[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 176 (Tuesday, November 5, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6371-S6372]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              Impeachment

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, last week, the House of Representatives 
voted in favor of a set of procedures to govern its impeachment 
inquiry, laying out a formal process to examine the facts in a 
deliberate and fairminded process.
  Our Republican colleagues keep changing their arguments as to why 
they are opposed to what the House is doing. First, there needed to be 
a vote. There was a vote. Second, make it public. Now it is public. 
Third, there is no quid pro quo. Now there is a quid pro quo, they even 
admit.
  So now they are saying it is not impeachable. The shifting stands of 
the Republicans' argument in the House and Senate, which seems to shift 
all the time, indicates they don't seem to have a real interest in 
following the facts to where they lead but rather just defending Trump, 
regardless of the facts. That is a huge mistake for the Republic and 
for the Senate and how we should conduct ourselves.
  So let me elaborate. For weeks, congressional Republicans criticized 
House Democrats for not scheduling a vote. As soon as the vote was 
taken, the same Republicans criticized the process once again.
  Republicans criticized House Democrats for conducting classified 
hearings, even though the material discussed concerns our national 
security and Republicans readily participated in those hearings. Then 
once the House voted on the plan for open hearings, predictably, the 
same Republicans kept criticizing the process, coming up with a new 
argument: The idea that there was no ``quid pro quo,'' which the 
President himself stated, although he was contradicted by Mr. Mulvaney, 
and that seemed to be the linchpin of their defense of the President in 
the last few days and weeks.
  But now, all of the sudden, knowing maybe what is coming out, all of 
the sudden, our Republican colleagues are saying: Yes, there was a quid 
pro quo, but it doesn't matter. It is not impeachable. Some of them 
even think it is not even wrong, which is absolutely absurd.
  So instead of the shifting sands of defenses of the President on a 
near daily basis, my Republican friends should let all the facts come 
out and make their judgments based on the facts. Instead of changing 
their argument every third day when faced with new facts, they should 
remain dispassionate and say we are going to look at the facts, instead 
of just jumping to find a new defense of the President no matter what 
the facts.
  If you are defending the President because there is no quid pro quo 
and there is quid pro quo, maybe you should be saying: Maybe something 
is going on here. But, no, a new argument pops up.
  The investigation is not yet complete. Jumping to conclusions before 
all the facts come out is misguided. It is unbefitting of a Senator's 
role as judge and juror of a potential impeachment case.
  Now, last night, the President held a political rally in Kentucky 
with several Republican elected officials, including the junior Senator 
from Kentucky who publicly and explicitly urged the media to expose the 
identity of the Federal whistleblower. The President, of course, 
quickly praised the Senator's idea.
  I cannot stress just how wrong this is. We have Federal whistleblower 
laws designed to protect the identity and safety of patriotic Americans 
who come forward to stand up for the Constitution. There are Members on 
the other side of the aisle, including senior Members and chairs of 
committees, who spent their entire careers defending whistleblowers and 
the laws that protect them and their families.
  So where are they now? I was pleased to hear that my colleague, 
Senator Thune, spoke out and said that whistleblowers must be 
protected. I believe

[[Page S6372]]

that Senator Grassley is saying the same. They are both right. But 
there should be bipartisan outrage at the public attempts by the 
President and a Member of this body to expose the identity of a Federal 
whistleblower. You do not get to determine when our whistleblower laws 
apply or do not or whether you like what the whistleblower said or you 
do not. They are laws. This whistleblower, whose complaint was deemed 
``credible'' and an ``urgent matter'' by a Trump appointee, is 
protected by these statutes. Every single Member of this body should 
stand up and say that it is wrong to disclose his or her identity.
  Our rhetoric can sometimes be overheated, but I am appalled by these 
developments. There is no other word for it. We are in a moment of 
history when the Republicans, over only a few weeks, have shifted from 
saying that no laws were broken to saying that laws were broken, but it 
is not impeachable, to outright advocating that laws be broken.
  Where is the internal gyroscope, the clock of decency and honor on 
the other side? They are twisting themselves in contradictory pretzels 
to defend this President who is going to bounds that we have rarely 
seen in this body with any party with any President.
  I don't understand what sort of effect President Trump has on people 
of integrity and some degree of strength, who just fold whenever he 
says something, twist their arguments, change their arguments, do 180-
degree hairpins about their arguments, all because they are afraid of 
telling the truth to power, the truth to this President who never likes 
to hear it.