath. That is not my duty. If we 
put our fingers to the political winds with everything we do in this 
body, we may as well not be here. We should not be able to live with 
ourselves. Unfortunately, I think so many people do that. I am hoping 
that in this day, in this time, in these troubled waters we are about 
to embark on, people will see that higher calling and that they will 
once again return to that time and that place when this Senate was a 
deliberative body and not a knee-jerk reaction to a particular program 
or nomination or whatever that comes before it. We will return to the 
days of yesteryear where we actually deliberate and we talk amongst 
ourselves and we have a civil discussion about the important issues 
that we are faced with. I remember those days. I was here. I was 
sitting back there as a Senate staffer, watching those great debates 
and watching people change their minds on the floor of the Senate 
because of the debate that someone gave and someone persuaded him. We 
don't have those any more. Look around right now. We are all gone, 
except those people around here listening to me, and I have staff here. 
But we don't have those debates any more. We don't have those 
deliberations any more. We are going to have to now. We are going to 
have to because the Republic depends on it. The fate of this country 
will depend on it. We are so divided in this country right now. We are 
living in what Arthur Brooks has called that ``culture of contempt,'' 
where we don't necessarily just disagree with each other. We hold each 
other in contempt if we disagree with each other.
  We have to change that, folks. We have to get back. We have to change 
that. We have to make sure people understand their roles and their 
duties. We have to make sure that for this country to progress and for 
this country to survive, we have to work together.
  We have to be one America. We can't be so divided. That is exactly 
what our enemies have been trying to do to us for centuries. For two 
centuries or more, they have wanted to divide us, and they came close 
during the Civil War. They are going to come close now if we are not 
careful. If we don't stop folks on both sides of the aisle from 
continuing to pull us into our corners but rather start pulling people 
back to where we can have these discussions, we will be in trouble.
  As we go forward and as we go into this recess, I hope all of my 
colleagues will remember their oaths. I hope people will remember what 
they said when they stood right over there and the Vice President of 
the United States asked them to raise their right hands and say: ``I do 
solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the 
United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.''
  We took an oath to support the Constitution. We didn't take an oath 
to support the President of the United States. We didn't take an oath 
to support the Republican Party. We didn't take an oath to support the 
Democratic Party. We took an oath to defend the Constitution of the 
United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. That is an 
important part that our Framers put in the Constitution, ``foreign and 
domestic.''
  We said we would take this obligation freely without any mental 
reservation or purpose of evasion. We cannot evade. We took an oath not 
to evade while we were here--that is not what we do--and to well and 
faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which we entered.
  Our duties to this office are to be fair, to be impartial, and to be 
deliberative, not political. Our duties to this office are to our 
constituents and to do the very best we can to make sure we analyze 
whatever is in front of us because history will judge us. It will 
determine whether or not we acted with courage and conviction or 
whether we just simply tested the political winds as some people are 
already doing.
  Often in my talks around the country and in some even here, I like to 
quote one of my favorite characters from literature, Atticus Finch. 
Atticus Finch gave an impassioned closing argument to a jury he knew 
was not likely to give him the verdict he sought. He laid out a case in 
defense of Tom Robinson, a Black man who was accused of raping a White 
woman. In that defense, he went through the facts. Everybody who has 
ever read the book and everybody who has ever watched the movie knows 
Tom Robinson was innocent, but Atticus Finch knew that the likelihood 
of the jury's finding that man innocent was slim and none.
  At the end of that closing argument, he talked about the solemn duty, 
the solemn obligation, that the jurors had to the system. He talked 
about the justice system and the courts and the jurors being the great 
levelers of society, where the pauper and the rich man were the same in 
the eyes of the law. He talked about the duty they had to fairly and 
impartially judge the facts.
  Just before he sat down--and you could see it and feel it, and if you 
were to read the book, you could feel that Atticus knew what was going 
to happen--he looked that jury in the eye and said: ``[Gentlemen], in 
the name of God, do your duty.''
  Ladies and gentlemen and colleagues, in the name of God, we have to 
do our duty. We have to do our duty. We have to make sure we fulfill 
our oaths and not be concerned about how many votes it might get us or 
how many votes we might lose. Whether we know the outcome or not, 
whether we get pressure from Assad or not, whether or not there are 
millions of dollars spent on TV and in radio so as to tell us to vote a 
certain way, we have to fulfill that solemn obligation. In the name of 
God, we should do our duty and nothing less.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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