[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 13 (Wednesday, January 22, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S443-S457]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ORDER OF PROCEDURE

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. Chief Justice, for the information of all of our 
colleagues, no motions--no motions--were filed this morning, so we will 
proceed to the House managers' presentation. We will go for 
approximately 2 hours and take a short recess when there is an 
appropriate break time between presenters.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 483, the 
managers for the House of Representatives have 24 hours to make the 
presentation of their case.
  The Senate will now hear you.


                           Opening Statement

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, counsel for the 
President, and my fellow House managers: I want to begin by thanking 
you, Chief Justice, for a very long day, for the way you have presided 
over these proceedings. I want to thank the Senators also. We went well 
into the morning, as you know, until I believe around 2 in the morning. 
You paid attention to every word and argument you heard from both sides 
in this impeachment trial, and I know we are both deeply grateful for 
that.
  It was an exhausting day for us, certainly, but we have adrenaline 
going through our veins. For those who are required to sit and listen, 
it is a much more difficult task. Of course, we know our positions. You 
have the added difficulty of having to weigh the facts and the law. So 
I want to begin today by thanking you for the conduct of the 
proceedings yesterday and inviting your patience as we go forward. We 
have some very long days yet to come.
  So let us begin.
  ``When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, 
bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the 
advantage of military habits, despotic in his ordinary demeanor, known 
to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty--when such a 
man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity, to join in the cry 
of danger to liberty, to take every opportunity of embarrassing the 
general government and bringing it under suspicion, to flatter and fall 
in with all the nonsense of the zealots of

[[Page S444]]

the day, it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things 
into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.''
  Those words were written by Alexander Hamilton in a letter to 
President George Washington at the height of the panic of 1792, a 
financial credit crisis that shook our young Nation. Hamilton was 
responding to sentiments relayed to Washington as he traveled the 
country that America, in the face of that crisis, might descend from a 
republican form of government, plunging instead into that of monarchy.
  The Framers of the Constitution worried then, as we worry today, that 
a leader might come to power not to carry out the will of the people he 
was elected to represent but to pursue his own interests. They feared 
that a President would subvert our democracy by abusing the awesome 
power of his office for his own personal or political gain. And so they 
devised a remedy as powerful as the evil it was meant to combat: 
impeachment.
  As centuries have passed, our Founders achieved an almost mythical 
character. We are aware of their flaws, certainly some very painful and 
pronounced indeed. Yet, when it came to the drafting of the new system 
of government never seen before and with no guarantee it would succeed, 
we cannot help but be in awe of their genius, their prescience even, 
vindicated time and again.
  Still, maybe because of their brilliance and the brilliance of their 
words, we find year after year it more difficult to imagine them as 
human beings. This is no less true of Alexander Hamilton, 
notwithstanding his recent return to celebrity. But they were human 
beings. They understood human frailties, even as they exhibited them. 
They could appreciate, just as we can, how power can corrupt. Even as 
we struggle to understand how the Framers might have responded to 
Presidential misconduct of the kind and character that we are here to 
try, we should not imagine for one moment that they lacked basic common 
sense or refuse to apply it ourselves.
  They knew what it was like to live under a despot, and they risked 
their lives to be free of it. They knew they were creating an 
enormously powerful executive, and they knew they needed to constrain 
it. They did not intend for the power of impeachment to be used 
frequently or over mere matters of policy, but they put it in the 
Constitution for a reason: for a man who would subvert the interests of 
the Nation to pursue his own interests; for a man who would seek to 
perpetuate himself in office by inviting foreign interference and 
cheating in an election; for a man who would be disdainful of 
constitutional limit, ignoring or defeating the other branches of 
government and their coequal powers; for a man who believed that the 
Constitution gave him the right to do anything he wanted and practiced 
in the art of deception; for a man who believed that he was above the 
law and beholden to no one; for a man, in short, who would be a King.
  We are here today in this hallowed Chamber undertaking this solemn 
action for only the third time in history because Donald J. Trump, the 
45th President of the United States, has acted precisely as Hamilton 
and his contemporaries feared. President Trump solicited foreign 
interference in our democratic elections, abusing the power of his 
office, to seek help from abroad to improve his reelection prospects at 
home. When he was caught, he used the powers of that office to obstruct 
the investigation into his own misconduct.
  To implement this corrupt scheme, President Trump pressured the 
President of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into two 
discredited allegations that would benefit President Trump's 2020 
Presidential campaign. When the Ukrainian President did not immediately 
assent, President Trump withheld two official acts to induce the 
Ukrainian leader to comply: a head-of-state meeting in the Oval Office 
and military funding. Both were of bright consequence to Ukraine and to 
our national interests in security, but one looms largest. President 
Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to a 
strategic partner at war with Russia to secure foreign help with his 
reelection--in other words, to cheat.

  In this way, the President used official state powers available only 
to him and unavailable to any political opponent to advantage himself 
in a democratic election. His scheme was undertaken for a simple but 
corrupt reason--to help him win reelection in 2020. But the effect of 
the scheme was to undermine our free and fair elections and to put our 
national security at risk.
  It was not even necessary that Ukraine undertake the political 
investigations the President was seeking. They merely had to announce 
them. This is significant, for President Trump had no interest in 
fighting corruption, as he would claim after he was caught. Rather, his 
interest was in furthering corruption by the announcement of 
investigations that were completely without merit.
  The first sham investigation that President Trump desired was into 
former Vice President Joe Biden, who had sought the removal of a 
corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor during the previous U.S. administration.
  The Vice President acted in accordance with U.S. official policy at 
the time and was supported unanimously by our European allies and key 
global financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund, 
which shared the concern over corruption.
  Despite this fact, in the course of this scheme, President Trump and 
his agents pressed the Ukrainian President to announce an investigation 
into the false claim that Vice President Biden wanted the corrupt 
prosecutor removed from power in order to stop an investigation into 
Burisma Holdings, a company on whose board Biden's son Hunter sat.
  This allegation is simply untrue. It has been widely debunked by 
Ukrainian and American experts alike. That reality mattered not to 
President Trump. To him, the value in promoting a negative tale about 
former Vice President Biden--true or false--was its usefulness to his 
reelection campaign. It was a smear tactic against a political opponent 
that President Trump apparently feared.
  Remarkably but predictably, Russia, too, has sought to support this 
effort to smear Mr. Biden, reportedly hacking into the Ukraine energy 
company at the center of the President's disinformation campaign only 
last week.
  Russia almost certainly was looking for information related to the 
former Vice President's son so that the Kremlin could also weaponize it 
against Mr. Biden, just like it did against Hillary Clinton in 2016, 
when Russia hacked and released emails from her Presidential campaign.
  President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he would like 
nothing more than to make use of such dirt against Mr. Biden, just as 
he made use of Secretary Clinton's hacked and released emails in his 
previous Presidential campaign.
  That brings us to the other sham investigation that President Trump 
demanded the Ukrainian leader announce. This investigation was related 
to a debunked conspiracy theory, alleging that Ukraine, not Russia, 
interfered in the 2016 Presidential election. This narrative, 
propagated by the Russian intelligence services, contends that Ukraine 
sought to help Hillary Clinton and harm then-Candidate Trump and that a 
computer server providing this fiction is hidden somewhere in Ukraine.
  That is the so-called CrowdStrike conspiracy theory. This tale is 
also patently false, and, remarkably, it is precisely the inverse of 
what the U.S. intelligence communities' unanimous assessment was that 
Russia interfered in the 2016 election in sweeping in systemic fashion 
in order to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.
  Nevertheless, the President evidently believed that a public 
announcement lending credence to these allegations by the Ukrainian 
President could assist his reelection by putting to rest any doubts 
Americans may have had over the legitimacy of his first election, even 
as he invited foreign interference in the next.
  To the degree that most Americans have followed the President's 
efforts to involve another foreign power in our election, they may be 
most familiar with his entreaty to the Ukrainian President on the now 
infamous July 25 call to ``do us a favor, though'' and investigate 
Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory.

[[Page S445]]

  That call was not the beginning of the story of the President's 
corrupt scheme, nor was it the end. Rather, it was merely part--
although, a significant part--of a months' long effort by President 
Trump and his allies and associates who applied significant and 
increasing pressure on Ukraine to announce these two politically 
motivated investigations.
  Key figures in the Trump administration were aware or directly 
involved or participated in the scheme. As we saw yesterday, one 
witness--a million-dollar donor to the President's inaugural committee 
put it this way: Everyone was in the loop.
  After twice inviting Ukraine's new President to the White House 
without providing a specific date for the proposed visit, President 
Trump conditioned this coveted Head-of-State meeting on the 
announcement of these sham investigations. For Ukraine's new and 
untested leader, an official meeting with the President of the United 
States in the Oval Office was critical. It would help bestow on him 
important, domestic, and international legitimacy, as he sought to 
implement an ambitious anti-corruption platform.
  Actual and apparent support from the President of the United States 
would also strengthen his position as he sought to negotiate a peace 
agreement with Russia's President Vladimir Putin, seeking an end to 
Russia's illegal annexation and continued military occupation of parts 
of Ukraine.
  But most pernicious, President Trump petitioned hundreds of millions 
of dollars in congressionally appropriated taxpayer-funded military 
assistance for the same purpose to apply more pressure on Ukraine's 
leader to announce the investigations. This military aid, which has 
long enjoyed bipartisan support, was designed to help Ukraine defend 
itself from the Kremlin's aggression.

  More than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and 
their proxies--15,000. The military aid was for such essentials as 
sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, radar night-vision 
goggles, and other vital support for the war effort.
  Most critically, the military aid we provide Ukraine helps to protect 
and advance American national security interests in the region and 
beyond. America has an abiding interest in stemming Russian 
expansionism and resisting any nations' efforts to remake the map of 
Europe by dint of military force, even as we have tens of thousands of 
troops stationed there.
  Moreover, as one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the 
United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia 
over there and we don't have to fight Russia here.
  When the President's scheme was exposed and the House of 
Representatives properly performed its constitutional responsibility to 
investigate the matter, President Trump used the same unrivaled 
authority at his disposal as Commander in Chief to cover up his 
wrongdoing.
  In unprecedented fashion, the President ordered the entire executive 
branch of the United States of America to categorically refuse and 
completely obstruct the House's impeachment investigation. Such a 
wholesale obstruction of congressional impeachment has never before 
occurred in our democracy. It represents one of the most blatant 
efforts of a coverup in history.
  If not remedied by his conviction in the Senate and removal from 
office, President Trump's abuse of his office and obstruction of 
Congress will permanently alter the balance of power among the branches 
of government, inviting future Presidents to operate as if they are 
also beyond the reach of accountability, congressional oversight, and 
the law.
  On the basis of this egregious misconduct, the House of 
Representatives returned two Articles of Impeachment against the 
President: first, charging that President Trump corruptly abused the 
powers of the Presidency to solicit foreign interference in the 
upcoming Presidential election for his personal political benefit; and, 
second, that President Trump obstructed an impeachment inquiry into 
that abuse of power in order to cover up his misconduct.
  The House did not take this extraordinary step lightly. As we will 
discuss, impeachment exists for cases in which the conduct of the 
President rises beyond mere policy disputes to be decided otherwise and 
without urgency at the ballot box.
  Instead, we are here today to consider a much more grave matter, and 
that is an attempt to use the powers of the Presidency to cheat in an 
election. For precisely this reason, the President's misconduct cannot 
be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote 
will be fairly won.
  In corruptly using his office to gain a political advantage, in 
abusing the powers of that office in such a way to jeopardize our 
national security and the integrity of our elections, in obstructing 
the investigation into his own wrongdoing, the President has shown that 
he believes that he is above the law and scornful of constraint.
  As we saw yesterday on the screen, under article II he can do 
anything he wants. Moreover, given the seriousness of the conduct at 
issue and its persistence, this matter cannot and must not be decided 
by the courts, which apart from the presence of the Chief Justice here 
today, are given no role in impeachments in either the House or the 
Senate.
  Being drawn into litigation, taking many months or years to complete, 
would provide the President with an opportunity to continue his 
misconduct. He would remain secure in the knowledge that he may tie up 
the Congress and the courts indefinitely, as he has with Don McGahn, 
rendering the impeachment power effectively meaningless.
  We also took the step with the knowledge that this was not the first 
time the President solicited foreign interference in our elections. In 
2016, then-candidate Trump implored Russia to hack his opponent's email 
account, something that the Russian military agency did only hours 
later--only hours later.
  When the President said, ``hey, Russia, if you're listening,'' they 
were listening. Only hours later they hacked his opponent's campaign.
  The President has made it clear this would also not be the last time, 
asking China only recently to join Ukraine in investigating his 
political opponent.
  Over the coming days, we will present to you and to the American 
people the extensive evidence collected during the House's impeachment 
inquiry into the President's abuse of power--overwhelming evidence, 
notwithstanding his unprecedented and wholesale obstruction of the 
investigation into that misconduct.
  You will hear and read testimony from courageous public servants who 
upheld their oath to the Constitution and their legal obligations to 
comply with congressional action, despite a categorical order by 
President Trump not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.
  These are courageous Americans who were told by the President of the 
United States not to cooperate, not to appear, not to testify, but who 
had the sense of duty to do so. But more than that, you will hear from 
witnesses who have not yet testified, such as John Bolton and Mick 
Mulvaney, Mr. Blair and Mr. Duffey. And if you can believe the 
President's words last month, you will also hear from Secretary Pompeo. 
You will hear their testimony at the same time as the American people; 
that is, if you allow it, if we have a fair trial.
  During our presentation, you will see documentary records, those the 
President was unable to suppress, that exposed the President's scheme 
in detail. You will learn of further evidence that has been revealed in 
the days since the House voted to impeach President Trump, even as the 
President and his agents have persisted in their efforts to cover up 
their wrongdoing from Congress and the public.
  You will see dozens of new documents providing new and critical 
evidence of the President's guilt that remain at this time in the 
President's hands and in the hands of the Department of Defense and the 
Department of State and the Office of Management and Budget, even the 
White House. You will see them and so will the American people if you 
allow it--if, in the name of a fair trial, you will demand it.
  These are politically charged times. Tempers can run high, 
particularly where this President is concerned, but these are not 
unique times. Deep divisions and disagreements were hardly

[[Page S446]]

alien concepts to the Framers so they designed impeachment power in 
such a way as to insulate it as best they could from the crush of 
partisan politics. The Framers placed the question of removal before 
the Senate, a body able to rise above the fray, to soberly judge the 
President's conduct or misconduct for what it was, nothing more and 
nothing less.
  In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton wrote:

       Where else than in the Senate could have been found a 
     tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? 
     What other body would be likely to feel confidence enough in 
     its own situation, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the 
     necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the 
     representatives of the people, his accusers?

  It is up to you to be the tribunal that Hamilton envisioned. It is up 
to you to show the American people and yourselves that his confidence 
and that of the other Founders was rightly placed. The Constitution 
entrusts you to the responsibility of acting as impartial jurors, to 
hold a fair and thorough trial, and to weigh the evidence before you no 
matter what your party affiliation or your vote in the previous 
election or the next. Our duty is to the Constitution and to the rule 
of law.
  I recognize there will be times during the trial that you may long to 
return to the business of the Senate. The American people look forward 
to the same but not before you decide what kind of democracy that you 
believe we ought to be and what the American people have a right to 
expect in the conduct of their President.
  The House believes that an impartial juror, upon hearing the evidence 
that the managers will lay out in the coming days, will find that the 
Constitution demands the removal of Donald J. Trump from his office as 
President of the United States. But that will be for you to decide. 
With the weight of history upon you, and as President Kennedy once 
said: ``With a good conscience our only sure reward. . . . ''
  In drafting our Constitution, the Framers designed a new and untested 
form of government. It would be based on free and fair elections to 
ensure that our political leaders would be chosen democratically and by 
citizens of our country alone. Having broken free from a King with 
unbridled authority who often placed his own interests above that of 
the people, the Framers established a structure that would guarantee 
that the Chief Executive's power flowed only from his obligation to the 
people rather than from a sovereign whose power was confirmed on him by 
divine right.
  In this new architecture, no branch of government or individual would 
predominate over another. In this way, the Founders ensured that their 
elected leaders and their President would use the powers of office only 
to undertake that which the people desired and not for their personal 
aggrandizement or enrichment.
  What did those who rebelled and fought a revolution desire? Nothing 
different than what we, the generations that have followed, desire: 
that no person, including and especially the President, would be above 
the law. Nothing could be more dangerous to a democracy than a 
Commander in Chief who believed that he could operate with impunity, 
free from accountability--nothing, that is, except a Congress that is 
willing to let it be so.
  To ensure that no such threat can take root and subvert our fledgling 
democracy, the Framers divided power among three coequal branches of 
government--the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches--
so that ambition may be made to counter ambition. They provided for 
Presidential elections every 4 years, and the Framers required that the 
President swear an oath to faithfully execute the law and to preserve, 
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
  Even with these guardrails in place, the Framers understood an 
individual could come to power who defied that solemn oath, who pursued 
his own interests rather than those of the country he led. For that 
reason, the Framers adopted a tool used by the British Parliament to 
restrain its officials: the power of impeachment. Rather than a 
mechanism to overturn an election, impeachment would be a remedy of 
last resort, and, unlike in England, the Framers applied this ultimate 
check to the highest office in the land, to the President of the United 
States. Impeachment removal of a duly elected President was not 
intended for policy disputes or poor administration of the State. 
Instead, the Framers had in mind the most serious of offenses: those 
against the public itself.
  Hamilton explained that impeachment was not designed to cover only 
statutory common law crimes but instead crimes against the body 
politic. Hamilton wrote:

       The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which 
     proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other 
     words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They 
     are of a nature which may, with peculiar propriety, be 
     denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries 
     done immediately to the society itself.

  In other words, impeachment would be confined to abuses of people's 
trust and to the society itself. This is precisely the abuse that has 
been undertaken by our current President when he withheld money in 
support for an ally at war to secure a political benefit. The 
punishment for those crimes would fit the political nature of the 
offense. As James Wilson--a delegate of the Constitutional Convention 
and a future Associate Justice of the Supreme Court--reasoned that 
impeachment ``was confined to political characters, to political crimes 
and misdemeanors, and to political punishments.'' The Framers 
determined that punishment would be neither prison nor fines but, 
instead, limited to removal from office and disqualification from 
holding future office.
  The Framers chose to undertake impeachment for treason, bribery, or 
other high crimes and misdemeanors to underscore the requirement of an 
offense against society. In this phrase, ``high'' modifies both the 
crimes and the misdemeanors in that both relate to a high injustice, a 
transgression committed against the people and to the public trust. The 
Framers had two broad categories in mind: those actions that are 
facially permissible under the President's authority but are based on 
corrupt motives, such as seeking to obtain a personal benefit through 
public office, and those that far exceed the President's constitutional 
authority or violate the legal limits on that authority.
  In article I, we deal with the first evil which the Framers wished to 
guard against; that is, cases in which a President corruptly misused 
the power otherwise bestowed on him to secure a personal reward. 
Guarding against a President who undertakes official acts with a 
corrupt motive of helping himself is at the heart of the impeachment 
power. As one scholar explained, the President's duty to faithfully 
execute the law requires that he undertakes actions only when motivated 
in the public interest rather than in their private self-interest. 
Efforts to withhold official acts for personal gain countermand the 
President's sacred oath and, therefore, constitute impeachable behavior 
as it was conceived by the Framers.
  In article II, we also deal with the second evil contemplated by the 
Founders, who made it clear that the President ought not operate beyond 
the limits placed on him by legislative and judicial branches. 
Impeachment was warranted for a President who usurped the power of the 
Constitution that was not granted to him, such as to defy Congress the 
right to determine the propriety, the scope, and the nature of an 
impeachment inquiry into his own misconduct.
  The Framers fashioned a powerful Chief Executive but not one beyond 
accountability of law. When a President wields power in ways that are 
inappropriate and seek to extinguish the rights of Congress, he exceeds 
the power of constitutional authority and violates the limits placed on 
his conduct. Obstruction of a separate and coequal branch of government 
for the purposes of covering up an abuse of power not only implies a 
corrupt intent but also demonstrates a remarkable antipathy toward the 
balance of power contemplated and enshrined in our Constitution. It is 
a betrayal of the President's sacred oath of office and of his duty to 
put the country before himself.
  On September 24, 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced 
that the House of Representatives would move forward with an official 
impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump. The announcement 
followed public reporting in the United States

[[Page S447]]

and Ukraine that the President and his agents sought Ukraine's help in 
his reelection effort and revelations that the White House was blocking 
from Congress an intelligence community whistleblower complaint 
possibly related to this grave offense.
  The next day, on September 25, under extraordinary pressure, the 
White House released publicly the record of the July 25 call between 
President Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The call 
record revealed that President Trump explicitly requested that the new 
leader undertake investigations beneficial to President Trump's 
reelection campaign. Upon release of the record of the call, President 
Trump claimed that the call was ``perfect.'' Far from perfect, the call 
record revealed a President who used his high office to personally and 
directly press the leader of a foreign country to do his political 
dirty work. Asking for a favor, President Trump insisted that President 
Zelensky investigate a formidable potential political opponent, former 
Vice President Joe Biden, as well as the baseless conspiracy theory 
that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election to assist 
then-Candidate Trump's opponent.
  Witnesses who listened to the call as it transpired testified that 
they immediately recognized these requests did not represent official 
U.S. policy and, instead, were politically charged appeals, not 
appropriate for a President to make. Key witnesses emphasized it was 
not necessary that Ukraine actually undertake the investigations, only 
that the Ukrainian President denounce them.
  President Trump's objective was not to encourage a foreign government 
to investigate legitimate allegations of misconduct or wrongdoing 
abroad, made clear, as well, by the fact that the investigations he 
wanted announced have been discredited entirely. Rather, the President 
simply wanted to reap a political benefit by tarnishing a political 
rival and in attempting to erase from history his previous election 
misconduct. To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political dirty 
work, President Trump withheld from President Zelensky two official 
acts of great importance: that coveted White House meeting to which 
President Zelensky had already been invited and $391 million in 
military assistance for the Ukrainians to fight the Russians.
  For a strategic partner of the United States in a hot war with 
Russian-backed forces inside its own borders, this symbolic support 
conferred on it by an Oval Office visit with the President of the 
United States and the lifesaving support of our military aid was 
essential. As the House's presentation will make clear, in directly 
soliciting foreign interference and withholding those official acts in 
exchange for the announcement of political investigations beneficial to 
his election, the President put his own interest above the national 
interest.
  President Trump undermined the integrity of our free and fair 
elections by pressing a foreign power to influence our most sacred 
right as citizens, our right to freely choose our leaders, and he 
threatened our national security by withholding critical aid from a 
partner on the frontlines of war with Russia, an aggressor that has 
threatened peace and stability on an entire continent. In so doing, the 
President sacrificed not only the security of our European allies but 
also our Nation's core national security interests. President Trump 
undertook this pressure campaign through handpicked agents inside and 
outside of government who circumvented traditional policy channels. 
President Trump intentionally bypassed many U.S. Government career 
officials with responsibility over Ukraine and advanced his scheme 
primarily through the effort of his personal attorney Rudy 
Giuliani. President Trump carried out this scheme with the knowledge of 
senior administration officials, including the President's Acting Chief 
of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Vice President 
Mike Pence, National Security Council Legal Advisor John Eisenberg, and 
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.

  When the President became aware that the scheme would be uncovered, 
he undertook an unprecedented effort to obstruct the House of 
Representatives' impeachment inquiry to hide it from the public and 
from Congress, including all evidence related to his misconduct. That 
coverup continues today as the administration has not provided a single 
document pursuant to lawful subpoenas by the House.
  The administration also continues to prevent witnesses from 
cooperating, further obstructing the House's efforts--efforts the 
President is, no doubt, proud of but which threaten the integrity of 
this institution and this Congress as a coequal branch of power--and 
our ability not only to do oversight but to hold a President who is 
unindictable accountable.
  Despite these efforts to obstruct our inquiry, the House of 
Representatives uncovered overwhelming evidence related to the 
President's misconduct through interviews with 17 witnesses who 
appeared before the Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, and Foreign 
Affairs Committees. Many of these witnesses bravely defied White House 
orders not to comply with duly authorized congressional subpoenas. Were 
it not for them--were it not for Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was 
the first through the breach--we may never have known of the 
President's scheme.
  I want you to imagine, just for a minute, what kind of courage that 
took for Ambassador Yovanovitch--the subject of that vicious smear 
campaign--to risk her reputation and her career to stand up to the 
President of the United States, who was instructing her through his 
agents: You will not cooperate. You will not testify. You will tell 
them nothing.
  Then, there is Bill Taylor, a West Point graduate and a Vietnam 
veteran with a Bronze Star and something he was even more proud of--the 
Combat Infantryman Badge. He knows what courage is. He showed a 
different kind of courage in Vietnam, but he also showed courage, as 
did others, in coming forward and defying the President's order that he 
obstruct to tell the American people what he knew.
  But for the courage of people like them and Lieutenant Colonel 
Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, we would know nothing of the 
President's misconduct--nothing. When the President directs his ire 
toward these people, this is why--because they showed the courage to 
come forward.
  Now, in the Intelligence Committee, we held 7 open hearings with 12 
fact witnesses. Separately, the Judiciary Committee held public 
hearings with constitutional law experts and counsel from the House 
Intelligence Committee as it sought to determine whether to draft and 
consider Articles of Impeachment. The House also collected text 
messages related to the President's scheme from a witness who provided 
limited personal communications.
  Since the conclusion of our inquiry, new evidence has continued to 
come to light, through court-ordered releases of administration 
documents and public reporting, underscoring that there is 
significantly more evidence of the President's guilt which he continues 
to block from Congress, including the Senate. Nevertheless, the 
documents and testimony that we were able to collect paint an 
overwhelming and damning picture of the President's efforts to use the 
powers of his office to corruptly solicit foreign help in his 
reelection campaign and withhold official acts and military aid to 
compel that support.
  Over the coming days, you will hear remarkably consistent evidence of 
President Trump's corrupt scheme and coverup. When you focus on the 
evidence uncovered during the investigation, you will appreciate there 
is no serious dispute about the facts underlying the President's 
conduct, and this is why you will hear the President's lawyers make the 
astounding claim: You can't impeach a President for abusing the powers 
of his office. It is because they can't seriously contest that that is 
exactly--exactly--what he did, and so they must go find a lawyer 
somewhere.
  Apparently, they could not go to their own Attorney General. It was 
just reported in a memo he wrote, as part of the audition for Attorney 
General, that the President can be impeached for abusing the public 
trust. He couldn't go to Bill Barr for that opinion. He couldn't even 
go to Jonathan Turley, their expert in the House, for an opinion. No, 
they had to go outside of these

[[Page S448]]

experts, outside of constitutional law, to a criminal defense lawyer 
and professor. And why? Because they can't contest the facts. The 
President was the key player in the scheme. Everyone was in the loop. 
He directed the actions of his team. He personally asked a foreign 
government to investigate his opponent. These facts are not in dispute.
  Ultimately, the question for you is whether the President's 
undisputed actions require the removal of the 45th President of the 
United States from office because he abused his office and the public 
trust by using his power for personal gain by seeking illicit foreign 
assistance in his reelection and covering it up.
  Other than voting on whether to send our men and women to war, there 
is, I think, no greater responsibility than the one before you now. The 
oath that you have taken to impartially weigh the facts and evidence 
requires serious and objective consideration--decisions that are about 
country, not party; about the Constitution, not politics; about what is 
right and what is wrong.
  After you consider the evidence and weigh your oath to render a fair 
and impartial verdict, I suggest to you today that the only conclusion 
consistent with the facts and law--not just the law but the 
Constitution--is clear as described by constitutional law experts' 
testimony before the House: If this conduct is not impeachable, then 
nothing is.
  Let me take a moment to describe to you how we intend to present the 
case over the coming days.
  You will hear today the details of the President's corrupt scheme in 
narrative form, illustrating the timeline of the effort through the 
testimony of the numerous witnesses who came before the House as well 
as through documents and materials we collected as evidence during the 
investigation. After you hear the factual chronology, we will then 
discuss the constitutional framework of impeachment as it was 
envisioned by the Founders.
  Before we analyze how the facts of the President's misconduct and 
coverup lead to the conclusion that the President undertook the sort of 
corrupt course of conduct that impeachment was intended to remedy, let 
me start with a preview of the President's scheme, the details of which 
you will hear during the course of this day.
  President Trump's months-long scheme to extract help with his 2020 
reelection campaign from the new Ukrainian President involved an effort 
to solicit and then compel the new leader to announce political 
investigations. The announcement would reference two specific 
investigations. One was intended to undermine the unanimous consensus 
of our intelligence agencies, Congress, and Special Counsel Robert 
Mueller that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help then-
Candidate Trump and another to hurt the Presidency of former Vice 
President Joe Biden.
  The Kremlin itself has been responsible for first propagating one of 
the two false narratives that the President desired. In February 2017, 
less than a month after the U.S. intelligence community released its 
assessment that Russia alone was responsible for a covert influence 
campaign designed to help President Trump win the 2016 election, 
President Putin said:

       As we all know, during the Presidential campaign in the 
     United States, the Ukrainian government adopted a unilateral 
     position in favor of one candidate. More than that, certain 
     oligarchs--certainly with the approval of political 
     leadership--funded this candidate--or a female candidate to 
     be more precise.

  Those were Putin's words on February 2, 2017.
  Of course, this is false, and it is part of a Russian 
counternarrative that President Trump and some of his allies have 
adopted.
  Fiona Hill, the Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the National 
Security Council, described Russia's effort to promote this baseless 
theory.
  (Text of videotape presentation:)

       Dr. HILL. Based on questions and statements I have heard, 
     some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia 
     and its Security Services did not conduct a campaign against 
     our country and that, perhaps, somehow, for some reason, 
     Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been 
     perpetrated and propagated by the Russian Security Services 
     themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was that 
     foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic 
     institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our 
     intelligence agencies, confirmed by bipartisan congressional 
     reports. It is beyond dispute even if some of the underlying 
     details must remain classified.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. This, of course, was not the first time that 
President Trump embraced Russian activity and disinformation.
  On July 24 of last year, Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified 
before Congress that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a 
``sweeping and systemic fashion'' to benefit Donald Trump's political 
campaign. Mueller and his team found ``the Russian Government perceived 
that it would benefit from a Trump Presidency and worked to secure that 
outcome.'' They also found that the Trump campaign expected it would 
benefit electorally from information stolen and released through 
Russian efforts.
  Just as he solicited help from Ukraine in 2019, in 2016 then-
Candidate Trump also solicited help from Russia in his election effort. 
As you will recall, at a rally in Florida, he said the following:
  (Text of videotape presentation:)

       Mr. TRUMP. Russia, if you are listening, I hope you're able 
     to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will 
     probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that 
     happens.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Following Special Counsel Mueller's testimony, 
during which he warned against future interference in our elections, 
did the President recognize the threat posed to our democracy and 
renounce Russian interference in our democracy? Did he choose to stand 
with his own intelligence agencies, both Houses of Congress, and the 
special counsel's investigation in affirming that Russia interfered in 
our last election?
  He did not.
  Instead, only one day after Special Counsel Mueller testified before 
Congress, empowered in the belief that he had evaded accountability for 
making use of foreign support in our last election, President Trump was 
on the phone with the President of Ukraine, pressing him to intervene 
on President Trump's behalf in the next election.
  Let's take a moment to let that sink in.
  On July 24, Bob Mueller concludes a lengthy investigation. He comes 
before the Congress. He testifies that Russia systemically interfered 
in our election to help elect Donald Trump, that the campaign 
understood that, and that they willfully made use of that help. On July 
24, that is what happens.
  On the very next day--the very next day--President Trump is on the 
phone with a different foreign power, this time Ukraine, trying to get 
Ukraine to interfere in the next election--the next day.
  That should tell us something. He did not feel chained by what the 
special counsel found. He did not feel deterred by what the special 
counsel found. He felt emboldened by escaping accountability, for the 
very, very next day, he is on the phone, soliciting foreign 
interference again.
  Now, that July 25 phone call between President Trump and President 
Zelensky was a key part of President Trump's direct and corrupt 
solicitation of foreign help in the 2020 election.
  The question likely sounded familiar to President Zelensky, who had 
been swept into office in a landslide victory on a campaign of rooting 
out just the type of corruption he was being asked to undertake on this 
call with our President.
  Zelensky campaigned as a reformer, as someone outside of politics who 
would come up and clean up corruption, who would end the political 
prosecutions, end the political investigations. And what is his most 
important and powerful patron asking him to do? To do exactly what he 
campaigned against. No wonder he resisted this pressure campaign.
  Now, President Trump had been provided talking points for discussion 
by the National Security Council staff beforehand, including 
recommendations to encourage President Zelensky to continue to promote 
anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine. So the National Security staff 
understood what was in the U.S. national security interests, and that 
was rooting out corruption, and they encouraged the President to talk 
about it.
  But as you see from the record of the call--and I join the President 
in saying ``read the call''--that topic was never

[[Page S449]]

addressed. The word ``corruption'' never escapes his lips.
  Instead, President Trump openly pressed President Zelensky to pursue 
the two investigations that would benefit him personally.
  In response to President Zelensky's gratitude for the significant 
military support the United States had provided to Ukraine, President 
Trump said:

       I would like you to do us a favor though because our 
     country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about 
     it. I would like you to find out what happened with this 
     whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike . . . I 
     guess you have one of your wealthy people . . . The server, 
     they say Ukraine has it.

  That is that crazy conspiracy theory I talked about earlier that 
there is this server somewhere in Ukraine that shows that, in fact, it 
was Ukraine that hacked the DNC, not the Russians. That is a Russian 
propaganda conspiracy theory, and here it is being promulgated by the 
President of the United States. And more than promulgated, he is 
pressuring an ally to further this Russian propaganda because he was 
referring to this extensively discredited conspiracy theory that 
Ukraine was the one that really hacked the DNC--the Democratic National 
Committee--servers in 2016.
  And that reference to CrowdStrike--well, that is an American cyber 
security firm. And the theory--this kooky conspiracy theory--is that 
CrowdStrike moved the DNC servers to Ukraine to prevent U.S. law 
enforcement from getting it.
  If Ukraine announced an investigation into this fabrication, 
President Trump could remove what he perceived to be a cloud over his 
legitimacy--legitimacy of his last election, Russia's assistance with 
his campaign--and suggest that it was the Democratic Party that was the 
real beneficiary of that.
  On the call, President Trump told Zelensky: ``Whatever you can do, 
it's very important that you do it if that's possible.''
  President Zelensky agreed that he would do the investigation saying: 
``Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just 
mentioned earlier.''
  President Trump then turned to his second request, asking President 
Zelensky to look into the sham allegation into former Vice President 
Biden. President Trump said to President Zelensky:

       The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, 
     that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want 
     to find out about that so whatever you can do with the 
     Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging 
     that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it . 
     . . It sounds horrible to me.

  There is no question what President Trump intended in pressing the 
Ukrainian leader to ``look into'' his political rival. Even after the 
impeachment inquiry began, he confirmed his desire on the south lawn of 
the White House, declaring not only that Ukraine should investigate 
Biden but that China should do the same.
  Let's see what he said.
  (Text of Videotape presentation:)

       NEWS REPORTER. What exactly did you hope Zelensky would do 
     about the Bidens after your phone call? Exactly.
       PRESIDENT TRUMP. Well, I would think that, if they were 
     honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the 
     Bidens. It's a very simple answer.
       They should investigate the Bidens, because how does a 
     company that is newly formed--and all these companies, if you 
     look at--
       And, by the way, likewise, China should start an 
     investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China 
     is just about as bad as what happened with--with Ukraine.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. The day after that July 25 phone call, President 
Trump sought confirmation that President Zelensky understood his 
request to announce the politically motivated investigations and that 
he would follow through.
  After meeting with Ukranian officials, including President Zelensky 
and his top aide, the President's handpicked Ambassador to the European 
Union, Gordon Sondland, called President Trump from an outdoor 
restaurant in Kyiv to report back. This was the second conversation 
between the two about Ukraine in as many days.
  David Holmes, an American diplomat dining with Sondland, overheard 
the call, including the President's voice through the cell phone. I 
described part of that call last night.
  Holmes testified that President Trump asked Sondland: ``So he's going 
to do the investigation?'' Sondland replied that he is going to do it, 
adding that President Zelensky will do ``anything you ask him to do.''
  After the phone call, Holmes ``took the opportunity to ask Ambassador 
Sondland for his candid impression of the President's views on 
Ukraine.'' According to Holmes:
  (Text of Videotape presentation:)

       Mr. HOLMES. In particular, I asked Ambassador Sondland if 
     it was true that the President did not give a [expletive] 
     about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland agreed the President did 
     not give a [expletive] about Ukraine. I asked, why not, and 
     Ambassador Sondland stated, the President only cares about . 
     . . ``big stuff.'' I noted there was . . . ``big stuff'' 
     going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia. And Ambassador 
     Sondland replied that he meant . . . ``big stuff'' that 
     benefits the President, like the . . . ``Biden 
     investigation'' that Mr. Giuliani was pushing. The 
     conversation then moved on to other topics.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Those three days in July--the 24th, the 25th, and 
the 26th--reveal a lot about President Trump's effort to solicit help 
from a foreign country in assisting his own reelection.
  On the 24th, Special Counsel Mueller testifies that Russia interfered 
in our 2016 election to assist the Trump campaign, which knew about the 
interference, welcomed it, and utilized it. That is the 24th.
  The 25th is the day of the call, when President Trump, believing he 
had escaped accountability for Russian meddling in the first election 
and is welcoming of it, asked the Ukranian President to help him 
undermine the special counsel's conclusion and help him smear a 
political opponent, former Vice President Biden.
  And then, the third day in a row in July, President Trump sought to 
ensure that Ukraine had received his request and understood it and 
would take the necessary steps to announce the investigations that he 
wanted.
  Three days in July. In many ways those 3 days in July tell so much of 
this story. This course of conduct alone should astound all of us who 
value the sanctity of our elections and who understand that the vast 
powers of the Presidency are reserved only for actions which benefit 
the country as a whole, rather than the political fortunes of any one 
individual.
  President Trump's effort to use an official head-of-state phone call 
to solicit the announcement of investigations helpful to his reelection 
is not only conduct unbecoming a President, but it is conduct of one 
who believes that the powers of his high office are political tools to 
be wielded against his opponents, including by asking a foreign 
government to investigate a United States citizen, and for a corrupt 
purpose. That alone is grounds for removal from office of the 45th 
President.
  But these 3 days in July were neither the beginning nor the end of 
this scheme. President Trump, acting through agents inside and outside 
of the U.S. Government, including his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, 
sought to compel Ukraine to announce the investigations by withholding 
the head-of-state meeting in the Oval Office until the President of 
Ukraine complied.
  Hosting an Oval Office meeting for a foreign leader is an official 
act available only to one person--the President of the United States. 
And it is an official act that President Trump had already offered to 
President Zelensky during their first phone call on April 21 and in a 
subsequent letter to the Ukranian leader.
  Multiple witnesses testified about the importance of a White House 
meeting for Ukraine. For example, Deputy Assistant Secretary George 
Kent explained that a White House meeting was ``very important'' for 
Ukrainians to demonstrate the strength of their relationship with 
``Ukraine's strongest supporter.''
  Dr. Fiona Hill of the National Security Council explained that a 
White House meeting would supply the new Ukranian Government with ``the 
legitimacy that it needed, especially vis-a-vis the Russians'' and that 
the Ukrainians viewed a White House meeting as ``a recognition of their 
legitimacy as a sovereign state.''
  This White House meeting would also prove to be important for three 
handpicked agents whom President Trump

[[Page S450]]

placed in charge of U.S.-Ukraine issues: Ambassador Sondland, 
Ambassador Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the so-called three 
amigos. They hoped to convince President Trump to hold an Oval Office 
meeting with Zelensky.
  During a meeting of the three amigos on May 23, President Trump told 
them that Ukraine had tried to ``take [him] down'' in 2016. He then 
directed them to ``talk to Rudy'' Giuliani about Ukraine.
  It was immediately clear that Giuliani, who was pursuing the 
discredited investigations in Ukraine on the President's behalf, was 
the key to unlocking an Oval Office meeting for President Zelensky.
  Giuliani by then had said publicly that he was actively pursuing 
investigations President Trump corruptly desired and planning a trip to 
Ukraine. Giuliani admitted: ``We're not meddling in an election, we're 
meddling in an investigation.''
  On May 10, however, Giuliani canceled the trip to Ukraine to dig up 
dirt on former Vice President Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory, 
just as President Zelensky won elections for the Presidency and 
Parliament.
  Faced with a choice between working with Giuliani to pursue an Oval 
Office meeting--understanding it meant taking part in a corrupt effort 
to secure the political investigations--or abandoning efforts to 
support our Ukranian ally, the President's agents fell into line. They 
would pursue the White House meeting and explain to Ukraine that 
announcement of the investigations was the price of admission.
  As Ambassador Sondland made clear:
  (Text of Videotape presentation:)

       Mr. SONDLAND. I know that members of this committee 
     frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a 
     simple question: Was there a quid pro quo? As I testified 
     previously with regard to the requested White House call and 
     the White House meeting, the answer is yes.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. This quid pro quo was negotiated between the 
President's agents, Rudy Giuliani, and Ukranian officials throughout 
the summer of 2019 in numerous telephone calls, text messages, and 
meetings, including during a meeting hosted by then-National Security 
Advisor John Bolton on July 10.
  Near the end of that July 10 meeting, after the Ukrainians again 
raised the issue of a White House visit, Ambassador Sondland blurted 
out that there would be agreement for a White House meeting once the 
investigations began. At that point Bolton ``immediately stiffened'' 
and abruptly ended the meeting.
  During a subsequent discussion that day, Sondland was even more 
explicit. LTC Alex Vindman, a director for Europe and Ukraine on the 
National Security Council, testified that Sondland began to discuss the 
``deliverable'' required to get the White House meeting. What Sondland 
specifically mentioned was ``investigation of the Bidens.'' This is, 
again, in that meeting in the White House with a Ukranian delegation 
and an American delegation. Sondland explained in that meeting that he 
had an agreement with Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney whereby 
President Zelensky would be granted the Oval Office meeting if he went 
forward with the investigations.
  After the meeting, Vindman's supervisor, Dr. Hill, reported back to 
Bolton, who told her to tell John Eisenberg, the National Security 
Council legal advisor, that he was not ``part of whatever drug deal 
Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.'' She reported their 
concerns, as did Vindman.
  It remains unclear what action, if any, Bolton or Eisenberg took once 
they were made aware of Mulvaney and Sondland's drug deal. Both refused 
to testify in our inquiry. However, Dr. Hill testified that she 
understood that Mr. Eisenberg informed Mr. Cipollone of her concerns 
about the drug deal.
  If this body is serious about a fair trial--one that is fair to the 
President and to the American people--we again urge you to allow the 
House to call both Eisenberg and Bolton, as well as other key witnesses 
with firsthand knowledge who refused to testify before the House on the 
orders of the President.
  Additional testimony and documents are particularly important 
because, according to Sondland, ``Everyone was in the loop'' when it 
came to the President's self-serving effort. In part relying on email 
excerpts, Sondland explained that the President's senior aides and 
Cabinet officials knew that the White House meeting was predicated on 
Ukraine's announcement of the investigations beneficial to the 
President's political campaign.
  Hill characterized the quid pro quo succinctly:
  (Text of Videotape presentation:)

       But it struck me when yesterday, when you put up on the 
     screen Ambassador Sondland's emails and who was on these 
     emails, and he said, These are the people who need to know, 
     that he was absolutely right. Because he was being involved 
     in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in 
     national security foreign policy, and those two things had 
     just diverged.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. In effect, President Zelensky was being drawn 
into this domestic political area. He grew wary of becoming involved in 
another country's election and domestic affairs.
  Bill Taylor, the Acting U.S. Ambassador for Ukraine at the time, 
described a conversation he had with a senior aide to the Ukrainian 
leader. He said:
  (Text of Videotape presentation:)

       [Also] on July 20, I had a phone conversation with 
     Oleksandr Danylyuk, President Zelensky's national security 
     advisor, who emphasized that President Zelensky did not want 
     to be used as an instrument in a U.S. reelection campaign.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Remember that conversation when you hear counsel 
say that the Ukrainians felt no pressure to be involved in a U.S. 
reelection campaign. But that concern did not deter President Trump. In 
his conversation with Sondland shortly before the July 25 call, the 
President made clear that he not only wanted Ukraine to do the 
investigations or announce them, but also a White House meeting would 
be scheduled only if President Zelensky confirmed these investigations, 
as Volker communicated to President Zelensky's top aide by text less 
than 30 minutes before the phone call between Trump and Zelensky.
  Again, we are talking about July 25, in a text 30 minutes before the 
Trump-Zelensky phone call. Here is what it says--with Volker texting 
Andriy Yermak, a top aide to President Zelensky.

       Good lunch--thanks. Heard from White House--assuming 
     President Z convinces trump he will investigate/``get to the 
     bottom of what happened'' in 2016, we will nail down day for 
     visit to Washington. Good luck! See you tomorrow--kurt.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Well, those words couldn't be much clearer: 
``assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate/`get to the 
bottom of what happened' in 2016, we will nail down [the] . . . visit 
to Washington.'' That is a text 30 minutes before that call.
  Counsel for the President would like you to think this is just about 
that call. You don't get to look outside the four corners of that call. 
They don't want you to look at the months that went into preparing for 
that call or the months of pressure that followed. But you can just 
look at, right now, what happened 30 minutes before that call in this 
text message: ``Heard from White House--assuming President Z convinces 
trump he will investigate/`get to the bottom of what happened' in 
2016.''
  If you were wondering whether President Zelensky was aware of what he 
was going to be asked on that call, this is how you can tell. He was 
prepped. Of course he was prepped. In fact, the missing reference in 
the call record to Burisma was a signal Colonel Vindman recognized that 
clearly he had been prepped for that call. Why else would the name of 
this particular energy company come up in that conversation?
  Well, President Zelensky clearly got the message. Toward the end of 
the call with President Trump, President Zelensky said:

       I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the 
     United States, specifically Washington DC. On the other hand, 
     I also wanted to ensure you that we will be very serious 
     about the case and will work on the investigation.''

  Thank you for the invitation. On the other hand, I want to assure you 
that we will be very serious about the case, and we will work on the 
investigation.
  President Zelensky clearly understood the quid pro quo for the White 
House meeting on July 25, but his reticence to be used as a political 
pawn

[[Page S451]]

kept President Trump from moving forward with a promise to schedule the 
meeting, and so the President and his agents pressed on.
  In August, Giuliani met with a top Ukrainian aide and made it clear 
that Ukraine must issue a public statement and announce investigations 
in order to get a White House meeting. Fearful of getting involved in 
U.S. domestic politics and having entered office with a promise to 
clean up government and corruption, President Zelensky and his aides 
preferred a generic statement about investigations, but Giuliani 
insisted. No, the statement must include two specific investigations 
that would benefit President Trump.
  Let's look at a comparison between the statement the Ukrainians 
preferred and the one that Giuliani required.
  On the left--and I will read it in case you can't see the screens--
the Yermak draft, the Ukrainian draft, says: ``We intend to initiate 
and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available 
facts and episodes, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this 
problem in the future.'' That is pretty generic.
  But here is the Giuliani-Volker-Sondland response. This is what had 
to be included: ``We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and 
unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes.'' Up to 
that point, it is exactly the same, until you get to ``including those 
involving Burisma and the 2016 US elections,'' and then it goes back to 
the Ukrainian draft: ``which in turn will prevent the recurrence of 
this problem in the future.''
  You can see in this such graphic evidence that the Ukrainians did not 
want to do this. They didn't even want to mention this. Giuliani had to 
insist: No, no, no; we are not going to be satisfied with some generic 
statement. After all, I think we can see this isn't about corruption--
no, this is about announcing investigations to damage Biden and to 
promote this fiction about the last election.
  So here in these texts, you see that Giuliani, Volker, and Sondland 
have added these references to Burisma--a thinly-veiled reference to 
former Vice President Biden--and the 2016 election. They wished to 
ensure that the Ukrainians mentioned the sham investigation President 
Trump required.
  The Ukrainians recoiled at the new statement, recognizing that 
releasing it would run directly counter to the anti-corruption platform 
that Zelensky campaigned on and would embroil them in U.S. election 
politics. As a result, Zelensky didn't get his White House meeting. He 
still hasn't gotten his White House meeting.
  Senators, witness testimony, text messages, emails, and the call 
record itself confirm a corrupt quid pro quo for the White House 
meeting--an official act available only to the President of the United 
States--in exchange for the announcement of political investigations. 
The President and his allies have offered no explanation for this 
effort--except that the President can abuse his office all he likes, 
and there is nothing you can do about it. You can't indict him. You 
can't impeach him. That is because they cannot seriously dispute that 
President Trump corruptly used an official White House visit for a 
foreign leader to compel the Ukrainian President into helping him cheat 
in the next election.
  The White House meeting, of course, was not the only official act 
that President Trump conditioned on the announcement of investigations 
into Biden and the conspiracy theory meant to exonerate President Trump 
on Russia's interference on his behalf in the last election. In a far 
more draconian step, as we discussed, the President withheld $391 
million of military aid.
  Several weeks before this phone call with President Zelensky but 
after Giuliani was already pressing Ukrainian officials to conduct the 
investigations his client sought, President Trump ordered the hold on 
Ukraine's military aid. Significantly, this was after Congress had 
already been notified that most of it was prepared to be spent. Ukraine 
had met all of the critical conditions for anti-corruption and defense 
reforms in order to receive the funds. We conditioned the funds. They 
met the conditions. The funds were ready to go.
  At the time and even today, witnesses uniformly testified that the 
order to hold the funding came without explanation to the foreign 
policy and national security officials responsible for Ukraine. The 
only message from the Office of Management and Budget was that the hold 
was implemented at the direction of the President.
  Since Russia's illegal incursion into Ukraine in 2014, the United 
States has maintained a bipartisan policy of delivering hundreds of 
millions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine each year, which several 
Senators here have personally invested significant time and effort to 
ensure. It was President Trump himself who originally authorized 
additional financial support for military assistance to Ukraine in 2017 
and 2018 without reservation, making his abrupt decision to withhold 
assistance in 2019 without explanation all the more surprising to those 
responsible for Ukraine policy.

  That confusion, however, would soon disappear. The President used the 
hold on military aid as leverage to pressure Ukraine to announce these 
investigations that he hoped would help his reelection campaign. The 
only difference between the prior years when the President approved the 
aid without question and the inexplicable hold on aid in 2019 was the 
emergence of Joe Biden as a potentially formidable obstacle to the 
President's reelection.
  These funds that the President withheld--these funds--they don't just 
benefit Ukraine; they benefit the security of the United States by 
ensuring that Ukraine is equipped to defend its own borders against 
Russian aggression.
  As Ambassador Taylor noted in his deposition, the United States 
provides Ukraine with ``radar and weapons and sniper rifles, 
communications that save lives. It makes Ukrainians more effective. It 
might even shorten the war. That is what our hope is, to show the 
Ukrainians can defend themselves--and the Russians, in the end, will 
say: OK, we are going to stop.'' That is in our interest. This isn't 
just about Ukraine or its national security; it is about our national 
security. This isn't charity; it is about our defense as much as 
Ukraine's.
  Ambassador Taylor also said that the American aid was ``a concrete 
demonstration of the United States' commitment to resist aggression and 
defend freedom.'' This is what this country is supposed to be about, 
right? Resisting aggression, defending freedom, not exporting corrupt 
ideas--that is what we are supposed to be about, right?
  It was against this backdrop that American officials responsible for 
Ukraine policy sat in astonishment, according to Ambassador Taylor, 
when they learned about the hold. Officials immediately expressed 
concerns about the legality of President Trump's hold on the assistance 
to Ukraine. Their concerns were well warranted, as the Government 
Accountability Office, which was just last night pooh-poohed by the 
President's counsel--well, that is just some institution of Congress. 
Like they are just going to be inherently biased, right? Well, they are 
a nonpartisan organization that both parties have come to rely upon. 
But I am not surprised that they don't like the conclusion of the GAO, 
because the Defense Department warned them that this was going to be 
the conclusion, and that conclusion was that the hold on aid was not 
only wrong, it was not only immoral, it was also illegal. It violated 
the law--a law that we passed so that Presidents could not refuse to 
spend money that we allocated for the defense of others and for 
ourselves.
  The Impoundment Control Act prevents the President and other 
government officials from unilaterally making funding decisions when 
Congress has made its intent clear. In fact, the act exists precisely 
because of previous Presidential abuses of Congress's power of the 
purse during the Nixon era. The nonpartisan GAO ruled that the hold on 
military aid was not only illegal but that holding underscores the 
President's efforts to go to any lengths to ensure his own personal 
benefit rather than take care that the laws be faithfully executed as 
he swore he would do when he took his oath of office.
  Now, because of recent Freedom of Information Act responses in media 
reports, we now know additional details about how senior officials 
expressed serious reservations about the legality of the hold at the 
time. This is not like some big surprise. This is not like something 
that just came out of the blue--whoa, an independent watchdog

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agency found this was illegal. No, they knew this was illegal at the 
time. These concerns were raised at the time.
  Certain individuals who may have further information about the hold 
who refused to testify at the President's direction--including his 
Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney; Robert Blair; OMB official Michael 
Duffey, all of them--all of them defied congressional subpoenas but 
were included in important email communications that have been made 
public only recently.
  As you know, these and many other categories of documents from the 
White House, the Defense Department, and OMB were subpoenaed by the 
House and none was produced--none--at the President's direction and 
through Mr. Cipollone's intervention. Although the investigation 
developed an overwhelming body of evidence that clearly proves that the 
President implemented this hold to pressure Ukraine to announce 
investigations, the full story behind the hold--the full and complete 
story--is within your power to request.
  As you consider the evidence we present to you, ask yourselves 
whether the documents of witnesses that have been denied by the 
President's complete and unprecedented obstruction could shed more 
light on this critical topic. You may agree with the House managers 
that the evidence of the President's withholding of military aid to 
coerce Ukraine is already supported by overwhelming evidence and no 
further insight is necessary to convict the President, but if the 
President's lawyers attempt to contest these or other factual matters, 
you are left with no choice but to demand to hear from each witness 
with firsthand knowledge. A fair trial requires nothing less.
  Let's look at some of the evidence that we gathered, notwithstanding 
this obstruction.
  First, the President withheld the aid without explanation and against 
the advice of his own agencies, Cabinet officials, national security 
experts, including Secretary Pompeo, Secretary Esper, Ambassador 
Bolton, and others. Only Mick Mulvaney, a central figure in this 
effort, reportedly supported the hold, and he told us why. During a 
press briefing, Mulvaney personally acknowledged that the hold was 
ordered as part of a quid pro quo designed to get Ukraine to undertake 
the investigation President Trump signed.
  Second, the reason for the security assistance hold was undoubtedly 
on the President's mind during the telephone call with President 
Zelensky on July 25. Near the beginning of their conversation, 
President Zelensky expressed his gratitude for U.S. military 
assistance, noting the United States' ``great support in the area of 
defense.'' Immediately after President Zelensky's reference to defense 
and military support, President Trump responded by saying: ``I would 
like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through 
a lot, and Ukraine knows a lot about it.'' President Trump then 
proceeded to openly press Ukraine to conduct these investigations.
  Third, numerous officials were aware that President Trump was 
withholding the White House meeting until the Ukrainian President 
announced the investigations. That the President would ratchet up 
pressure on Ukraine to compel its action stunned Ukraine experts like 
Ambassador Taylor but followed logically for those engaged in the 
President's corrupt scheme.
  Fourth, by the end of August, there was still no explanation for the 
hold, despite ongoing efforts from numerous officials to persuade the 
President to release the money. The leverage of the White House meeting 
had not succeeded in coercing Ukraine to announce the investigations, 
providing the President and his agents every reason to use the most 
aggressive lever of influence, hundreds of millions of dollars in 
military support, to compel Ukraine to act. If they didn't feel 
pressure, they wouldn't have done it. They wouldn't have done it, but 
of course they did.
  Imagine if this country were dependent on a more powerful country for 
our defense; imagine if we were at war; imagine if we were waiting for 
weapons to defend ourselves, something our Framers could have 
understood; imagine that we found ourselves in those circumstances, and 
much to our astonishment, we couldn't even get a meeting with our ally, 
much to our astonishment, they were withholding aid from us. Would you 
think we would feel pressure? Of course we would. The Framers had 
common sense, and so must we.
  Are we to accept: Well, the President said there was no quid pro quo; 
I guess that closes the case? In every courtroom in America, jurors--
and I know you are not just jurors. I led the Clinton trial. You are 
jurors and judges. Jurors all over America are told: You don't leave 
your common sense at the door. Well, we don't have to leave our common 
sense at the door here too. Two plus two equals four.
  The aid was withheld. You are asking for it. We are asking for it. 
His own aides are asking for it, and no one can get an explanation. The 
Ukrainians can't get an explanation. All the Ukrainians get is: We want 
you to do these investigations. They are promised a White House 
meeting. They want a White House meeting. They need a White House 
meeting. They are going to be going into negotiations with Putin. They 
want to show strength, and they can't get in the door. They see the 
Russian Foreign Minister get in the door of the White House. We see the 
photos of the President and the Russian Foreign Minister, or the 
Ambassador, what a great time they are having, but, no, the President 
of Ukraine, our ally, can't get in the door. They are not stupid. They 
know what is going on here. They are not stupid. Remember that 
conversation I referenced yesterday when the Ukrainians threw it right 
back in our face--when Ambassador Volker said to his Ukrainian 
counterpart: You shouldn't investigate the former President. You 
shouldn't engage in those political investigations. The Ukrainian 
response was: You mean like the one you want us to do on the Bidens and 
the Clintons? They are not stupid.

  By the end of August, there was still no explanation for the hold, 
despite efforts by numerous people to seek the release of the funding. 
The leverage hadn't succeeded in getting the President to--in coercing 
Ukraine to announce the investigations, and so the aid was withheld. 
Two witnesses privy to this scheme testified that the only logical 
conclusion to reach about the President's continued hold on the aid was 
that it was intended to put more pressure on Ukraine to announce the 
investigations. As I said, they testified it was as simple as two plus 
two equals four.
  We can do math, and, more importantly, so can the Ukrainians, and 
maybe even more importantly than that, so can the Russians. Multiple 
senior officials, including President Trump himself, have confirmed 
this logical conclusion. On September 7, Ambassador Sondland spoke 
directly to President Trump, who by that point was aware that a 
whistleblower complaint was circulating that alleged the contours of 
his scheme and that Congress and the public were beginning to ask 
probing questions about the hold on aid, including whether the 
withholding of the aid was in exchange for reelection help.
  During that call of September 7--so in July you have got Mueller's 
testimony. You have got the call itself. You have got a followup call 
the next day, where the President is speaking to Sondland and wants to 
make sure they are going to do the investigations. You have got August, 
where they are trying to hammer out a statement, and the Ukrainians are 
still resisting.
  Then you have September. On September 7, Ambassador Sondland is on 
the phone with President Trump. At that point, he is aware that a 
whistleblower has filed a complaint alleging the contours of this 
scheme and Congress and the public are beginning to ask questions about 
the hold on aid, including whether this was to get help in his 
reelection.
  During this call between the President and Ambassador Sondland, 
without a prompt, President Trump told Sondland: There is no quid pro 
quo. Now, why would he do that? That is not something that comes up in 
normal conversation, right? Hello, Mr. President, how are you today? No 
quid pro quo.
  That is the kind of thing that comes up in a conversation if you are 
trying to put your alibi out there. If you heard about a whistleblower 
complaint, if you had seen allegations, if you

[[Page S453]]

know Congress is starting to sniff around, no quid pro quo. But--and I 
know this is astonishing--so much of the last 3 years has been a 
combination of shock and yet no surprise. Yet, even while the President 
is saying no quid pro quo, what does he say? Zelensky must publicly 
announce the two political investigations, and he should want to do it. 
No quid pro quo, except this quid pro quo.
  Sondland immediately relayed the message to President Zelensky, 
informing him that without the announcement of the political 
investigations, they would be at a stalemate. Sondland made clear that 
this reference to a stalemate meant the release of the security 
assistance.
  President Zelensky, after hesitating for weeks to join the 
President's corrupt scheme, finally relented. President Zelensky 
informed Sondland that he agreed to do a CNN interview, and Sondland 
understood that he would use that occasion to mention these items, 
meaning the two investigations at the heart of the scheme.
  Candidate Zelensky, who was swept into office with a landslide 
victory on a promise of fighting corruption, would be forced to 
undertake just the same kind of corrupt act he had been elected to 
clean up. Upon learning this, Ambassador Taylor called Sondland to 
register his deep concern, telling him that it was crazy--crazy. Taylor 
later texted Sondland to reinforce the point: ``As I said on the phone, 
I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a 
political campaign.''
  ``As I said on the phone''--clearly, they had discussed it. ``As I 
said on the phone.''
  Taylor testified about the message and the events leading up to it. 
Taylor said that security assistance was so important for Ukraine, as 
well as our own national interest. To withhold that assistance for no 
good reason other than help with the political campaign made no sense. 
It was counterproductive to all of what we had been trying to do. It 
was illogical. It could not be explained. It was crazy.
  What is more, Ambassador Taylor also came to learn that President 
Trump wanted Zelensky in a public box.
  He testified--Mr. Goldman was asking the question: ``Now, you 
reference a television interview and a desire for President Trump to 
put Zelensky in a public box, which you also have in quotes.''
  Now, this is in reference, I think, to his written testimony.
  ``Was that reference to `in a public box' in his notes?''
  You remember he kept detailed notes.
  Taylor's answer: ``It was in my notes.''
  ``And what did you understand that to mean, to put Zelensky in a 
public box''?
  And Taylor responds: ``I understood that to mean that President 
Trump, through Ambassador Sondland, was asking for President Zelensky 
to publicly commit to these investigations, that it was not sufficient 
to do this in private, that this needed to be a very public 
statement.''
  So we saw earlier, the side-by-side comparison, right, of what the 
Ukrainians wanted to say. They wanted to make no mention of these 
specific investigations, and now Giuliani insisted: No, no, no. This 
isn't going to be credible unless you mention these specific 
investigations. This is what it is going to take. And now you see that 
Ambassador Sondland has acknowledged to Ambassador Taylor that it is 
not enough to use even the right language, apparently. It has to be 
done in public. We are not going to take any private commitment. It has 
got to be done in public.

  As we would later come to understand, this is because President Trump 
didn't care about the investigations being done. He just wanted them 
announced. He wanted Zelensky in a public box. He wanted it announced 
publicly.
  Ambassador Taylor also testified that he understood from Sondland 
that because Trump was a businessman, he would expect to get something 
in return before signing a check.
  (Text of Videotape presentation.)

       Mr. TAYLOR. During our meeting, during our call on 
     September 8, Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that 
     President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about 
     to sign a check to someone who owes him something, the 
     businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the 
     check. Ambassador Volker used the same language several days 
     later while we were together at the Yalta European strategy 
     conference. I argued to both that the explanation made no 
     sense. Ukrainians did not owe President Trump anything.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. This is very telling. Ambassador Taylor, a 
Vietnam veteran, a West Point graduate, said that Ukrainians didn't owe 
us anything. Clearly, Donald Trump felt Ukrainians owed him, right?
  This is not about Ukraine's national security. It is not about our 
national security. It is not about corruption. No, it is about what is 
in it for me. Those Ukrainians owe me before I sign a check.
  And, by the way, that is not his money. That is your money. That is 
the American people's money for their defense.
  But here we see Ambassador Sondland explain: No, President Trump is a 
businessman. Before he even signs a check, he wants to get something, 
and, of course, that something he was going to sign that check for or 
he was going to make that payment for, with our tax dollars--that thing 
that he was going to buy with those tax dollars--was a smear of his 
opponent and an effort to lift whatever cloud he felt was over his 
Presidency because of the Russian interference on his behalf in the 
last election.
  The President has offered an assortment of shifting explanations 
after the fact for the hold on aid, including that he withheld the 
money because of corruption in Ukraine or concerns about burden-sharing 
with other European countries. But those arguments are completely 
without merit.
  First, the President's own administration had determined by the time 
of the hold that Ukraine had undertaken all necessary anti-corruption 
and defense reforms in order to receive the funds. The Defense 
Department and State Department officials repeatedly made this clear as 
the hold remained and threatened the ability of the agency to spend the 
money before the end of the fiscal year.
  Second, the evidence revealed that the President only asked about the 
foreign contributions to Ukraine in September, nearly 2 months after 
the President implemented the hold and as it became clear that the 
public, Congress, and a whistleblower were becoming aware of the 
President's scheme.
  The after-the-fact effort to come up with a justification also belies 
the truth. The European countries provide far more financial support to 
Ukraine than the United States. Their support is largely economic. Ours 
also includes a lot of military support, but Europe is a substantial 
financial backer of Ukraine.
  There is something else remarkable about this that I was struck by 
yesterday as we were going through the importance of the witness 
testimony and looking at some of those redacted emails in which the 
administration sought to hide its misconduct.
  In those redactions, when we got to see what was beneath them, there 
was an indication that this is very close-hold. This is a need-to-know 
basis only. Do you remember that? We will show you that again, but it 
is one of those emails that only came to light, I believe, recently, 
and it is not because the administration wanted you to see this 
information. We see there is a desire not to let people know about this 
hold.
  If the President were fighting corruption, if he wanted Europeans to 
pay more, why would he hide it from us? Why would he hide it from the 
Ukrainians? Why would he hide it from the rest of the world? If this 
were a desire for Europe to pay more, why wouldn't he charge Sondland 
to go ask Europe for more? Why wouldn't he be proud to tell the 
Congress of the United States: I am holding up this aid, and I am 
holding it up because I am holding up corruption?
  Why wouldn't he? Because, of course, it wasn't true. There is no 
evidence of that.
  And, once more, the White House admitted why the President held up 
the money. The President's own Chief of Staff explained precisely why 
during the October 17 press conference. Let's see, again, what he had 
to say.
  (Text of Videotape presentation.)

       Mr. MULVANEY. That was--those were the driving factors. Did 
     he also mention to

[[Page S454]]

     me in the past that the corruption related to the DNC server? 
     Absolutely. No question about that. But that's it. That's why 
     we held up the money. Now, there was a report--
       Mr. KARL. So the demand for an investigation into the 
     Democrats was part of the reason that he went on to withhold 
     funding to Ukraine?
       Mr. MULVANEY. The look-back to what happened in 2016 
     certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in 
     corruption with that nation and absolutely appropriate.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. But Mulvaney didn't just admit that the President 
withheld the crucial aid appropriated by Congress to apply pressure on 
Ukraine to do the President's political dirty work. He also said that 
we should just ``get over it.'' Let's watch.

  (Text of Videotape presentation.)

       Mr. KARL. Let's be clear. What you just described is a quid 
     pro quo. It is funding will not flow unless the investigation 
     into the Democratic server happened as well.
       Mr. MULVANEY. We do that all the time with foreign policy. 
     If you read the news reports and you believe them--what did 
     McKinney say yesterday? Well, McKinney said yesterday that he 
     was really upset with the political influence in foreign 
     policy. That was one of the reasons he was so upset about 
     this. And I have news for everybody: Get over it. There's 
     going to be political influence in foreign policy.

  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Should the Congress just get over it? Should the 
American people just come to expect that our Presidents will corruptly 
abuse their office to seek the help of a foreign power to cheat in our 
election? Should we just get over it? Is that what we have come to? I 
hope and pray that the answer is no.
  We cannot allow a President to withhold military aid from an ally or 
to elicit help in a reelection campaign. I hope that we don't have to 
just get over that. I hope that we just don't have to get accustomed to 
that.
  Is that what we want to tell our constituents, that, yes, the 
President withheld aid from an ally? Yes, it damaged our national 
security. And, yes, he wouldn't meet with the foreign leaders important 
to us unless he got help in the next election. And, yes, it is wrong to 
try to get a foreign power to help.
  It is kind of cheating, really, if we are going to be honest about it 
and blatant about it. It is cheating. Americans are supposed to decide 
American elections, but, you know, I guess we just need to get over it. 
I guess that is just what we should now expect of a President of the 
United States.
  I guess there is really no remedy for that anymore. The impeachment, 
maybe that was a good idea 200 years ago, but I guess we just need to 
get over it. I guess maybe the President really is above the law 
because they say you can't indict the President.
  The President says you can't even investigate the President. The 
President is in court saying, you can not only not indict the 
President, you can't even investigate the President. The Attorney 
General's position is that you can't even investigate the President.
  Are we really prepared to say that? The only answer to the 
President's misconduct is that we need to get over it? What are we to 
say to the next President? What are we to say to the President who is 
from a different party, who refuses the same kind of subpoenas, and the 
President says to you or his Chief of Staff says to you or her Chief of 
Staff says to you: Just get over it. I am not doing anything different 
than Donald Trump did. Just get over it. He asked for help in the next 
election, I am asking for help in the next election. Just get over it. 
We do this kind of thing all the time.
  People are cynical enough as it is about politics, about people's 
commitment to their good, cynical enough without having us confirm it 
for them.
  I think it is more than crazy. Those were Ambassador Taylor's words. 
I think it is more than crazy. I think it is a gross abuse of power.
  And I don't think that impeachment power is a relic. If it is a 
relic, I wonder how much longer our Republic can succeed.
  For months, President Trump and his agents had pressured Ukraine to 
announce investigations, and President Zelensky finally yielded. As 
previously noted, he scheduled a CNN interview and planned to publicly 
announce the politically motivated investigations.
  He informed Sondland of this plan during a September 7 phone call. In 
the same call, Sondland related to President Zelensky that Trump 
required that the Ukrainian leader make the public announcement in 
order to get the critical military aid.
  President Trump's corruption had finally worn down President 
Zelensky, overcoming his effort to remain true to his anti-corruption 
platform--until events intervened.
  Before Zelensky could do the interview, President Trump learned that 
his scheme had been exposed. Facing public and congressional pressure 
on September 11, the President finally released the hold on aid to 
Ukraine. Just like the implementation of the hold, he provided no 
reason for the release, but the reason is quite simple. The President 
got caught.
  In late August, President Trump learned about a whistleblower 
complaint that was winding its way through the intelligence agencies on 
its way to Congress.
  On September 9, three House committees announced an investigation 
into President Trump's Ukraine misconduct and that of his proxy, Rudy 
Giuliani. Later that day, again, September 9, the intelligence 
community inspector general notified the Senate and House Intelligence 
Committees of the existence of the complaint and the fact that it was 
being withheld from Congress, contrary to law and in an unprecedented 
fashion.
  Facing significant public pressure on September 11, the President 
gave up and released the money to Ukraine. One week later, President 
Zelensky canceled the CNN interview.
  And rather than demonstrate attrition or acknowledged wrongdoing, the 
President instead has continued his effort, even after the impeachment 
investigation began. He not only continued to call on Ukraine to 
investigate his political opponent, he called on China to do the same.
  This should concern all of us. It is a confirmation not only of the 
scheme to pressure Ukraine to help his political campaign but a clear 
sign that the President believes that these corrupt acts are 
acceptable.
  A President this unapologetic, this unbound to the Constitution and 
the oath of office, must be removed from that office lest he continue 
to use the vast prejudicial powers at his disposal to seek advantage in 
the next election.
  President Trump's abuse of powers of his office undermined the 
integrity of our free and fair elections and compromised America's 
national security.
  If we don't stand up to this peril today, we will write the history 
of our decline with our own hand. If President Trump is not held to 
account, we send a message to future Presidents, future Congresses, and 
generations of Americans that the personal interests of the President 
can fairly take precedent over those of the Nation. The domestic 
effects of this descent from democracy will be a weakened trust in the 
integrity of our elections and the rule of law and a steady decline of 
the spread of democratic values throughout the world.

  For how can any country trust the United States as a model of 
governance if it is one that sanctions precisely the political 
corruption and invitation to foreign meddling that we have long sought 
to help eradicate in burgeoning democracies around the world? To 
protect against foreign interference in our elections, we have 
guardrails built into our democratic system. We have campaign finance 
laws to ensure that political assistance can come only from domestic 
actors, and we take seriously the need to shore up the integrity of our 
voting systems so that a foreign government or actor cannot change vote 
tallies. The promise of one person, one vote is only effective if each 
vote is cast free of foreign interference. Americans decide American 
elections--at least they should.
  Now, what if electoral corruption is even more insidious? What 
happens when the invitation comes from within? Our Framers understood 
that threat too. George Mason noted at the Constitutional Convention 
that impeachment was a necessary tool because ``the man who has 
practiced corruption and by that means procured his appointment in the 
first instance'' could seek to repeat his guilt.
  In June of last year, President Trump was clear that, if a foreign 
government offered dirt on his political opponent, he would take it, a 
statement deeply at odds with the guidance provided at the time by his 
own FBI Director, the former Federal Election

[[Page S455]]

Commission Chair, and our Constitution, written some 233 years ago. In 
no uncertain terms, it admonishes against any person holding office of 
profit or trust accepting any present from any foreign state.
  But President Trump did more than take the foreign help in 2019, as 
he had done in 2016. This time, he had not only asked for it in the 
July 25 call, but when he didn't get the help from the Ukrainian 
President in the form of announced investigations, he withheld hundreds 
of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded military aid and a coveted 
White House meeting to increase the pressure on Ukraine to comply. 
Later, he demonstrated no remorse and continued to encourage Ukraine to 
conduct the political investigations he wanted, even asking other 
countries to do so.
  The consequences of these actions alone have shaken our democratic 
system. What message will we send if we choose not to hold this 
President accountable for his abuse of power to solicit reelection 
interference in our upcoming election? The misconduct undertaken by 
this President may lead future Presidents to believe that they, too, 
can use the substantial power conferred on them by the Constitution in 
order to undermine it. Nothing could weaken the integrity of our 
elections more, and no campaign finance law or statement by a future 
FBI Director could stand up to the precedent of electoral misconduct 
set by the President of the United States if we do not say clearly that 
this behavior is unacceptable and, more than unacceptable, impeachable.
  We also undermine our global standing. As a country long viewed as a 
model for democratic ideals worth emulating, we have, for generations, 
been the ``shining city upon a hill'' that President Reagan described. 
America is not just a country but also an idea. But of what worth is 
that idea if, when tried, we do not affirm the values that underpin it?
  What will those nascent democracies around the world conclude; that 
democracy is not only difficult but maybe that it is too difficult? 
Maybe that it is impossible? And who will come to fill the void we 
leave when the light from that shining city upon a hill is 
extinguished? The autocrats with whom we compete, who value not freedom 
and fair elections but the unending rule of a repressive executive; 
autocrats who value not freedom of the press and open debate but 
disinformation, propaganda, and state-sanctioned lies.
  Vladimir Putin would like nothing better. The Russians have little 
democracy left, thanks to Vladimir Putin. It is an autocracy; it is a 
thugocracy. The Russian story line, the Russian narrative, the Russian 
propaganda, the Russian view they would like people around the world to 
believe is that every country is just the same, just the same corrupt 
system: There is no difference. It is not a competition between 
autocracy and democracy. No, it is just between autocrats and 
hypocrites.
  They make no bones about their loss of democracy. They just want the 
rest of the world to believe you can't fight it anywhere. Why take to 
the streets of Moscow to demand something better if there is nothing 
better anywhere else. That is the Russian story. That is the Russian 
story. That is who prospers by the defeat of democracy. That is who 
wins by the defeat of our democratic ideals. It is not other 
democracies; it is the autocrats who are on the rise all over the 
world.
  I think all of us in this room have grown up in a generation where 
each successive generation lived with more freedom than the one that 
came before. We each had more freedom of speech and associations, the 
freedom to practice our faith. This was true at home. It was true all 
over the world. I think we came to believe this was some immutable law 
of nature, only to find it isn't, only to come to the terrible 
realization that this year fewer people have freedom than last, and 
there is no guarantee that next year people will live in more freedom 
than today. And the prospect for our children is even more in doubt.
  It turns out, there is nothing immutable about this. Every generation 
has to fight for it. We are fighting for it right now. There is no 
guarantee that this democracy that has served us so well will continue 
to prosper. We will struggle to protect this idea, and even as we do, 
we will struggle to protect our security in more tangible ways. Support 
for an independent and democratic Ukraine, which is the literal bulwark 
against Russian expansionism in Europe, is essential to our security. 
Russia showed that when it invaded Ukraine in 2014 and sought to redraw 
the map of Europe.
  Was our commitment to Ukraine's independence and sovereignty just an 
empty promise or are we prepared to support its efforts to keep Russia 
contained so they and we may all eventually enjoy a long peace?
  Russia is not a threat--I don't need to tell you--to Eastern Europe 
alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving ground for just the 
types of hybrid warfare that the 21st century will become defined by: 
cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the 
legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or 
financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that, with the 
malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine. 
Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they 
will do so again. Indeed, they have never stopped. Will we allow the 
primary country now fighting Russia to be weakened, placing our troops 
in Europe at greater risk and opening the door to greater interference 
in our affairs at home?
  If we allow the President of the United States to pursue his 
political and personal interests rather than the national interests, we 
send a message to our European allies that our commitment to a Europe 
free and whole is for sale to the highest bidder. The strength of our 
global alliances relies on a shared understanding of what that alliance 
stands for: one built on the rule of law, on free and fair elections, 
and on a shared struggle against aggression from autocratic regimes.
  We are countries built on a commitment to our people, not unyielding 
loyalty to a President who would be King.
  A President has a right to hold a call with a foreign leader, yes. 
And he has a right to decide the time and location of a meeting with 
that leader, yes. And he has a right to withhold funding to that leader 
should the law be followed and the purpose be just.
  But he does not, under our laws and under our Constitution, have a 
right to use the powers of his office to corruptly solicit foreign 
aid--prohibited foreign aid--in his reelection. He does not. He does 
not have the right to withhold official Presidential acts to secure 
that assistance, and he certainly does not have the right to undermine 
our elections and place our security at risk for his own personal 
benefit. No President, Republican or Democratic, can be permitted to do 
that.
  Now let me turn to the second Article of Impeachment, which charges 
the President with misusing the powers of his office to obstruct and 
interfere with the impeachment inquiry.
  The evidence you will hear during the House presentation is equally 
undeniable and damning. President Trump issued a blanket order 
directing the entire executive branch not to cooperate with the 
impeachment inquiry and to withhold all documents and testimony. His 
order was categorical. It was indiscriminate and historically 
unprecedented. No President before President Trump has ever ordered the 
complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and 
impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives 
to investigate high crimes and misdemeanors.
  The President was able to block agencies across the executive branch 
from producing any records or documents to the House investigative 
committees, despite duly authorized subpoenas. The White House 
continues to refuse to produce a single document or record in response 
to a House subpoena that remains in full force and effect. The 
Department of State and Office of Management and Budget, Department of 
Energy, and the Department of Defense continue to refuse to provide a 
single document or record in response to House subpoenas that remain in 
full force and effect.
  It is worth underscoring this point. The House has yet to receive a 
single document from the executive branch agencies pursuant to its 
subpoenas. Not a single piece of paper, email, or other record has been 
turned over--not one.

[[Page S456]]

  While I pause to get a drink of water, let me let you know for your 
timing that I have about 10 minutes left in my presentation. So the end 
is in sight.
  President Trump has also successfully blocked witnesses--nine of 
them--under subpoena from testifying, witnesses with firsthand 
knowledge of the President's actions, including his closest aides, some 
of whom were directly involved in executing the President's improper 
orders. These witnesses include Mick Mulvaney and Robert Blair; Russell 
Vought, the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget; Michael 
Duffey, a senior official; and the President's chief legal advisor on 
the National Security Council, John Eisenberg, among others.
  The managers will present in detail what these officials knew about 
their role in executing different parts of the President's scheme. 
There is no dispute, nor could there be, that President Trump's order 
substantially obstructed the House impeachment inquiry. That 
obstruction continues unabated today, even as we stand here at the 
start of the President's trial.
  The President has been able to do so only because of the uniquely 
powerful position he holds as our Commander in Chief. No other American 
could seek to obstruct an investigation into his own wrongdoing this 
way. No other American could use the vast powers and levers of his 
government to conduct a corrupt scheme to benefit themselves and then 
use those same powers to suppress evidence and bar any cooperation with 
the authorities investigating them--not a police chief, not a mayor, 
not a Governor, not any elected official in the country, and certainly 
not any unelected official in the country.
  For those folks watching us from around the country, you know what 
would happen to them if they defied a lawful subpoena.
  They got a subpoena commanding them to appear. You know what would 
happen to them because they are not above the law: They would be 
arrested; they would be detained; they would be incarcerated; they 
would be forced to comply. They are not above the law, and neither are 
we, and neither is the President.
  And, yet, despite the fact that he is not above the law, despite the 
President's extensive and persistent efforts, the House heard from 
courageous witnesses who obeyed lawful subpoenas, and we gathered 
overwhelming evidence. The House built a formidable case that forms the 
basis of these articles.
  The second article for obstruction of Congress is not simply about 
President Trump's decision to obstruct a congressional investigation or 
even an impeachment inquiry. It should not be misunderstood as some 
routine dispute between two branches of government, nor should it be 
reduced to the notion that the President was simply protecting himself 
or fighting back against a partisan or overzealous Congress. The 
charges in the second article are much more serious and urgent than 
that.
  First, the President's attempt to obstruct the inquiry so 
categorically and comprehensively is part and parcel of the President's 
furious effort to conceal, suppress, and cover up his own misconduct. 
From the very first moment his actions were at the risk of coming to 
light, President Trump has sought to hide and cover up key evidence, 
even as his scheme to pressure Ukraine was still underway.
  As the House's presentation will make clear, the President's coverup 
started even before the House began to investigate the President's 
Ukraine-related activity. The President learned early on of the 
existence of a lawful whistleblower complaint from within the 
intelligence community that would ring the first alarm. He deployed the 
White House and Justice Department to intervene in an unprecedented 
fashion to conceal and then withhold from Congress--for the first time 
ever--a credible and urgent whistleblower complaint, even though the 
law requires that it be provided to the congressional intelligence 
committees.
  Once the impeachment inquiry was underway in late September, the 
President used the immense and unique power at his disposal to direct 
and maintain at every turn the categorical defiance of congressional 
scrutiny, even as he attacked the inquiry itself and its witnesses. The 
President offered multiple and shifting justifications for obstructing 
the House's inquiry, each of them deficient, while his actions and 
statements powerfully reflect his own consciousness of guilt.
  Second, the ramifications of the President's obstruction go beyond 
the sinister motives of simply covering up his actions. His obstruction 
strikes at the heart of our Constitution. It threatens the last line of 
defense our Founders purposefully enshrined in our system to protect 
our democracy.
  If Presidents can obstruct an impeachment inquiry undertaken by the 
House and evade accountability in the Senate for doing so, they usurp 
an essential power granted exclusively to the Congress--and for a 
reason. Presidents could seize for themselves the power to neutralize 
and nullify the impeachment clause in order to shield themselves from 
any accountability. And if Congress is unable to investigate and 
impeach a President for abuse of their office, our democracy's 
essential check on a rogue President would fail. It would no longer 
protect the American people from a corrupt President who presents an 
ongoing threat. This is the outcome every American should be concerned 
about and one that the Founders warned us about.
  Through the impeachment clause, the Framers of the Constitution 
empowered Congress to thoroughly investigate Presidential malfeasance--
and to respond, if necessary, by removing the President from office. 
This entire framework depends on Congress's ability to discover, and 
then to thoroughly and effectively investigate, Presidential 
misconduct. Without the ability of Congress to do that, the impeachment 
power is a nullity. If you can't investigate it, you can't enforce it 
and can't apply it.
  What we confront here, in the second Article of Impeachment, is 
therefore an impeachable offense aimed at destroying the impeachment 
power itself. When a President abuses the power of his office to so 
completely defy House investigators, and does so without lawful cause 
or excuse, he attacks the Constitution itself. He confirms that he sees 
himself as above the law. His actions destabilize the separation of 
powers, which defines our democracy and preserves our freedom, and 
establish an exceedingly dangerous precedent. And he proves that he is 
willing to destroy a vital safeguard against tyranny--a safeguard meant 
to protect the American people--just to advance his own personal 
interests in covering up evidence.
  The House's presentation of the second article will therefore focus 
on three core areas that confirm the President's obstruction and 
require his removal from office: first, the singular importance and 
role of the impeachment clause for our democracy and why an effort by a 
President to obstruct an impeachment inquiry is, in and of itself, an 
impeachable offense; second, why the President's extensive effort to 
cover up evidence of his misconduct is unprecedented in American 
history and without lawful cause or justification; and, finally, why 
the President's obstruction poses a direct threat to our system of 
self-governance, with consequences for all Americans--today and in the 
future--and for both Chambers of Congress.
  Over the coming days, you will hear from the House managers details 
of this scheme and the effort to hide it from Congress. The Articles of 
Impeachment that the House presented go to the heart of those efforts, 
and let me share a few takeaways.
  The House of Representatives has found that, using the powers of his 
high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign 
government, Ukraine, in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. He did so 
through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the 
government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would 
benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political 
opponent, and influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential election improperly 
and to his advantage.

  President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to 
take these steps by conditioning official U.S. Government acts of 
significant value to Ukraine on Ukraine's public announcement of these 
investigations. He engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for 
corrupt purposes

[[Page S457]]

in pursuit of his personal political benefit.
  In doing so, President Trump used the powers of the Presidency in a 
manner that compromised the national security of the United States and 
undermined the integrity of the U.S. democratic process. He thus 
ignored and injured the interests of the Nation.
  As part of the House's impeachment inquiry, the committees 
undertaking the investigation served subpoenas seeking documents and 
testimony deemed vital to the inquiry from various executive branch 
agencies and offices and current and former officials.
  In response, and without lawful cause or excuse, President Trump 
directed executive branch agencies, offices, and officials not to 
comply with those subpoenas. President Trump thus interposed the powers 
of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of 
Representatives and assumed to himself functions and judgments 
necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment vested by 
the Constitution in the House of Representatives.
  As George Washington and his troops retreated across the Delaware 
River in early December 1776, they were read the words of Thomas Paine, 
published that month in his pamphlet, ``The American Crisis'':

       These are the times that try men's souls. The summer 
     soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink 
     from the service of their country; but he that stands by it 
     now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

  Seventeen days later, George Washington crossed the Delaware, leading 
to a decisive victory for those who would come to shape our promising 
young country.
  As much as our Founders feared an unchecked Chief Executive able to 
pursue his own will over the will of the people, they also feared the 
poison of excessive factionalism that could divert us from a difficult 
service to our country. As George Washington warned in his farewell 
address, ``the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party 
are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to 
discourage and restrain it.''
  Our political parties and affiliations are central to our democracy, 
ensuring that good and bad political philosophies alike are considered 
in the marketplace of ideas. Here, the American people can choose 
between the policies of one party or another and make decisions about 
their political leaders up to and including the President of the United 
States based on the degree to which that person represents their 
interests and values. That is not factionalism; that is the foundation 
of our democracy.
  But when a leader takes the reins of the highest office in our land 
and uses that awesome power to solicit the help of a foreign country to 
gain an unfair advantage in our free and fair elections, we all--
Democrats and Republicans alike--must ask ourselves whether our loyalty 
is to our party or whether it is to our Constitution. If we say that we 
will align ourselves with that leader, allowing our sense of duty to be 
usurped by an absolute Executive, that is not democracy; it is not even 
factionalism. It is a step on the road to tyranny.
  The damage that this President has done to our relationship with a 
key strategic partner will be remedied over time, and Ukraine continues 
to enjoy strong bipartisan support in Congress. But if we fail to act, 
the damage to our democratic elections, to our national security, to 
our system of checks and balances will be long-lasting and potentially 
irreversible.
  As you will hear in the coming days, President Trump has acted in a 
manner grossly incompatible with self-governance. His conduct has 
violated his oath of office and his constitutional duty to faithfully 
execute the law. He has shown no willingness to be constrained by the 
rule of law and has demonstrated that he will continue to abuse his 
power and obstruct investigations into himself, causing further damage 
to the pillars of our democracy if he is not held accountable.
  He cannot be charged with a crime, so says the Department of Justice. 
There is no remedy for such a threat but removal from office of the 
President of the United States.
  If impeachment and removal cannot hold him accountable, then he truly 
is above the law.
  We are nearly 2\1/2\ centuries into this beautiful experiment of 
American democracy, but our future is not assured.
  As Benjamin Franklin departed the Constitutional Convention, he was 
asked: ``What have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy?'' He responded 
simply: ``A Republic, if you can keep it.''
  A fair trial, impartial consideration of all of the evidence against 
the President is how we keep our Republic.
  That concludes our introduction.

                          ____________________