[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 22 (Monday, February 3, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S773-S790]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        TRIAL OF DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Senate will convene as a Court of Impeachment.
  The Chaplain will lead us in prayer.


                                 prayer

  The Chaplain, Dr. Barry C. Black, offered the following prayer:
  Let us pray.
  Arise, O Lord, as we enter the final arguments phase of this 
impeachment trial. Mighty God, we continue to keep our eyes on You, on 
whom our faith depends from start to finish. May our Senators embrace 
Your promise to do for them immeasurably, abundantly, above all that 
they can ask or imagine.
  Lord, help our lawmakers to store Your promises in their hearts and 
permit You to keep them from stumbling. Grant that they will leave a 
legacy of honor as they seek Your will in all they do.
  We pray in Your amazing Name. Amen.


                          Pledge of Allegiance

  The Chief Justice led the Pledge of Allegiance, as follows:

       I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of 
     America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation 
     under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.


                              The Journal

  The CHIEF JUSTICE. If there is no objection, the Journal of 
proceedings of the trial are approved to date.
  The Deputy Sergeant at Arms will make the proclamation.
  The Deputy Sergeant at Arms, Jennifer Hemingway, made proclamation as 
follows:

       Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons are commanded to 
     keep silent, on pain of imprisonment, while the Senate of the 
     United States is sitting for the trial of the articles of 
     impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives against 
     Donald John Trump, President of the United States.

  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The majority leader is recognized.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. Chief Justice, colleagues.
  Today the Senate will hear up to 4 hours of closing statements by the 
two sides. We will take a 30-minute lunch break after the House has 
made its initial presentation. Then we will come back and finish this 
afternoon.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 488, the 
Senate has provided for up to 4 hours of closing arguments, equally 
divided between the managers on the part of the House of 
Representatives and the counsel for the President. Pursuant to rule 
XXII of the rules of procedure and practice of the Senate when sitting 
on impeachment trials, the arguments shall be opened and closed on the 
part of the House of Representatives.


 =========================== NOTE =========================== 

  
  On page S773, February 3, 2020, second column, the following 
appears: The CHIEF JUSTICE. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 
488, the Senate has provided up to 4 hours of closing arguments, 
equally divided between the managers on the part of the House of 
Representatives and the counsel for the President. Pursuant to 
rule XXII of the rules of procedure and practice of the Senate 
when sitting on impeachment trials, the arguments shall be opened 
and closed on the part of the House of Representatives.
  
  The online Record has been corrected to read: The CHIEF JUSTICE. 
Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 488, the Senate has provided 
for up to 4 hours of closing arguments, equally divided between 
the managers on the part of the House of Representatives and the 
counsel for the President. Pursuant to rule XXII of the rules of 
procedure and practice of the Senate when sitting on impeachment 
trials, the arguments shall be opened and closed on the part of 
the House of Representatives.


 ========================= END NOTE ========================= 


  The Presiding Officer recognizes Mr. Manager Schiff to begin the 
presentation on the part of the House of Representatives.
  Mr. Manager CROW. Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the U.S. Senate, 
counsel for the President.
  Almost 170 years ago, Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts took to 
the well of the Old Senate Chamber, not far from where I am standing. 
He delivered what would become perhaps his most famous address, the 
``Seventh of March'' speech. Webster sought to rally his colleagues to 
adopt the Compromise of 1850, a package of legislation that he and 
others hoped would forestall a civil war brewing over the question of 
slavery.
  He said:

       It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United 
     States; a body not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to 
     a just sense of its own dignity, and its own high 
     responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with 
     confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing 
     counsels. It is not to be denied that we live in the midst of 
     strong agitations and are surrounded by very considerable 
     dangers to our institutions and our government. The 
     imprisoned winds are let loose . . . but I have a duty to 
     perform, and I mean to perform it with fidelity--not without 
     a sense of surrounding dangers, but not without hope.

  Webster was wrong to believe that the Compromise of 1850 could 
prevent secession of the South, but I hope he was not wrong to put his 
faith in the Senate because the design of the Constitution and the 
intention of the Framers was that the Senate would be a Chamber removed 
from the sway of temporary political winds.
  In Federalist 65, Hamilton wrote:

       Where else than in the Senate could have been found a 
     tribal 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?

  In the same essay, Hamilton explained this about impeachment:

       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.
       The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail 
     to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide 
     it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the 
     accused . . . in such cases there will always be the greatest 
     danger that the decision will be regulated more by the 
     comparative strength of parties, than by the real 
     demonstrations of innocence or guilt.

  Daniel Webster and Alexander Hamilton placed their hopes in you, the 
Senate, to be the court of greatest impartiality, to be a neutral 
representative of the people in determining--uninfluenced by party or 
preexisting faction--the innocence or guilt of the President of the 
United States.
  Today you have a duty to perform, with fidelity, not without a sense 
of surrounding dangers, but also not without hope.

[[Page S774]]

  I submit to you, on behalf of the House of Representatives, that your 
duty demands that you convict President Trump. Now, I don't pretend 
that this is an easy process. It is not designed to be easy. It 
shouldn't be easy to impeach or convict a President. Impeachment is an 
extraordinary remedy, a tool only to be used in rare instances of grave 
misconduct, but it is in the Constitution for a reason. In America, no 
one is above the law, even those elected President of the United 
States. I would say especially those elected President of the United 
States.
  You have heard arguments from the President's counsel that 
impeachment would overturn the results of the 2016 election. You have 
heard that, in seeking the removal and disqualification of the 
President, the House is seeking to interfere in the next elections. 
Senators, neither is true, and these arguments demonstrate a deeply 
misguided or, I think, intentional effort to mislead about the role 
that impeachment plays in our democracy.
  If you believe--as we do and as we have proven--that the President's 
efforts to use his official powers to cheat in the 2020 election 
jeopardized our national security and are antithetical to our 
democratic tradition, then you must come to no other conclusion but 
that the President threatens the fairness of the next election and 
risks putting foreign interference between the voters and their 
ballots.
  Professor Dershowitz and the other counselors to the President have 
argued that if the President thinks that something is in his interest, 
then it is, by definition, in the interest of the American people. We 
have said throughout this process that we cannot and should not leave 
our common sense at the door. The logical conclusion to this argument 
is that the President is the State; that his interests are the Nation's 
interests; that his will is necessarily ours. You and I and the 
American people know otherwise; that we do not have to be 
constitutional scholars to understand that this is a position deeply at 
odds with our Constitution and our democracy; that believing in this 
argument or allowing the President to get away with misconduct based on 
this extreme view would render him above the law.
  But we know that this cannot be true. What you decide on these 
articles will have lasting implications for the future of the 
Presidency, not only for this President but for all future Presidents. 
Whether or not the office of the Presidency of the United States of 
America is above the law, that is the question.
  As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his 1855 work, ``Democracy in 
America,'' ``The greatness of America lies not in being made more 
enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair 
her faults.''
  In May of 1974, Barry Goldwater and other Republican congressional 
leaders went to the White House to tell President Nixon that it was 
time for him to resign and that they could no longer hold back the tide 
of impeachment over Watergate.
  Now, contrary to popular belief, the Republican Party did not abandon 
Nixon as the Watergate scandal came to light. It took years of 
disclosures and crises and court battles. The party stood with Nixon 
through Watergate because he was a popular, conservative President, and 
his base was with him, so they were, too. But, ultimately, as Goldwater 
would tell Nixon, ``There are only so many lies you can take, and now 
there has been one too many.''
  The President would have us believe that he did not withhold aid to 
coerce these sham investigations; that his July 25 call with the 
Ukrainian President was ``perfect''; that his meeting with President 
Zelensky on the sidelines of the U.N. was no different than a head-of-
state meeting in the Oval Office; that his only interest in having 
Ukraine announce investigations into the Bidens was an altruistic 
concern against corruption; that the Ukrainians interfered in our 2016 
election, not Russia; that Putin knows better than our own intelligence 
agencies. How many falsehoods can we take? When will it be one too 
many?
  Let us take a few minutes to remind you one last time of the facts of 
the President's misconduct as you consider how you will vote on this 
important matter for our Nation. Those facts compel the President's 
conviction on the two Articles of Impeachment.
  Mrs. Manager DEMINGS. Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, over the past 2 
weeks, the House has presented to you overwhelming and uncontroverted 
evidence that President Trump has committed grave abuses of power that 
harm our national security and were intended to defraud our elections.
  President Trump abused the extraordinary powers he alone holds as 
President of the United States to coerce an ally to interfere in our 
upcoming Presidential election for the benefit of his own reelection. 
He then used those unique powers to wage an unprecedented campaign to 
obstruct Congress and cover up his wrongdoing.
  As the President's scheme to corrupt our election progressed over 
several months, it became, as one witness described, more 
``insidious.'' The President and his agents wielded the powers of the 
Presidency and the full weight of the U.S. Government to increase 
pressure on Ukraine's new President to coerce him to announce two sham 
investigations that would smear his potential election opponent and 
raise his political standing.
  By early September of last year, the President's pressure campaign 
appeared on the verge of succeeding--until, that is, the President got 
caught, and the scheme was exposed. In response, President Trump 
ordered a massive coverup--unprecedented in American history. He tried 
to conceal the facts from Congress, using every tool and legal window 
dressing he could to block evidence and muzzle witnesses. He tried to 
prevent the public from learning how he placed himself above country.
  Yet, even as President Trump has orchestrated this coverup and 
obstructed Congress's impeachment inquiry, he remains unapologetic, 
unrestrained, and intent on continuing his sham to defraud our 
elections. As I stand here today delivering the House's closing 
argument, President Trump's constitutional crimes--his crimes against 
the American people and the Nation--remain in progress.
  As you make your final determination on the President's guilt, it is 
therefore worth revisiting the totality of the President's misconduct. 
Doing so lays bare the ongoing threat President Trump poses to our 
democratic system of government, both to our upcoming election that 
some suggest should be the arbiter of the President's misconduct and to 
the Constitution itself that we all swore to support and defend.
  Donald Trump was the central player in this corrupt scheme, assisted 
principally by his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
  Early in 2019, Giuliani conspired with two corrupt former Ukrainian 
prosecutors to fabricate and promote phony investigations of wrongdoing 
by former Vice President Joe Biden as well as the Russian propaganda 
that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that hacked the DNC in 2016.
  In the course of their presentation to you, the President's counsel 
have made several remarkable admissions that affirm core elements of 
this scheme, including specifically about Giuliani's role and 
representation of the President.
  The President's counsel have conceded that Giuliani sought to 
convince Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and have alleged Ukraine 
election interference on behalf of his client, the President, and that 
the President's focus on these sham investigations was significantly 
informed by Giuliani, whose views the President adopted.
  Compounding this damning admission, the President's counsel have also 
conceded that Giuliani was not conducting foreign policy on behalf of 
the President. They have confirmed that, in pursuing these two 
investigations, Giuliani was working solely in the President's private, 
personal interest, and the President's personal interest is now clear--
to cheat in the next election.
  As Giuliani would later admit, for the President's scheme to succeed, 
he first needed to remove the American Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie 
Yovanovitch--an anti-corruption champion Giuliani viewed as an obstacle 
who ``was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.'' 
In working with now-indicted associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, 
Giuliani orchestrated a bogus, monthslong

[[Page S775]]

smear campaign against the Ambassador that culminated in her removal in 
April.
  The President's sudden order to remove our Ambassador came just 3 
days after Ukraine's Presidential elections in late April, which saw a 
reformer, Volodymyr Zelensky, sweep into office on an anti-corruption 
platform. President Trump called to congratulate Zelensky right after 
his victory. He invited President Zelensky to the White House, and he 
agreed to send Vice President Pence to his inauguration. But 3 weeks 
later, after Rudy Giuliani was denied a meeting with President 
Zelensky, President Trump abruptly ordered Vice President Pence to 
cancel his trip. Instead, a lower level delegation, led by three of 
President Trump's political appointees--Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, 
Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and Special 
Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volker--attended 
Zelensky's inauguration the following week.
  These three returned from Ukraine and were impressed with President 
Zelensky. In a meeting shortly thereafter with President Trump in the 
Oval Office, they relayed their positive impression of the new 
Ukrainian President and encouraged President Trump to schedule the 
White House meeting he promised in his first call, but President Trump 
reacted negatively. He railed that Ukraine ``tried to take me down'' in 
2016, and in order to schedule a White House visit for President 
Zelensky, President Trump told the delegation that it would have to 
``talk to Rudy.''
  It is worth pausing here to consider the importance of this meeting 
in late May. This is the moment when President Trump successfully 
hijacked the tools of our government to serve his corrupt personal 
interests--when the President's ``domestic political errand,'' as one 
witness famously described it, began to overtake and subordinate U.S. 
foreign policy and national security interests.
  By this point in the scheme, Rudy Giuliani was advocating very 
publicly for Ukraine to pursue the two sham investigations, but his 
request to meet with President Zelensky was rebuffed by the new 
Ukrainian President. According to reports about Ambassador Bolton's 
account--soon to be available if not to this body then to bookstores 
near you--the President also unsuccessfully tried to get Bolton to call 
the new Ukrainian President to ensure he would meet with Giuliani.
  The desire for Ukraine to announce these phony investigations was for 
a clear and corrupt reason--because President Trump wanted the 
political benefit of a foreign country's announcing that it would 
investigate his rival. That is how we know without a doubt that the 
object of the President's scheme was to benefit his reelection 
campaign--in other words, to cheat in the next election.
  Ukraine resisted announcing the investigations throughout June, so 
the President and his agent, Rudy Giuliani, turned up the pressure--
this time, by wielding the power of the U.S. Government.
  In mid-June, the Department of Defense publicly announced that it 
would be releasing $250 million of military assistance to Ukraine. 
Almost immediately after seeing this, the President quietly ordered a 
freeze on the assistance to Ukraine. None of the 17 witnesses in our 
investigation were provided with a credible reason for the hold when it 
was implemented, and all relevant agencies opposed the freeze.
  In July, Giuliani and the President's appointees made it clear to 
Ukraine that a meeting at the White House would only be scheduled if 
Ukraine announced the sham investigations. According to a July 19 email 
the White House has tried to suppress, this ``drug deal,'' as 
Ambassador Bolton called it, was well known among the President's most 
senior officials, including his Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, and 
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and it was relayed directly to senior 
Ukrainian officials by Gordon Sondland on July 10 at the White House. 
``Everyone was in the loop.''
  Although President Zelensky explained that he did not want to be a 
``pawn'' in Washington politics, President Trump did not care. In fact, 
on July 25, before President Trump spoke to President Zelensky, 
President Trump personally conveyed the terms of this quid pro quo to 
Gordon Sondland, who then relayed the message to Ukraine's President.
  Later that morning, during the now-infamous phone call, President 
Trump explicitly requested that Ukraine investigate the Bidens and the 
2016 election. Zelensky responded as President Trump instructed: He 
assured President Trump that he would undertake these investigations. 
After hearing this commitment, President Trump then reiterated his 
invitation to the White House at the end of the call.
  No later than a few days after the call, the highest levels of the 
Ukrainian Government learned about the hold on military assistance. 
Senior Ukrainian officials decided to keep quiet, recognizing the harm 
it would cause to Ukraine's defense, to the new government's standing 
at home, and to its negotiating posture with Russia. Officials in 
Ukraine and the United States hoped the hold would be reversed before 
it became public. As we now know, that was not to be.
  As we have explained during the trial, the President's scheme did not 
begin with the July 25 call, and it did not end there either. As 
instructed, a top aide to President Zelensky met with Giuliani in early 
August, and they began working on a press statement for Zelensky to 
issue that would announce the two sham investigations and lead to a 
White House meeting.
  Let's be very clear here. The documentary evidence alone--the text 
messages and the emails that we have shown you--confirms definitively 
the President's corrupt quid pro quo for the White House meeting. 
Subsequent testimony further affirms that the President withheld this 
official act--this highly coveted Oval Office meeting--to apply 
pressure on Ukraine to do his personal bidding.
  The evidence is unequivocal.
  Despite this pressure, by mid-August President Zelensky resisted such 
an explicit announcement of the two politically motivated 
investigations desired by President Trump. As a result, the White House 
meeting remained unscheduled, just as it remains unscheduled to this 
day.
  During this same timeframe in August, the President persisted in 
maintaining the hold on the aid, despite warnings that he was breaking 
the law by doing so, as an independent watchdog recently confirmed that 
he did.
  According to the evidence presented to you, the President's entire 
Cabinet believed he should release the aid because it was in the 
national security interest of our country. During the entire month of 
August, there was no internal review of the aid. Congress was not 
notified, nor was there any credible reason provided within the 
executive branch.
  With no explanation offered and with the explicit, clear, yet 
unsuccessful quid pro quo for the White House meeting in the front of 
his mind, Ambassador Sondland testified that the only logical 
conclusion was that the President was also withholding military 
assistance to increase the pressure on Ukraine to announce the 
investigations. As Sondland and another witness testified, this 
conclusion was as simple as two plus two equals four. If the White 
House meeting wasn't sufficient leverage to extract the announcement he 
wanted, Trump would use the frozen aid as his hammer.
  Secretary Pompeo confirmed Sondland's conclusion in an August 22 
email. It is also clear that Vice President Pence was aware of the quid 
pro quo over the aid and was directly informed of such in Warsaw on 
September 1, after the freeze had become public and Ukraine became 
desperate. Sondland pulled aside a top aide in Warsaw and told him that 
everything--both the White House meeting and also the security 
assistance--were conditioned on the announcement of the investigations 
that Sondland, Giuliani, and others had been negotiating with the same 
aide earlier in August.
  This is an important point. The President claims that Ukraine did not 
know of the freeze in aid, though we know this to be false. As the 
former Deputy Foreign Minister has admitted publicly, they found out 
about it within days of the July 25 call and kept it quite. But no one 
can dispute that even after the hold became public on August 28, 
President Trump's representatives continued their efforts to secure

[[Page S776]]

Ukraine's announcement of the investigations. This is enough to prove 
extortion in court, and it is certainly enough to prove it here.
  If that wasn't enough, however, on September 7, more than a week 
after the aid freeze became public, President Trump confirmed directly 
to Sondland that he wanted President Zelensky in a ``public box'' and 
that his release of the aid was conditioned on the announcement of the 
two sham investigations. Having received direct confirmation from 
President Trump, Sondland relayed the President's message to President 
Zelensky himself.
  President Zelensky could resist no longer. America's military 
assistance makes up 10 percent of his country's defense budget, and 
President Trump's visible lack of support for Ukraine harmed his 
leverage in negotiations with Russia. President Zelensky affirmed to 
Sondland on that same telephone call that he would announce the 
investigations in an interview on CNN. President Trump's pressure 
campaign appeared to have succeeded.
  Two days after President Zelensky confirmed his intention to meet 
President Trump's demands, the House of Representatives announced its 
investigation into these very issues. Shortly thereafter, the inspector 
general of the intelligence community notified the communities that the 
whistleblower complaint was being improperly handled--or was improperly 
withheld from Congress with the White House's knowledge.
  In other words, the President got caught, and 2 days later, on 
September 11, the President released the aid. To this day, however, 
Ukraine still has not received all of the money Congress has 
appropriated and the White House meeting has yet to be scheduled.
  The identity of the whistleblower, moreover, is irrelevant. The House 
did not rely on the whistleblower's complaint, even as it turned out to 
be remarkably accurate. It does not matter who initially sounded the 
alarm when they saw smoke. What matters is that the firefighters--
Congress--were summoned and found the blaze, and we know that we did.
  The facts about the President's misconduct are not seriously in 
dispute. As several Republican Senators have acknowledged publicly, we 
have proof that the President abused his power in precisely the manner 
charged in article I. President Trump withheld the White House meeting 
and essential, congressionally appropriated military assistance from 
Ukraine in order to pressure Ukraine to interfere in the upcoming 
Presidential election on his behalf.
  The sham investigations President Trump wanted announced had no 
legitimate purpose and were not in the national interest, despite the 
President's counsel's troubling reliance on conspiracy theories to 
claim the President acted in the public interest.
  The President was not focused on fighting corruption. In fact, he was 
trying to pressure Ukraine's President to act corruptly by announcing 
these baseless investigations. And the evidence makes clear that the 
President's decision to withhold Ukraine's military aid is not 
connected in any way to purported concerns about corruption or burden-
sharing.
  Rather, the evidence that was presented to you is damning, chilling, 
disturbing, and disgraceful. President Trump weaponized our government 
and the vast powers entrusted to him by the American people and the 
Constitution to target his political rival and corrupt our precious 
elections, subverting our national security and our democracy in the 
process. He put his personal interests over those of the country, and 
he violated his oath of office in the process.

  But the President's grave abuse of power did not end there. In 
conduct unparalleled in American history, once he got caught, President 
Trump engaged in categorical and indiscriminate obstruction of any 
investigation into his wrongdoing. He ordered every government agency 
and every official to defy the House's impeachment inquiry, and he did 
so for a simple reason: to conceal evidence of his wrongdoing from 
Congress and the American people.
  The President's obstruction was unlawful and unprecedented, but it 
also confirmed his guilt. Innocent people don't try to hide every 
document and witness, especially those that would clear them. That is 
what guilty people do. That is what guilty people do. Innocent people 
do everything they can to clear their name and provide evidence that 
shows that they are innocent.
  But it would be a mistake to view the President's obstruction 
narrowly, as the President's counsel have tried to portray it. The 
President did not defy the House's impeachment inquiry as part of a 
routine interbranch dispute or because he wanted to protect the 
constitutional rights and privileges of his Presidency. He did it 
consistent with his vow to ``fight all subpoenas.''
  The second article of impeachment goes to the heart of our 
Constitution and our democratic system of government. The Framers of 
the Constitution purposefully entrusted the power of impeachment in the 
legislative branch so that it may protect the American people from a 
corrupt President.
  The President was able to undertake such comprehensive obstruction 
only because of the exceptional powers entrusted to him by the American 
people, and he wielded that power to make sure Congress would not 
receive a single record or a single document related to his conduct and 
to bar his closest aides from testifying about his scheme. Throughout 
the House's inquiry, just as they did during the trial, the President's 
counsel offered bad-faith and meritless legal arguments as transparent 
window dressing intended to legitimize and justify the President's 
efforts to hide evidence of his misconduct.
  We have explained why all of these legal excuses hold no merit, why 
the House's subpoenas were valid, how the House appropriately exercised 
its impeachment authority, how the President's strategy was to stall 
and obstruct. We have explained how the President's after-the-fact 
reliance on unfounded and, in some cases, brand-new legal privileges 
are shockingly transparent cover for a President's dictate of blanket 
obstruction. We have underscored how the President's defiance of 
Congress is unprecedented in the history of our Republic, and we all 
know that an innocent person would eagerly provide testimony and 
documents to clear his name, as the President apparently thought he was 
doing, mistakenly, when he released the call records of his two 
telephone calls with President Zelensky.
  And even as the President has claimed to be protecting the 
Presidency, remember that the President never actually invoked 
executive privilege throughout this entire inquiry, a revealing fact, 
given the law's prohibition on invoking executive privilege to shield 
wrongdoing.
  And yet, according to the President's counsel, the President is 
justified in resisting the House's impeachment inquiry. They assert 
that the House should have taken the President to court to defy the 
obstruction. The President's argument is as shameless as it is 
hypocritical. The President's counsel is arguing in this trial that the 
House should have gone to court to enforce its subpoenas, while at the 
same time, the President's own Department of Justice is arguing in 
court that the House cannot enforce the subpoenas through the courts. 
And you know what remedy they say in court is available to the House? 
Impeachment for obstruction of Congress.
  This is not the first time this argument has been made. President 
Nixon made it too, but it was roundly rejected by the House Judiciary 
Committee 45 years ago, when the committee passed an article for 
obstruction of Congress for a far less serious objection than we have 
here. The committee concluded that it was inappropriate to enforce its 
subpoenas in court and, as the slide shows:

       The Committee concluded that it would be inappropriate to 
     seek the aid of the courts to enforce its subpoenas against 
     the President. This conclusion is based on the constitutional 
     provision vesting the power of impeachment solely in the 
     House of Representatives and the express denial by the 
     Framers of the Constitution of any role for the courts in the 
     impeachment process.

  Again, the committee report on Nixon's Articles of Impeachment.
  Mr. Manager JEFFRIES. Once we strip the President's obstruction of 
this legal window dressing, the consequences are as clear as they are 
dire for our democracy. To condone the President's obstruction would 
strike a deathblow to the impeachment clause in the Constitution. And 
if the Congress cannot enforce this sole power

[[Page S777]]

vested in both Chambers alone, the Constitution's final line of defense 
against a corrupt Presidency will be eviscerated.
  A President who can obstruct and thwart the impeachment power becomes 
unaccountable. He or she is effectively above the law. And such a 
President is more likely to engage in corruption with impunity. This 
will become the new normal with this President and for future 
generations.
  So where does this leave us? As many of you in this Chamber have 
publicly acknowledged in the past few days, the facts are not seriously 
in dispute. We have proved that the President committed grave offenses 
against the Constitution. The question that remains is whether that 
conduct warrants conviction and removal from office.
  Should the Senate simply accept or even condone such corrupt conduct 
by a President? Absent conviction and removal, how can we be assured 
that this President will not do it again? If we are to rely on the next 
election to judge the President's efforts to cheat in that election, 
how can we know that the election will be free and fair? How can we 
know that every vote will be free from foreign interference solicited 
by the President himself?
  With President Trump, the past is prologue. This is neither the first 
time that the President solicited foreign interference in his own 
election, nor is it the first time that the President tried to obstruct 
an investigation into his misconduct. But you will determine--you will 
determine--you will determine whether it will be his last.
  As we speak, the President continues his wrongdoing unchecked and 
unashamed. Donald Trump hasn't stopped trying to pressure Ukraine to 
smear his opponent, nor has he stopped obstructing Congress. His 
political agent, Rudolph Giuliani, recently returned to the scene of 
the crime in Ukraine to manufacture more dirt for his client, the 
President of the United States.
  President Trump remains a clear and present danger to our national 
security and to our credibility around the world. He is decimating our 
global standing as a beacon of democracy while corrupting our free and 
fair elections here at home.
  What is a greater protection to our country than ensuring that we, 
the American people, alone, not some foreign power, choose our 
Commander in Chief? The American people alone should decide who 
represents us in any office without foreign interference--particularly 
the highest office in the land. And what could undermine our national 
security more than to withhold from a foreign ally fighting a hot war 
against our adversary hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid 
to buy sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, radar and 
night vision goggles, so that they may fight the war over there, 
keeping us safe here?
  If we allow the President's misconduct to stand, what message do we 
send? What message do we send to Russia, our adversary intent on 
fracturing democracy around the world?
  What will we say to our European allies, already concerned with this 
President, about whether the United States will continue to support our 
NATO commitments that have been a pillar of our foreign policy since 
World War II? What message do we send to our allies in the free world?
  If we allow this President's conduct to stand, what will we say to 
the 68,000 men and women in uniform in Europe right now who 
courageously and admirably wake up every day ready and willing to fight 
for America's security and prosperity, for democracy in Europe and 
around the world? What message do we send them when we say 
America's national security is for sale?

  That cannot be the message we want to send to our Ukrainian friends 
or our European allies or to our children and our grandchildren who 
will inherit this precious Republic, and I am sure it is not the 
message that you wish to send to our adversaries.
  The late Senator John McCain was an astounding man--a man of great 
principle, a great patriot. He fought admirably in Vietnam and was 
imprisoned as a POW for over 5 years, refusing an offer by the North 
Vietnamese to be released early because his father was a prominent 
admiral. As you all are aware, Senator McCain was a great supporter of 
Ukraine, a great supporter of Europe, a great supporter of our troops. 
Senator McCain understood the importance of this body--this 
distinguished body--and serving the public, once saying: ``Glory 
belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than 
yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you 
rely and who rely on you.''
  The Ukrainians and the Europeans and the Americans around the world 
and here at home are watching what we do. They are watching to see what 
the Senate will do, and they are relying on this distinguished body to 
be constant to the principles America was founded on and which we tried 
to uphold for more than 240 years.
  Doing the right thing and being constant to our principles requires a 
level of moral courage that is difficult but by no means impossible. It 
is that moral courage shown by public servants throughout this country 
and throughout the impeachment inquiry in the House.
  People like Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch--her decades of nonpartisan 
service were turned against her in a vicious smear campaign that 
reached all the way to the President. Despite this effort, she decided 
to honor a duly authorized congressional subpoena and to speak the 
truth to the American people. For this, she was the subject of yet more 
smears against her career and her character even as she testified in a 
public hearing before Congress. Her courage mattered.
  People like Ambassador Bill Taylor, a West Point graduate who wears a 
Bronze Star and an Air Medal for valor and, his proudest honor, the 
Combat Infantryman Badge. When his country called on him, he answered 
again and again and again, in battle and foreign affairs and in the 
face of a corrupt effort by the President to extort a foreign country 
into helping his reelection campaign--an effort that Ambassador Taylor 
rightly believed was ``crazy.'' His courage mattered.
  People like LTC Alexander Vindman, who came to this country as a 
young child fleeing authoritarianism in Eastern Europe--he could have 
done anything with his life, but he, too, chose public service, putting 
on a uniform and receiving a Purple Heart after being wounded in battle 
fighting courageously in Iraq. When he heard that fateful July 25 call, 
in which the President sold out our country for his own personal gain, 
Lieutenant Colonel Vindman reported it and later came before Congress 
to speak the truth about what happened. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman's 
courage mattered.
  To the other public servants who came forward and told the truth in 
the face of vicious smears, intimidation, and White House efforts to 
silence you, your courage mattered. You did the right thing. You did 
your duty. No matter what happens today or from this day forward, that 
courage mattered.
  Whatever the outcome in this trial, we will remain vigilant in the 
House. I know there are dedicated public servants who know the 
difference between right and wrong. But make no mistake, these are 
perilous times if we determine that the remedy for a President who 
cheats in an election is to pronounce him vindicated and attack those 
who expose his misconduct.
  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Senators, before we break, I want to take a 
moment to say something about the staff who have worked tirelessly on 
the impeachment inquiry and this trial for months now. There is a small 
army of public servants down the hall from this Chamber, in offices 
throughout the House, and, yes, in that windowless bunker in the 
Capitol, who have committed their lives to this effort because they, 
like the managers and the American people, believe that a President 
free of accountability is a danger to the beating heart of our 
democracy.
  I am grateful to all of them, but let me mention a few: Daniel 
Goldman, Maher Bitar, Rheanne Wirkkala, Patrick Boland, William Evans, 
Patrick Fallon, Sean Misko, Nicolas Mitchell, Daniel Noble, Diana 
Pilipenko, Emilie Simons, Susanne Grooms, Krista Boyd, Norm Eisen, 
Barry Berke, Joshua Matz, Doug Letter, Sarah Istel, Ashley Etienne, 
Terri McCullough, Dick Meltzer, and Wyndee Parker. Some of those staff, 
including some singled out in this Chamber, have been made to endure 
the most vicious false attacks to the point where they feel their lives 
have been put at risk.
  The attacks on them degrade our institution and all who serve in it. 
You

[[Page S778]]

have asked me why I hired certain of my staff, and I will tell you--
because they are brilliant, hard-working, patriotic, and the best 
people for the job, and they deserve better than the attacks they have 
been forced to suffer.
  Members of the Senate, Mr. Chief Justice, I want to close this 
portion of our statement by reading you the words of our dear friend 
and former colleague in the House, the late Elijah Cummings, who said 
this on the day the Speaker announced the beginning of the impeachment 
inquiry:

       As elected Representatives, [he said], of the American 
     people, we speak not only for those who are here with us now, 
     but for generations yet unborn. Our voices today are messages 
     to a future we may never see. When the history books are 
     written about this tumultuous era, I want them to show that I 
     was among those in the House of Representatives who stood up 
     to lawlessness and tyranny.

  We, the managers, are not here representing ourselves alone or even 
just the House, just as you are not here making a determination as to 
the President's guilt or innocence for yourselves alone. No, you and we 
represent the American people, the ones at home and at work who are 
hoping that their country will remain what they have always believed it 
to be: a beacon of hope, of democracy, and of inspiration to those 
striving around the world to create their own more perfect unions--for 
those who were standing up to lawlessness and to tyranny.
  Donald Trump has betrayed his oath to protect and defend the 
Constitution, but it is not too late for us to honor ours and to wield 
our power to defend our democracy. As President Abraham Lincoln said at 
the close of his Cooper Union Address on February 27, 1860, ``[n]either 
let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor 
frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of 
dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in 
that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand 
it.''
  Today, we urge you--in the face of overwhelming evidence of the 
President's guilt and knowing that, if left in office, he will continue 
to seek foreign interference in the next election--to vote to convict 
on both Articles of Impeachment and to remove from office, Donald J. 
Trump, the 45th President of the United States.
  Mr. Chief Justice, we reserve the balance of our time.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The majority leader is recognized.


                                 Recess

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. Chief Justice, colleagues, we will take a 30-
minute break for lunch.
  There being no objection, at 12:02 p.m., the Senate, sitting as a 
Court of Impeachment, recessed until 12:51 p.m.; whereupon the Senate 
reassembled when called to order by the Chief Justice.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The Senate will come to order.
  Mr. Counsel CIPOLLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice, Majority Leader 
McConnell, Democratic Leader Schumer, Senators. Thank you very much, on 
behalf of all of us, for your continued attention. Today we are going 
to complete our argument and finish our closing argument. We will 
complete that in a very efficient period of time.
  You understand the arguments that we have been making, and at the end 
of the day, the key conclusion--we believe, the only conclusion--based 
on the evidence and based on the Articles of Impeachment themselves and 
the Constitution is that you must vote to acquit the President. At the 
end of the day, this is an effort to overturn the results of one 
election and to try to interfere in the coming election that begins 
today in Iowa. And we believe that the only proper result, if we are 
applying the golden rule of impeachment, if we are applying the rules 
of impeachment that were so eloquently stated by Members of the 
Democratic Party the last time we were here--the only appropriate 
result here is to acquit the President and to leave it to the voters to 
choose their President.
  With that, I will turn it over to Judge Ken Starr, and we will move 
through a series of short presentations.
  Thank you.
  Mr. Counsel STARR. Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the Senate, Majority 
Leader McConnell, Democratic Leader Schumer, House impeachment managers 
and their very able staff, as World War I, the war to end all wars, was 
drawing to a close, an American soldier sat down at a piano and 
composed a song. It was designed to be part of a musical review for his 
Army camp out on Long Island, Suffolk County.
  The song was ``God Bless America.'' The composer, of course, was 
Irving Berlin, who came here at the age of 5, the son of immigrants who 
came to this country for freedom.
  As composers are wont to do, Berlin worked very carefully with the 
lyrics. The song needed to be pure. It needed to be above politics, 
above partisanship. He intended it to be a song for all America, but he 
intended it to be more than just a song. It was to be a prayer for the 
country.
  As your very distinguished Chaplain, RADM Barry Black, has done in 
his prayers on these long days that you have spent as judges in the 
High Court of Impeachment, we have been reminded of what our country is 
all about and that it stands for one nation under God. Nation is about 
freedom.
  And we hear the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his dream-
filled speech about freedom echoing the great passages inscribed on 
America's temple of justice, the Lincoln Memorial, which stood behind 
Dr. King as he spoke on that historic day. Dr. King is gone, felled by 
an assassin's bullet, but his words remain with us. And during his 
magnificent life, Dr. King spoke not only about freedom, freedom 
standing alone; he spoke frequently about freedom and justice. And in 
his speeches he summoned up regularly the words of a Unitarian 
abolitionist from the prior century, Theodore Parker, who referred to 
the moral arc of the universe--the long moral arc of the universe 
points toward justice--freedom and justice--freedom, whose contours 
have been shaped over the centuries in the English-speaking world by 
what Justice Benjamin Cardozo called the authentic forms of justice 
through which the community expresses itself in law. Authentic. 
Authenticity.
  And at the foundation of those authentic forms of justice is 
fundamental fairness. It is playing by the rules. It is why we don't 
allow deflated footballs or stealing signs from the field. Rules are 
rules. They are to be followed.
  And so I submit that a key question to be asked as you begin your 
deliberations: Were the rules here faithfully followed? If not, if that 
is your judgment, then, with all due respect, the prosecutors should 
not be rewarded, just as Federal prosecutors are not rewarded. You 
didn't follow the rules. You should have.
  As a young lawyer, I was blessed to work with one of the great trial 
lawyers of his time, and I asked him: Dick, what's your secret?
  He had just defended, successfully, a former United States Senator 
who was charged with a serious offense--perjury before a Federal grand 
jury. His response was simple and forthright. His words could have come 
from prairie lawyer Abe Lincoln: I let the judge and the jury know that 
they can believe and trust every word that comes out of my mouth. I 
will not be proven wrong.
  So here is a question, as you begin your deliberations: Have the 
facts as presented to you as a court, as the High Court of Impeachment, 
proven trustworthy? Has there been full and fair disclosure in the 
course of these proceedings? Fundamental fairness?
  I recall these words from the podium last week. A point would be made 
by one of the President's lawyers, and then this would follow: The 
House managers didn't tell you that. Why not? And again: The House 
managers didn't tell you that. Why not?
  At the Justice Department, on the fifth floor of the Robert F. 
Kennedy Building, is this simple inscription: ``The United States wins 
its point whenever justice is done its citizens in the courts.'' Not 
did we win, not did we convict; rather, the moral question: Was justice 
done?
  Of course, as has been said frequently, the House of Representatives 
does, under our Constitution, enjoy the sole power of impeachment. No 
one has disputed that fact. They have got the power, but that doesn't 
mean that anything goes. It doesn't mean that the House cannot be 
called to account in the High Court of Impeachment for its actions in 
exercising that power.
  A question to be asked: Are we to countenance violations of the rules 
and

[[Page S779]]

traditional procedures that have been followed scrupulously in prior 
impeachment proceedings? And the Judiciary Committee, the venerable 
Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives--compare and 
contrast the thoroughness of that committee in the age of Nixon, its 
thoroughness in the age of Clinton with all of its divisiveness within 
the committee in this proceeding.
  A question to be asked: Did the House Judiciary Committee rush to 
judgment in fashioning the Articles of Impeachment? Did it carefully 
gather the facts, assess the facts before it concluded? We need nothing 
more than the panel of very distinguished professors and the splendid 
presentations by both the majority counsel and the minority counsel.
  We asked some questions. The Republicans asked some questions. We 
heard their answers. We are ready to vote. We are ready to try this 
case in the High Court of Impeachment.
  What was being said in the sounds of silence was this: We don't have 
time to follow the rules. We won't even allow the House Judiciary 
minority members, who have been beseeching us time and again, to have 
their day--just one day--to call their witnesses. Oh yes, that is 
expressly provided for in the rules, but we will break those rules.
  That is not liberty and justice for all.
  The great political scientist of yesteryear, Richard Neustadt of 
Columbia, observed that the power of the President is ultimately the 
power to persuade--oh yes, the Commander in Chief, and, yes, charged 
with the conduct and authority to guide the Nation's foreign relations, 
but ultimately it is the power to persuade.
  I suggest to you that so, too, the House's sole power to impeach is 
likewise ultimately a power to persuade over in the House.
  A question to be asked: In the fast-track impeachment process in the 
House of Representatives, did the House majority persuade the American 
people--not just partisans; rather, did the House's case win over the 
overwhelming majority of consensus of the American people?
  The question fairly to be asked: Will I cast my vote to convict and 
remove the President of the United States when not a single member of 
the President's party--the party of Lincoln--was persuaded at any time 
in the process?
  In contrast, and when I was here last week, I noted for the record of 
these proceedings that in the Nixon impeachment, the House vote to 
authorize the impeachment inquiry was 410 to 4. In the Clinton 
impeachment--divisive, controversial--31 Democrats voted in favor of 
the impeachment inquiry. Here, of course, and in sharp contrast, the 
answer is, none.
  It is said that we live in highly and perhaps hopelessly partisan 
times. It is said that no one is open to persuasion anymore. They are 
getting their news entirely from their favorite media platform, and 
that platform of choice is fatally deterministic.
  Well, at least the decision of decision makers under oath, who are 
bound by sacred duty, by oath, or affirmation to do impartial justice, 
leaves the platforms out. Those modern-day intermediaries and shapers 
of thought, of expression, of opinion, are outside these walls where 
you serve.
  Finally, does what is before this court--very energetically described 
by the able House managers but fairly viewed--rise to the level of a 
high crime or misdemeanor, one so grave and so serious to bring about 
the profound disruption of the article II branch, the disruption of the 
government, and to tell the American people--and, yes, I will say this 
is the way it would be read--``Your vote in the last election is hereby 
declared null and void. And by the way, we are not going to allow you, 
the American people, to sit in judgment on this President and his 
record in November''? That is neither freedom, nor is it justice. It is 
certainly not consistent with the most basic freedom of ``we the 
people,'' the freedom to vote.
  I thank the court.
  I yield to my colleague, Mr. Purpura.
  Mr. Counsel PURPURA. Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the Senate, good 
afternoon. I will be relatively brief today and will not repeat the 
arguments that we have made throughout, but I want to highlight a few 
things.
  There are a number of reasons why the Articles of Impeachment are 
deficient and must fail. My colleagues have spent the past week 
describing those reasons. In my time today, I would like to review just 
a few core facts, which, again, remember, are all drawn from the record 
on which the President was impeached in the House and that the House 
managers brought to this body in support of the President's removal.
  First, the President did not condition security assistance or a 
meeting on anything during the July 25 call. In fact, both Ambassador 
Yovanovitch and Mr. Tim Morrison confirmed that the Javelin missiles 
and the security assistance were completely unrelated.
  The concerns that Lieutenant Colonel Vindman expressed on the call 
were, by his own words and admission, based on deep policy concerns.
  And remember, as we said before and everyone in this room knows, the 
President sets the foreign policy; the unelected staff implements the 
foreign policy.
  Others on the call, including Lieutenant Colonel Vindman's boss, Mr. 
Morrison, as well as LTG Keith Kellogg, had no such concerns and have 
stated that they heard nothing improper, unlawful, or otherwise 
troubling on the July 25 call.
  Second, President Zelensky and his top advisers agreed that there was 
nothing wrong with the July 25 call and that they felt no pressure from 
President Trump. President Zelensky said that the call was ``good,'' 
``normal,'' and ``no [one] pushed me.''
  President Zelensky's top adviser, Andriy Yermak, was asked if he had 
ever felt there was a connection between the U.S. military aid and the 
request for investigations. He was adamant that ``we never had that 
feeling. . . . We did not have the feeling that this aid was connected 
to any one specific issue.'' Several other top Ukrainian officials have 
said the same both publicly and in readouts of the July 25 call to 
Ambassador Taylor, Ambassador Volker, and others.

  Third, President Zelensky and the highest levels of the Ukrainian 
Government did not learn of the pause until August 28, 2019--more than 
a month after the July 25 call between President Trump and President 
Zelensky.
  President Zelensky himself said:

       I had no idea the military aid was held up. When I did find 
     out, I raised it with Pence at a meeting in Warsaw.

  Referring to the Vice President.
  The meeting in Warsaw took place 3 days after the POLITICO article 
was published, on September 1, 2019.
  Mr. Yermak likewise said that President Zelensky and his key advisers 
learned of the pause only from the August 28 POLITICO article.
  Just last week, while we were in this trial, Oleksandr Danylyuk, 
former chairman of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, 
said he first found out that the United States was withholding aid to 
Ukraine by reading POLITICO's article published August 28. Mr. Danylyuk 
also said there was panic within the Zelensky administration when they 
found out about the hold from the POLITICO article, indicating that the 
highest levels of the administration were unaware of the pause until 
the article was published.
  If that is not enough, Ambassador Volker, Ambassador Taylor, Deputy 
Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, and Mr. Morrison also 
testified that the Ukrainians did not know about the security hold 
until the POLITICO article on August 28. We showed you the text message 
from Mr. Yermak to Ambassador Volker just hours after the POLITICO 
article was published. You also remember all of the high-level, 
bilateral meetings at which the Ukrainians did not bring up the pause 
in the security assistance because they did not know about it. When 
they did find out on August 28, they raised the issue at the very next 
meeting in Warsaw on September 1.
  This is a really important point. As Ambassador Volker testified, if 
the Ukrainians didn't know about the pause, then there was no leverage 
implied. That is why the House managers have kept claiming and 
continued to claim throughout the trial that the high-level Ukrainians 
somehow knew about the pause before late August. That is inaccurate.
  We pointed out that Laura Cooper, on whom they rely, testified she 
didn't really know what the emails she saw

[[Page S780]]

relating to security assistance were about.
  We told you that Catherine Croft, who worked for Ambassador Volker, 
couldn't remember the specifics of when she believed the Ukrainian 
Embassy learned of the pause and that she didn't remember when news of 
the pause became public.
  The House managers also mentioned Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who 
claimed to have vague recollections of fielding unspecified queries 
about aid from Ukrainians in the mid-August timeframe. But Lieutenant 
Colonel Vindman ultimately agreed that the Ukrainians first learned 
about the hold on security assistance probably around when the first 
stories emerged in the open source.
  Former Deputy Foreign Minister Olena Zerkal's claim that she knew 
about the pause in July is inconsistent with statements by her boss, 
the then-Foreign Minister of Ukraine, who said that he learned of the 
pause from a news article, of which the August 28 POLITICO article was 
the first, as well as those of all of the other top-level Ukrainian 
officials I have mentioned, the testimony of the top U.S. diplomats 
responsible for Ukraine, and the many intervening meetings at which the 
pause was not mentioned.
  Fourth, none of the House witnesses testified that President Trump 
ever said there was any linkage between security assistance and 
investigations. When Ambassador Sondland asked the President on 
approximately September 9, the President told him:

       I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo.

  Before he asked the President, Ambassador Sondland presumed and told 
Ambassador Taylor and Mr. Morrison that there was a connection between 
the security assistance and the investigations. That was before he 
asked the President directly.
  Even earlier, on August 31, Senator Ron Johnson asked the President 
if there was any connection between security assistance and 
investigations. The President answered:

       No way. I would never do that. Who told you that?

  Under Secretary of State David Hale, Mr. Kent, and Ambassador Volker 
all testified that they were not aware of any connection whatsoever 
between security assistance and investigations.
  The House managers repeatedly point to a statement by Acting Chief of 
Staff Mick Mulvaney during an October press conference. When it became 
clear that the media was misinterpreting his comments or that he had 
simply misspoken, Mr. Mulvaney promptly, on the very day of the press 
conference, issued a written statement making clear that there was no 
quid pro quo. Here is his statement:

       Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo 
     between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 
     2016 election. The president never told me to withhold any 
     money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the 
     server.
       The only reasons we were holding the money was because of 
     concern about lack of support from other nations and concerns 
     over corruption. Accordingly, Mr. Mulvaney in no way 
     confirmed the link between the paused security assistance 
     and investigations. A garbled or misinterpreted statement 
     or a mistaken statement that is promptly clarified on the 
     same day as the original statement is not the kind of 
     reliable evidence that would lead to the removal of the 
     President of the United States from office. In any event, 
     Mr. Mulvaney also stated during the press conference 
     itself that the money held up had absolutely nothing to do 
     with Biden.

  Now, why does this all matter? I think Senator Romney really got to 
the heart of this issue on Thursday evening when he asked both parties 
whether there is any evidence that President Trump directed anyone who 
tell the Ukrainians that security assistance was being held up on the 
condition of an investigation into the Bidens. That was the question. 
There is no such evidence.
  Fifth, the security assistance was released when the President's 
concerns with burden-sharing and corruption were addressed by a number 
of people, including some in this Chamber today, without Ukraine ever 
announcing or undertaking any investigations. You have heard repeatedly 
that no one in the administration knew why the security assistance was 
paused. That is not true. Two of the House managers' own witnesses 
testified regarding the reason for the pause. As Mr. Morrison testified 
at a July meeting attended by officials throughout the executive branch 
agencies, the reason provided for the pause by a representative from 
the Office of Management and Budget was that the President was 
concerned about corruption in Ukraine and he wanted to make sure 
Ukraine was doing enough to manage that corruption. Further, according 
to Mark Sandy, Deputy Associate Director for National Security, Office 
for Management and Budget, we had received requests for additional 
information on what other countries were contributing to Ukraine.
  We told you about the work that was being done to monitor and collect 
information about anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine and burden-sharing 
during the summer pause. We told you about how, when President Zelensky 
asked Vice President Pence in Poland about the pause, Vice President 
Pence asked, according to Jennifer Williams, what the status of his 
reform efforts were that he could then convey back to the President and 
also wanting to hear if there was more that European countries could do 
to support Ukraine. Mr. Morrison, who was actually at the Warsaw 
meeting, testified similarly that Vice President Pence delivered a 
message about anti-corruption and burden-sharing.
  We told you about the September 11 call with President Trump, Senator 
Portman, and Vice President Pence. Mr. Morrison testified that the 
entire process culminating in the September 11 call gave the President 
the confidence he needed to approve the release of the security sector 
assistance, all without any investigations being announced.
  Now, I focused so far on the House managers' allegation that there 
was a quid pro quo for the security assistance. Let me turn very 
briefly to the claim that a Presidential meeting was also conditioned 
on investigations. Remember, by the end of the July 25 call, President 
Trump had personally invited President Zelensky to meet three times--
twice by phone, once in a letter, without any preconditions. You heard 
the White House was working behind the scenes to schedule the meeting 
and how difficult scheduling those meetings can be. The two Presidents 
planned to meet in Warsaw, just as President Zelensky requested on the 
July 25 call. President Trump had to cancel at the last minute due to 
Hurricane Dorian. President Trump and President Zelensky then met 3 
weeks later in New York without Ukraine announcing any investigations.
  Finally, one thing that the House managers' witnesses agreed upon was 
that President Trump has strengthened the relationship between the U.S. 
and Ukraine and has been a better friend to Ukraine and a stronger 
opponent of Russian aggression than President Obama. Most notably, 
Ambassador Taylor, Ambassador Volker, and Ambassador Yovanovitch all 
testified that President Trump's reversal of his predecessor's refusal 
to send the Ukrainians lethal aid was a meaningful and significant 
policy development and improvement for which President Trump deserves 
credit.
  Just last week, Ambassador Volker, who knows more about U.S.-Ukraine 
relationships than nearly, if not, everyone, published a piece in 
Foreign Policy magazine. I would like to read you an excerpt:

       Beginning in mid-2017, and continuing until the impeachment 
     investigation began in September 2019, U.S. policy toward 
     Ukraine was strong, consistent, and enjoyed support across 
     the administration, bipartisan support in Congress, and 
     support upon U.S. allies and in Ukraine itself.
       The Trump administration also coordinated Ukraine policy 
     closely with allies in Europe and Canada--maintaining a 
     united front against Russian aggression and in favor of 
     Ukraine's democracy, reform, sovereignty, and territorial 
     integrity. Ukraine policy is one of the few areas where U.S. 
     and European policies have been in lockstep. The 
     administration lifted the Obama-era ban on the sale of lethal 
     arms to Ukraine, delivering, among other things, Javelin 
     anti-tank missiles, coast guard cutters, and anti-sniper 
     systems. Despite the recent furor over the pause in U.S. 
     security assistance this past summer, the circumstances of 
     which are the topic of impeachment hearings, U.S. defensive 
     support for Ukraine has been and remains robust.

  And more, according to Ambassador Volker:

       It is therefore a tragedy for both the United States and 
     Ukraine that U.S. partisan politics, which have culminated in 
     the

[[Page S781]]

     ongoing impeachment process, have left Ukraine and its new 
     reform-minded president, Volodymyr Zelensky, exposed and 
     relatively isolated. The only one who benefits from this is 
     Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  Those are the words of Ambassador Volker. He was one of the House 
managers' key witnesses. He was the very first witness to testify in 
the House proceedings on October 3. So I think it is fitting that he 
may be the last witness we hear from. In his parting words, Ambassador 
Volker admonishes that it is U.S. partisan politics which have 
culminated in this impeachment process that have imperiled Ukraine.
  In sum, the House managers' case is not overwhelming, and it is not 
undisputed. The House managers bear the very heavy burden of proof. 
They did not meet it. It is not because they didn't get the additional 
witnesses or documents that they failed to pursue. It is because their 
witnesses have already offered substantial evidence undermining their 
case, and, important, as you have heard from Professor Dershowitz and 
from Mr. Philbin, the first article does not support or allege an 
impeachable offense regardless of any additional witnesses or 
documents.
  Members of the Senate, it has been an incredible honor and privilege 
to speak to you in this Chamber. I hope that what I have shown has been 
helpful to your understanding of the facts, and I respectfully ask you 
to vote to acquit the President of the wrongful charges against him.
  I yield to Mr. Philbin.
  Mr. Counsel PHILBIN. Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the Senate, we 
have heard repeatedly throughout the past week and a half or so that 
the President is not above the law, and I would like to focus in my 
last remarks here on an equally important principle--that the House of 
Representatives also is not above the law in the way they conduct the 
impeachment proceedings and bring a matter here before the Senate, 
because in very significant and important respects, they didn't follow 
the law.
  From the outset, they began an impeachment inquiry here without a 
vote from the House and, therefore, without lawful authority delegated 
to any committees to begin an impeachment inquiry against the President 
of the United States. That was unprecedented in our history. The 
Speaker of the House does not have authority, by holding a press 
conference, to delegate the sole power of impeachment from the House to 
a committee, and the result was 23 totally unauthorized and invalid 
subpoenas were issued at the beginning of this impeachment hearing.
  After that, the House violated every principle of due process and 
fundamental fairness in the way the hearings were conducted, and we 
have been through that. I am not going to go through the details again, 
but it is significant because denying the President the ability to be 
present through counsel to cross-examine witnesses and present evidence 
fundamentally skewed the proceedings in the House of Representatives. 
It left the President without the ability to have a fair proceeding, 
and it meant it reflected the fact that those proceedings were not 
truly designed as a search for truth. We have procedural protections. 
We have the right of cross-examination as a mechanism for getting to 
the facts, and that was not present in the House of Representatives.
  Lastly, Manager Schiff, as an interested witness who had been 
involved in--or at least his staff--discussions with the whistleblower, 
then guided factual inquiry in the House.
  So why does all of this matter? It matters because the lack of a vote 
meant that there was no democratic accountability and no lawful 
authorization from the beginning of the process. It meant that there 
were procedural defects that produced a record that this Chamber can't 
rely on for any conclusion other than to reject the Articles of 
Impeachment and to acquit the President. And it matters because the 
President, in response to these violations of the President's rights--
the failure to follow proper procedure, failure to follow the law--has 
rights of his own, rights of the executive branch to be asserted. And 
that is the President's response to the invalid subpoenas--that they 
are invalid, and we are not going to comply with them.
  And the President asserted other rights of the executive branch. When 
there were subpoenas for his senior advisers to come and testify, along 
with virtually every President since Nixon, he asserted the principle 
of immunity of the senior advisers, that they could not be called to 
testify. And the President asserted the defects in the subpoenas that 
called for executive branch officials to testify without the presence 
of agency counsel--all established principles that have been asserted 
before.
  What do the House managers say in response? They accuse the President 
in their second article of impeachment of trying to assert 
obstruction--that this was an unprecedented response and unprecedented 
refusal to cooperate. It was unprecedented the 23 subpoenas were issued 
in a Presidential impeachment inquiry without valid authorization from 
the House. The President's response was to a totally unprecedented 
attempt by the House to do that which it had no authority to do. They 
have asserted today and on other occasions that the President's legal 
argument in response to these subpoenas--they have said that it is 
indiscriminate. There was just a blanket defiance. I think I have shown 
that wasn't true. There were three very specific legal rationales 
provided by the executive branch as to different defects and different 
subpoenas, and there were letters explaining those defects. But there 
was no attempt by the House to attempt an accommodations process, even 
though the White House offered to engage in an accommodations process. 
There was no attempt by the House to use other mechanisms to resolve 
the differences with the executive branch. It was just straight to 
impeachment.
  Now, they asserted today and on other occasions that the President's 
counsel--that I and my colleagues--have made bad-faith legal arguments. 
They were just window dressings.
  In an ordinary court of law, one doesn't accuse opposing counsel of 
making bad-faith arguments like that, and if you make that accusation, 
it has to be backed up with analysis, but there hasn't been analysis 
here. There has just been accusation.
  When the President asserts the immunity of his senior advisers, that 
is a principle that has been asserted by virtually every President 
since Nixon. Let me read you what Attorney General Janet Reno, during 
the Clinton administration, said about this exact immunity. She said 
that immediate advisers to the President are immune from being 
compelled to testify before Congress. ``The immunity such advisers 
enjoy from testimonial compulsion by a congressional committee is 
absolute and may not be overborne by competing congressional 
interests.''
  And she went onto say: ``Compelling one of the President's immediate 
advisers to testify on a matter of executive decision-making would also 
raise serious constitutional problems, no matter the assertion of 
congressional need.''
  Was that bad faith? Was Attorney General Reno asserting that 
principle in bad faith, and President Clinton?
  President Obama asserted the same principle for his senior political 
advisers. Was that bad faith?
  Of course not.
  These are principles defending the separation of powers that 
Presidents have asserted for decades. President Trump was defending the 
institutional interests of the Office of the Presidency and is 
asserting the same principles here. That is vital for the continued 
operation of the separation of powers.
  The House managers have also said that, once the President asserted 
these defects in their subpoenas and resisted them, they had no time to 
do anything else. They had to go straight to impeachment. They could 
not accommodate. They could not go through a contempt process. They 
could not litigate.
  The idea that there is no time for dealing with that friction with 
the executive branch is really antithetical to the proper functioning 
of the separation of powers. It goes against part of the way the 
separation of powers is supposed to work. That interbranch friction is 
meant to take time to resolve. It is meant to slow things down and to 
be somewhat difficult to work through and to force the branches to work 
together to accommodate the interests of each branch, not just to jump 
to the conclusion of, well, we have no

[[Page S782]]

time for that. We have to assert absolute authority on one side of the 
equation.
  This is something that Justice Brandeis pointed out in a famous 
dissent in Myers v. United States, but it has since been cited many 
times by the Court majority.
  He said: ``The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by 
the Convention of 1787, not to promote efficiency''--so he is saying 
not to make government move quickly--``but to preclude the exercise of 
arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction but, by means of 
the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the 
governmental powers among the three departments, to save the people 
from autocracy.''
  That is a vitally important principle. The friction between the 
branches, even if it means taking longer, even if it means not jumping 
straight to impeachment, is part of the constitutional design, and it 
is required to force the branches to determine incrementally where 
their interests lie, to resolve disputes incrementally, and not to jump 
straight to the ultimate nuclear weapon of the Constitution.
  We have also heard from the House managers that everything the 
President did here in asserting the prerogatives of his office--in 
asserting the principles of immunity--must be wrong, must be rejected 
because only the guilty will assert a privilege; only the guilty will 
not allow evidence.
  That is definitely not a principle of American jurisprudence. It is 
antithetical to the fundamental principles of our system of laws. As we 
have pointed out in our trial memorandum in Bordenkircher v. Hayes and 
in other decisions, the Supreme Court has made clear that the very idea 
of punishing someone for asserting rights or privileges or suggesting 
that asserting the right or privilege is evidence of guilt is contrary 
to basic principles of due process.
  It takes on an even more malignant tenor to it when that principle is 
asserted in the context of a dispute between the branches relating to 
the boundaries of their relative powers, because what the House is 
essentially asserting in this case is that any assertion of the 
prerogatives of the Office of the President--any attempt to maintain 
the principles of separation of powers of executive confidentiality 
that have been asserted by past Presidents--can be treated by the House 
as evidence of guilt. And here, their entire second Article of 
Impeachment is structured on the assumption that the House can treat 
the assertion of principles grounded in the separation of powers as an 
impeachable offense.
  Boiled down to its essence, it is an assertion that defending the 
separation of powers--if the President does it in a way that they don't 
like and in a time that they don't like--can be treated as an 
impeachable offense. That is an incredibly dangerous assertion because, 
if it were accepted, it would fundamentally alter the balance between 
the different branches of our government.
  It would suggest--and Professor Turley explained this, and Professor 
Dershowitz explained it here--that, if Congress makes a demand on the 
executive and the executive resists based on separation of powers 
principles that past Presidents have asserted, Congress can nonetheless 
say: We have decided to proceed by impeachment.
  This is the principle they assert in the House Judiciary Committee's 
report: We have the sole power of impeachment. That means we are the 
sole judge of our own actions. There is no need for accommodation, and 
there is no need for the courts. We will determine that any resistance 
you provide is itself impeachable.
  That would fundamentally transform our government by essentially 
giving the House the same sort of power as a parliamentary system--to 
use impeachment as an effective vote of ``no confidence'' against a 
Prime Minister. This is not the way the Framers set up our three-branch 
system of government with a powerful Executive who would be independent 
from the legislature. That is why Professor Turley explained that the 
second Article of Impeachment here would be an abuse of power by 
Congress. It would make the Executive dependent on Congress in a manner 
antithetical to the system that the Framers had envisioned.
  So why is it that there are all of these defects in the House 
managers' case for impeachment? Why are they asserting principles like 
``only the guilty would assert privileges''? That is not a part of our 
system of law. Why are they asserting that, if the Executive resists, 
the House has the sole power to determine the boundaries of its own 
power in relation to the Executive? That is also not something that is 
in our system of jurisprudence. And why the lack of due process in the 
proceedings below?
  I think, as we have explained, it is because this was a purely 
partisan impeachment from the start. It was purely partisan and purely 
political, and that is something that the Framers foresaw.
  I will point to one passage from Federalist No. 65. There are a 
number of different passages from that which have been cited over the 
course of the past week, but I don't think this one has. It is just 
after Hamilton points out--he warns--that an impeachment in the House 
could be the result of the ``persecution of an intemperate or designing 
majority in the House of Representatives.''
  Then he goes on: ``Though this latter supposition may seem harsh, and 
might not be likely often to be verified, yet it ought not to be 
forgotten that the demon of faction will, at certain seasons, extend 
his sceptre over all numerous bodies of men.''
  Now, that is very 18th century language. We don't talk about demons 
extending their scepters over men, but it is prescient nonetheless. We 
might not be comfortable with the terms, but it is accurate for what 
can happen, and that is what has happened in this impeachment.

  This was a purely partisan, political process. It was opposed 
bipartisanly in the House. It was done by a process that was not 
designed to persuade anyone or to get to the truth or to provide 
process and abide by past precedents. It was done to get it finished by 
Christmas, on a political timetable, and it is not something that this 
Chamber should condone. That in itself provides a sufficient and 
substantial reason for rejecting the Articles of Impeachment.
  Members of the Senate, it has been an honor to be able to address you 
over the past week and a half or 2 weeks, and I thank you for your 
attention.
  I yield to Mr. Sekulow.
  Mr. Counsel SEKULOW. Mr. Chief Justice, Majority Leader McConnell, 
Democratic Leader Schumer, House managers, I want to join my colleagues 
in thanking you for your patience over these 2 weeks.
  I want to focus on one last point. We believe that we have 
established overwhelmingly that both Articles of Impeachment have 
failed to allege impeachable offenses and that, therefore, both 
articles--I and II--must fail.
  This entire campaign of impeachment--that started from the very first 
day the President was inaugurated--is a partisan one, and it should 
never happen again. For 3 years, this push for impeachment came 
straight from the President's opponents, and when it finally reached a 
crescendo, it put this body--the U.S. Senate--into a horrible position.
  I want to start by taking a look back.
  On the screen is a graphic of a Washington Post headline on January 
20, 2017: ``The Campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.'' This 
was posted 19 minutes after he was sworn in.
  I also want to play a video in which Members, as early as January 15, 
2017--before the President was sworn into office--were calling for his 
impeachment.
  (Text of Videotape presentation:)

       Mr. RASKIN. Let me say this for Donald Trump, whom I may 
     well be voting to impeach.
       Mr. ELLISON. I think that Donald Trump has already done a 
     number of things which have legitimately raised a question of 
     impeachment.
       Ms. WATERS. And I will fight every day until he is 
     impeached.
       Mr. GREEN of Texas. I rise today, Mr. Speaker, to call for 
     the impeachment of the President of the United States of 
     America.
       Mr. COHEN. The main reason I'm interested is not so much to 
     win the Senate, which is a byproduct, but it's because I 
     think he has committed impeachable offenses.
       Mr. CASTRO of Texas. But if we get to that point, then, 
     yes, I think that's grounds to start impeachment.
       Mr. COHEN. So we're calling upon the House to begin 
     impeachment hearings immediately.
       Question. Why do you think specifically he should be 
     impeached?

[[Page S783]]

  

       Mr. ESPAILLAT. Well, there are five reasons why we think he 
     should be impeached.
       Question. On the impeachment of Donald Trump, how would you 
     vote?
       Ms. OMAR. I would vote yes.
       Ms. OCASIO-CORTEZ. I would vote to impeach.
       Ms. TLAIB. Because we're going to impeach the [bleep].
       Mr. SHERMAN. I introduced the Articles of Impeachment in 
     July of 2017. All I did yesterday was make sure that those 
     articles did not expire.
       Mr. GREEN of Texas. I am concerned that, if we don't 
     impeach this President, he will get reelected.
       Ms. WARREN. It is time to bring impeachment charges against 
     him.
       Mr. NADLER. My personal view is that he richly deserves 
     impeachment.

  Mr. Counsel SEKULOW. One of the Members of the House of 
Representatives said that we are bringing these Articles of Impeachment 
so he doesn't get elected again.
  Here we are, 10 months before an election, doing exactly what they 
predicted. The whistleblower's lawyer, Mr. Zaid, sent out a tweet on 
January 30, 2017.
  Let me put that up on the screen:

       The #coup has started. First of many steps. #rebellion. 
     #impeachment will follow ultimately.

  And here we are.
  What this body, what this Nation, and what this President have just 
endured--what the House managers have forced upon this great body--is 
unprecedented and unacceptable. This is exactly and precisely what the 
Founders feared. This was the first totally partisan Presidential 
impeachment in our Nation's history, and it should be our last.
  What the House Democrats have done to this Nation, to the 
Constitution, to the Office of the President, to the President himself, 
and to this body is outrageous. They have cheapened the awesome power 
of impeachment, and, unfortunately, of course, the country is not 
better for that.
  We urge this body to dispense with these partisan Articles of 
Impeachment for the sake of the Nation, for the sake of the 
Constitution.
  As we have demonstrably proved, the articles are flawed on their 
face. They were the product of a reckless impeachment inquiry that 
violated all notions of due process and fundamental fairness. Then 
incredibly--incredibly--when these articles were finally brought to 
this Chamber without a single Republican vote, the managers then 
claimed that now--now--they needed more process; that now they needed 
more witnesses; that all of the witnesses that they compiled and all of 
the testimony that you heard was not enough; that your job was to do 
their job--the one, frankly, they failed to do.
  We have already said, many times, the charges themselves do not 
allege a crime or a misdemeanor, let alone a high crime or a 
misdemeanor. There is nothing in the charges that could permit the 
removal of a duly elected President or warrant the negation of an 
election and the subversion of the American people's will. That should 
be whatever party you are affiliated with. You are being asked to do 
this when, tonight, the citizens of Iowa are going to be caucusing for 
the first caucus of the Presidential election season for the Democratic 
Party--tonight.
  I think there is one thing that is clear. The President has had a 
concern about other countries' carrying their fair share of burden of 
financial aid. No one can doubt--and I think we have clearly set 
forth--the issue of corruption in Ukraine.
  The President's and the administration's policy on evaluating foreign 
aid and the conditions upon which it is given have been clear. Mr. 
Purpura laid that out in great detail.
  The bottom line is that the President's opponents don't like the 
President, and they really don't like his policies. They objected to 
the fact that the President chose not to rely each and every time on 
the advice of some of his subordinates, even though he, not those 
unelected bureaucrats who work for him, were elected to office.
  The President, under our constitutional structure, is the one who 
decides our Nation's foreign policy. Here is a perfect example--the 
House managers brought this up frequently: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. 
He admitted on page 155 of his transcript testimony that he ``did not 
know if there was a crime or anything of that nature''--that is his 
quote--but that he ``had deep policy concerns.'' So there you have it. 
The real issue is policy disputes.
  Elections have consequences. We all know that. And if you do not like 
the policies of a particular administration or a particular candidate, 
you are free and welcome to vote for another candidate. But the answer 
is elections, not impeachment.
  To be clear, in our country, in the United States, the President, 
elected by the American people, is, in the words of the Supreme Court, 
``the sole organ of the federal government in the field of 
international relations'' and foreign policy for our government--no 
unelected bureaucrats, not unhappy Members of the House of 
Representatives. And however you were to define ``high crimes and 
misdemeanors,'' there is no definition that includes disagreeing with a 
policy decision as an acceptable ground for removal of a President of 
the United States. None.
  The first Article of Impeachment is, therefore, constitutionally 
invalid and should be immediately rejected by the Senate.
  Now, as to the second Article of Impeachment, President Trump in no 
way obstructed Congress. The President acted with extraordinary 
transparency by declassifying and releasing the transcript for the July 
25 call and the earlier call. It is that July 25 call which is 
purportedly at the heart of the Articles of Impeachment. He did so soon 
after the inquiry was announced.
  And despite the fact that privileges apply that could have been 
asserted, he released them anyway in order to facilitate the House's 
inquiry and cut through all of it--all of the hearsay, all of the 
histrionics--to get the transcript out.
  Now, I want to take a moment because my colleague Deputy White House 
Counsel Pat Philbin addressed this idea of privilege. I have heard over 
and over again--and you have, too--phrases like: coverup; that the 
assertion of a privilege is a coverup.
  Here is what the Supreme Court of the United States has said about 
privileges in a variety of contexts:

       To punish a person because he has done what the law allows 
     him to do is a due process violation of the [basic order]--
     the . . . basic sort, and for an agent of the state to pursue 
     a course of action whose objective is to penalize a person's 
     reliance on his constitutional rights is patently 
     unconstitutional.

  And how much more so when you are talking about the President of the 
United States.
  How about this? And this goes to the context of assertions of 
privilege and other constitutional privileges. The allegation has been 
that if you assert a privilege, you are assumed to be guilty. That has 
been the assertion.
  Why would you do that? We have explained at great length--and I do 
not want to go over that again--the importance of the executive 
privilege and what it means to separation of powers and the functioning 
of our government, but I will say this: As the Supreme Court has 
recognized in other contexts with other privileges, the privilege 
serves to protect the innocent who otherwise might be ensnared by 
ambiguous circumstances.
  In another Supreme Court case, Quinn v. The United States: ``The 
privilege, this Court has stated, was generally regarded then, as now, 
as a privilege of great value, a protection to the innocent . . . '' 
The opinion goes on to say that ``safeguard against heedless, unfounded 
or tyrannical prosecutions.''
  I traced for you, and I am not going to do it again, how all of this 
started all those years ago, 3 years ago--how all of this began. There 
is no point to go over that because that evidence is undisputed, and 
the FISA Court's most recent orders put that into fair play.
  We have talked about the fact that the House violated its own 
fundamental rules in a series of unlawful subpoenas. I won't go over 
that again. Mr. Philbin laid that out in great detail.
  But I do think it is important to note that, when seeking the advice 
of the President's closest advisers, despite the well-known, bipartisan 
guidance from the Department of Justice regarding immunity, the House 
managers act as if it does not exist. They sought testimony on matters 
from the executive branch's confidential, internal decision-making 
process on matters of foreign relations and national security, and that 
is when protections are at their highest level.

[[Page S784]]

  Let's not forget that the House barred the attendance of executive 
branch counsel at witness proceedings when executive branch members 
were being examined.
  Notwithstanding these substantial abuses of process, the executive 
branch responded to each and every subpoena and identified the specific 
deficiencies found in each. You cannot just remove constitutional 
violations by saying you didn't comply.
  You have heard that one recipient of a subpoena, and this is--in 
fact, we have talked about it a number of times, but I think as we wrap 
up, I think it is worth saying again.
  One subpoena recipient did seek a declaratory judgment as to the 
validity of the subpoena that he had received. It was set up to go to 
court. A judge was going to make a decision. The House withdrew the 
subpoena and mooted the recipient's case before the court could rule.
  Now, was that because they didn't like the judge that was selected? 
Was it because they didn't like the way the ruling was going to go? Was 
it they didn't mean to have that witness in the first place?
  Whatever the reason, there is one undisputed fact: As the case was in 
court, they mooted it out by removing the subpoena.
  The assertion of valid constitutional privileges cannot be an 
impeachable offense, and that is what article II is based on, the 
obstruction of Congress.
  For the sake of the Constitution, for the sake of the Office of the 
President, this body must stand as a steady bulwark against this 
reckless and dangerous proposition. It doesn't just affect this 
President; it affects every man or woman who occupies that high office.
  So as we said with the first Article of Impeachment, we believe the 
second Article of Impeachment is invalid and should also be rejected.
  In passing the first Article of Impeachment, the House attempted to 
usurp the President's constitutional power to determine policy, 
especially foreign policy.
  In passing the second Article of Impeachment, the House attempted to 
control the constitutional privileges and immunities of the executive 
branch--all of this while simultaneously disrespecting the Framers' 
system of checks and balances, which designate the judicial branch as 
the arbiter of interbranch disputes.
  By approving both articles, the House of Representatives violated our 
constitutional order, illegally abused our power of impeachment in 
order to obstruct the President's ability to faithfully execute the 
duties of his office.
  These articles fail on their face as they do not meet the 
constitutional standard for impeachable offenses. No amount of 
testimony could change that fact.
  We have already discussed some of the specifics. I think Alexander 
Hamilton has been quoted a lot, and there is a reason. What has 
occurred over the past 2 weeks--really, the past 3 months--is exactly 
what Alexander Hamilton and other Founders of our great country feared.
  I believe that Hamilton was prophetic in Federalist 65 when he warned 
how impeachment had the ability to ``agitate''--his words--``the 
passions of the whole community, and . . . divide it into parties more 
or less friendly or inimical to the accused.
  He warned that impeachment would ``connect itself with the pre-
existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, 
influence, and interest on one side or on the other.''
  He continued:

       The convention, it appears, thought the Senate--

  This body--

     [the] most fit depositary of this important trust. Those who 
     can best discern the intrinsic difficulty of the thing, will 
     be least hasty in condemning that opinion, and will be most 
     inclined to allow due weight to the arguments which may be 
     supposed to have produced it.

  In the same Federalist 65, Hamilton regarded the Members of this 
Senate not only as the inquisitors for the Nation but as the 
representatives of the Nation as a whole.
  He said these words:

       Where else than in the Senate could have been found a 
     tribunal sufficiently dignified or significantly independent? 
     What other body would be likely to feel confident 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.

  You took an oath. They questioned the oath. You are sitting here as 
the trier of fact. They said the Senate is on trial.
  Based on all of the presentations that we made in our trial brief, in 
the arguments that we have put forward today, again, we believe both 
articles should be immediately rejected.
  Now, our Nation's representatives holding office in this great body 
must unite today to protect our Constitution and the separation of 
powers. And, you know, there was a time, not that long ago, even within 
this administration, where bipartisan agreements could be reached to 
serve the interests of the American people.
  Take a listen to this.
  (Text of Videotape presentation:)

       Senator MARKEY. Today we had a beautiful, bipartisan moment 
     where Democrats and Republicans, working together, to keep 
     that fentanyl out of our country, to use these devices to 
     accomplish that goal. It is not perfect. We need to do a lot 
     more, but today was a very good start, and I want to praise 
     all of the people--Democrats and Republicans and the 
     President--for working together on this bill.
       Senator SHAHEEN. As has been said, and we can see by the 
     people assembled here, if we work together in a bipartisan 
     way, we can get things done. This is a place where we can all 
     agree that we've got to do more and where we can work 
     together. So I applaud everyone's efforts.
       President TRUMP. We are proudly joined today by so many 
     Members of Congress--Republicans, Democrats--who worked very, 
     very hard on this bill. This was really an effort of 
     everybody. It was a bipartisan success--something you don't 
     hear too much about, but I think you will be. I actually 
     believe we may be--will be over the coming period of time. I 
     hope so. I think so. It is so good for the country.
       President TRUMP. Thank you, everybody. This was an 
     incredible bipartisan support. We passed this in the Senate 
     87 to 12. That's unheard of. And then in the House we passed 
     it 358 to 36.
       Senator COONS. . . . be here to help celebrate your signing 
     of this next step in the critical Women's Global and 
     Prosperity Development Initiative. It dovetails nicely with 
     the bill--the bipartisan bill you signed into law with the 
     WEEE Act, which recognizes this as a critical strategy. So I 
     think this is a tremendous initiative. Thank you, Mr. Trump.
       President TRUMP. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

  Mr. Counsel SEKULOW. This is what the American people expect.
  I simply ask this body to stand firm today to protect the integrity 
of the U.S. Senate, stand firm today to protect the Office of the 
President, stand firm today to protect the Constitution, stand firm 
today to protect the will of the American people and their vote, stand 
firm today to protect our Nation.
  And I ask that this partisan impeachment come to an end to restore 
our constitutional balance, for that is, in my view and in our view, 
what justice demands and the Constitution requires.
  With that, Mr. Chief Justice, I yield my time to the White House 
Counsel, Mr. Pat Cipollone.
  Mr. Counsel CIPOLLONE. Thank you, Mr. Chief Justice. Thank you, 
Members of the Senate.
  I will leave you with just a few brief points:
  First, I want to express on behalf of our entire team our gratitude--
our gratitude to you, Mr. Chief Justice, for presiding over this trial; 
our gratitude to you, Leader McConnell; our gratitude to you, 
Democratic Leader Schumer; and all of you on both sides of the aisle 
for your time and attention.
  I also want to express my gratitude to our team. It is large, and 
with the large number of people who have helped in this effort--I won't 
name them all--but I want to thank them for their effort and their hard 
work in the defense of the Constitution, in defense of the President, 
in defense of the American people's right to vote. I want to thank, as 
Members of that team, the Republican Members of the House of 
Representatives who have also been engaged in that effort throughout 
this entire period of time and the Democrats in the House who voted 
against this partisan impeachment. I also want to thank the President 
of the United States for his confidence in us to send us here to 
represent him to all of you in this great body and for all he has done 
on behalf of the American people.

  I would make just a couple of additional points. No. 1, as we have 
said repeatedly, we have never been in a situation like this in our 
history. We have

[[Page S785]]

an impeachment that is purely partisan and political. It is opposed by 
bipartisan Members of the House. It does not even allege a violation of 
law. It is passed in an election year, and we are sitting here on the 
day that election season begins in Iowa. It is wrong. There is only one 
answer to that, and the answer is to reject those Articles of 
Impeachment, to have confidence in the American people, to have 
confidence in the result of the upcoming election, to have confidence 
and respect for the last election and not throw it out and to leave the 
choice of the President to the American people and to leave to them 
also the accountability to the Members of the House of Representatives 
who did that. That is what the Constitution requires, and I think that 
should be done on a bipartisan basis, and that is what I ask you to do.
  Point No. 2: I believe the American people are tired of the endless 
investigations and false investigations that have been coming out of 
the House from the beginning, as my colleague Mr. Sekulow pointed out. 
It is a waste of tax dollars. It is a waste of the American people's 
time and, I would argue, more importantly--most importantly--the 
opportunity cost of that--the opportunity cost of that--what you could 
be doing, what the House could be doing. Working with the President to 
achieve those things on behalf of the American people is far more 
important than the endless investigations, the endless false attacks, 
the besmirching of the names of good people. This is something we 
should reject together, and we should move forward in a bipartisan 
fashion and in a way that this President has done successfully.
  He has achieved successful results in the economy and across so many 
other areas, working with you on both sides of the aisle, and he wants 
to continue to do that. That is what I believe the American people want 
those of you elected to come here to Washington to focus on, to spend 
your time on--to unify us, as opposed to the bitter division that is 
caused by these types of proceedings.
  So at the end of the day, we put our faith in the Senate. We put our 
faith in the Senate because we know you will put your faith in the 
American people. You will leave this choice to them, where it belongs. 
We believe that they should choose the President. We believe that this 
President, day after day, has put their interests first, has achieved 
successful results, has fulfilled the promises he made to them, and he 
is eager to go before the American people in this upcoming election.
  At the end of the day, that is the only result; it is a result, I 
believe, guided by your wise words from the past that we can, together, 
end the era of impeachment; that we can, together, put faith in the 
American people, put faith in their wisdom, put faith in their 
judgment. That is where our Founders put the power. That is where it 
belongs.
  I urge you, on behalf of those Americans--of every American--on 
behalf of all of your constituents, to reject these Articles of 
Impeachment. It is the right thing for our country. The President has 
done nothing wrong, and these types of impeachments must end.
  You will vindicate the right to vote, you will vindicate the 
Constitution, you will vindicate the rule of law by rejecting these 
articles. I ask you to do that on a bipartisan basis this week and end 
the era of impeachment once and for all.
  I thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to us, for your 
attention, and for considering our case on behalf of the President.
  I come here today to ask you to reject these Articles of Impeachment. 
Reject these Articles of Impeachment.
  Thank you for granting us the permission to appear here at the Senate 
on behalf of this President, and I ask you on his behalf, on behalf of 
the American people to reject these articles.
  Thank you.
  Ms. Manager LOFGREN. Mr. Chief Justice and Senators, it is a problem 
that here at the end of the trial the President's lawyers still dispute 
the meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors. Some say it requires an 
ordinary crime or that if the President misbehaves when he thinks it is 
good for the country, it is OK. Neither is correct. We need to clear 
this up by looking at what the Founders said.
  When the Founders created the Presidency, they gave the President 
great power. They had just been through a war to get rid of a King with 
too much power, and they needed a check on the great power given to the 
President. It was late in the Constitutional Convention that they 
turned to the impeachment clause. Madison argued in favor of 
impeachment. He said it was indispensable.
  Mason asked:

       Shall any man be above Justice? Above all shall that man be 
     above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?
  Randolph defended ``the propriety of impeachments,'' saying: ``The 
Executive will have great opportunitys of abusing his power.''
  The initial draft of the Constitution provided for impeachment only 
for treason or bribery. Mason asked:

       Why is the provision restrained to Treason & bribery only? 
     Treason as defined in the Constitution will not reach many 
     great and dangerous offences.

  And he added:

       Hastings is not guilty of Treason. Attempts to subvert the 
     Constitution may not be Treason as . . . defined.

  Now Hastings' impeachment in Britain at this time was well known, and 
it wasn't limited to a crime.
  They considered adding the word ``maladministration'' to capture 
abuse of Presidential power, but Madison objected. He said: ``So a 
vague a term would be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the 
Senate.'' So maladministration was withdrawn and replaced with the more 
certain term ``high Crimes and Misdemeanors'' because the Founders knew 
the law.
  Blackstone's Commentary, which Madison said was ``a book in every 
man's hand,'' described high crimes and misdemeanors as offenses 
against King and government.
  Hamilton called high crimes and misdemeanors ``those offenses which 
proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the 
abuse or violation of some public trust.''
  During ratification, Randolph in Virginia cited the President's 
receipt of presents or emoluments from a foreign power as an example. 
And Mason's example was a President who may ``pardon crimes which were 
advised by himself,'' or before indictment or conviction to ``stop 
inquiry and prevent detection.'' It is clear. They knew what they 
wrote.
  The President's lawyers tried to create a muddle to confuse you. 
Don't let them. High crimes and misdemeanors mean abuse of power 
against the constitutional order, conduct that is corrupt, whether or 
not a crime.
  Now some say: No impeachment when there is an election coming. But 
without term limits when they wrote the Constitution, there was always 
an election coming. If impeachment in election years was not to be, our 
Founders would have said so.
  So here we are: Congress passed a law to fund Ukraine to fight the 
Russians who invaded their country. President Trump illegally held that 
funding up to coerce Ukraine to announce an investigation to hurt his 
strongest election opponent. He abused his power corruptly to benefit 
himself personally, and then he tried to cover it up. That is 
impeachable.
  The facts are clear, and so is the Constitution. The only question is 
what you, the Senate, will do.
  Our Founders created a government where the tension between the three 
branches would prevent authoritarianism; no one of the branches would 
be allowed to grab all the power. Impeachment was to make sure that the 
President, who has the greatest opportunity to grab power, would be 
held in check. It is a blunt instrument, but it is what our Founders 
gave us.
  Some of the Founders thought the mere existence of an impeachment 
clause would prevent misconduct by Presidents, but, sadly, they were 
wrong because twice in the last half century a President tried to 
corruptly use his power to cheat in an election--first, Nixon with 
Watergate, and now another President corruptly abuses his power to 
cheat in an election.
  The Founders worried about factions--what we call political parties. 
They built a system where each branch of government would jealously 
guard their power, not one where guarding a faction was more important 
than guarding the government.

[[Page S786]]

  Opposing a President of your own party isn't easy. It wasn't easy 
when Republican Caldwell Butler voted to impeach Nixon in the Judiciary 
Committee. It wasn't easy for Senator Barry Goldwater to tell Nixon to 
resign. But your oath is not to do the easy thing; it is to do 
impartial justice. It requires conviction and removal of President 
Trump.
  Ms. Manager GARCIA of Texas. Mr. Chief Justice, counsel for the 
President, Senators, since I was a little girl and started going to 
church, I have been inspired by the words of scripture: ``[W]hatever 
you did for one of the least of my brothers . . . you did for me.''
  We are called to always look out for the most vulnerable. Sometimes 
fighting for the most vulnerable means holding the most powerful 
accountable, and that is what we are here to do today.
  The American people will have to live with the decisions made in this 
Chamber. In fact, Senators, I believe that the decision in this case 
will affect the strength of democracies around the world.
  Democracy is a gift that each generation gives to the next one. If we 
say that this President can put his own interests above all else, even 
when lives are at stake, then we give our Nation's children a weaker 
democracy than we inherited from those that came before us. The next 
generation deserves better. They are counting on us.
  I am a Catholic, and my faith teaches me that we all need 
forgiveness. I have given this President the benefit of the doubt from 
the beginning. Despite my strong opposition to so many of his policies, 
I know that the success of our Nation depends on the success of our 
leader. But he has let us down.
  Senators, we know what the President did and why he did it. This fact 
is seriously not in doubt. Senators on both sides of the aisle have 
said as much. The question for you now is, does it warrant removal from 
office? We say yes.
  We cannot simply hope that this President will realize that he has 
done wrong or was inappropriate and hope that he does better. We have 
done that so many other times. We know that he has not apologized. He 
has not offered to change. We all know that he will do it again.
  What President Trump did this time pierces the heart of who we are as 
a country. We must stop him from further harming our democracy. We must 
stop him from further betraying his oath. We must stop him from tearing 
up our Constitution.
  The Founders knew that in order for our Republic to survive, we would 
need to be able to remove some of our leaders from office when they put 
their interests above the country's interests. Senators, we have proven 
that. This President committed what is called the ABC's of impeachable 
behavior--abusing his power, betraying the Nation, and corrupting our 
elections. He deserves to be removed for taking the very actions that 
the Framers feared would undermine our country. The Framers designed 
impeachment for this very case.

  Senators, when I was growing up poor in South Texas, picking cotton, 
I confess I didn't spend any time thinking about the Framers. Like me, 
little girls and boys across America aren't asking at home what the 
Framers meant by high crimes and misdemeanors, but, someday, they will 
ask why we didn't do anything to stop this President, who put his own 
interest above what was good for all of us. They will ask. They will 
want to understand.
  Senators, we inherited a democracy. Now we must protect it and pass 
it on to the next generation. We simply can't give our children a 
democracy if a President is above the law, because in this country no 
one is above the law--not me, not any of you, not even this President.
  (English translation of statement made in Spanish is as follows:)
  Nobody is above the law--nobody.
  This President must be removed. With that, I yield to my colleague 
Mr. Crow.
  Mr. Manager CROW. Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the Senate, 2 weeks 
ago we started this trial promising to show you that the President 
withheld $391 million of foreign military aid to force an ally at war 
to help him win the 2020 election. And by many of your own admissions, 
we succeeded in showing you that, because the facts still matter.
  We also promised you that, eventually, all of the facts would come 
out, and that continues to be true. But we didn't just show you that 
the President abused his power and obstructed Congress. We painted a 
broader picture of President Trump--a picture of a man who thinks that 
the Constitution doesn't serve as a check on his power, but, rather, 
gives it to him in an unlimited way; a man who believes that his 
personal ambitions are synonymous with the good of the country; a man 
who, in his own words, thinks that if you are a star, they will let you 
do anything. In short, it is a picture of a man who will always put his 
own personal interests above the interests of the country that he has 
sworn to protect.
  But what is in an oath, anyway? Are they relics of the past? Do we 
simply recite them out of custom? To me, an oath represents a firm 
commitment to a life of service, a commitment to set aside your 
personal interest, your comfort, and your ambition to serve the greater 
good, and a commitment to sacrifice.
  I explained to you last week that I believe America is great not 
because of the ambition of any one man, not simply because we say it is 
true but because of our almost 250-year history. Millions of Americans 
have taken the oath, and they meant it. Many of them followed through 
on that oath by giving everything to keep it.
  But there is more to it than simply keeping your word, because an 
oath is also a bond between people who have made a common promise. 
Perhaps the strongest example is the promise between the Commander in 
Chief and our men and women in uniform. Those men and women took their 
oath with the understanding that the Commander in Chief, our President, 
will always put the interests of the country and their interests above 
his own, and understanding that his orders will be in the best interest 
of the country, and that their sacrifice in fulfilling those orders 
will always serve the common good.
  But what we have clearly shown in the last few weeks and what 
President Trump has shown us the past few years is that this promise 
flows only one way. As Maya Angelou said, ``When someone shows you who 
they are, believe them the first time.''
  Many of us in this room are parents. We all try to teach our kids the 
important lessons of life. One of those lessons is that you won't 
always be the strongest, you won't always be the fastest, and you won't 
always win. There are a lot of things outside our control, but my wife 
and I have tried to teach our kids that what we can always control are 
our choices.
  It is in that spirit that hanging in my son's room is a quote from 
Harry Potter. The quote is from Professor Dumbledore, who said: ``It is 
our choices . . . that show what we truly are, far more than our 
abilities.''
  This trial will soon be over, but there will be many choices for all 
of us in the days ahead, the most pressing of which is how each of us 
will decide to fulfill our oath. More than our words, our choices will 
show the world who we really are, what type of leaders we will be, and 
what type of Nation we will be.
  So let me finish where I began, with an explanation of why I am here 
standing before you. I have been carrying my kids' Constitutions these 
last few weeks, and this morning I wrote a note to them to explain why 
I am here:

       Our Founders recognized the failings of all people. So they 
     designed a system to ensure that the ideas and principles 
     contained in this document would always be greater than any 
     one person. It is the idea that no one is above the law. But 
     our system only works if people stand up and fight for it, 
     and fighting for something important always comes with a 
     cost.
       Some day you may be called upon to defend the principles 
     and ideas embodied in our Constitution. May the memory and 
     spirit of those who sacrificed for them in the past guide you 
     and give you strength as you fight for them in the future.

  Thank you for your time.
  Mrs. Manager DEMINGS. Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, and counsel for 
the President, this is a defining moment in our history and a 
challenging time for our Nation. A thousand things have gone through my 
mind since this body voted to not call witnesses in this trial. The 
vote was unprecedented. The

[[Page S787]]

President's former National Security Advisor indicated that he was 
willing to testify under oath before the Senate. Yet this body did not 
want to hear what he had to say.
  The President's lawyers have asked you to not believe your lying eyes 
and ears, to reinterpret the Constitution, and to believe that if the 
President thinks his reelection is in our national interest, then he 
can do whatever he wants--anything--to make it happen. And that is 
exactly what he was attempting to do--anything--when he illegally held 
much needed military aid while pressuring Ukraine's President to 
announce bogus investigations into his most feared political rival.
  This trial is about abuse of power, obstruction, breaking the law, 
and our system of checks and balances, and since we are talking about 
the President of the United States, this trial is also most certainly 
about character.
  I am reminded today, Senators, of my own father. He worked more than 
one job. He didn't have a famous last name. His name appeared on no 
building, but my father was rich in something no money and, apparently, 
no powerful position can buy. You see, my father was a man who was 
decent, honest, a man of integrity, and he was a man of good, moral 
character. The President's lawyer never spoke about the President's 
character during this trial, and I find that quite telling.
  I joined the police department because I wanted to make a difference, 
and I believe I did. As a police chief, I was always concerned about 
the message we were sending inside the agency, especially to young 
recruits, especially to newly hired dedicated police officers. We had 
to be careful about just how we were defining what was acceptable and 
unacceptable behavior inside the department and out in the community. 
Yes, people make mistakes. Yes, individuals make mistakes. But we had 
to be clear about the culture inside the organization, and we had to 
send a strong message that the police department was not a place where 
corruption could reside, where corruption was normalized, and where 
corruption was covered up.
  Today, unfortunately, I believe we are holding young police recruits 
to a higher standard than we are the leader of the free world. If this 
body fails to hold this President accountable, you must ask yourselves: 
What kind of Republic will we ultimately have with a President who 
thinks that he can really truly do whatever he wants? You will send a 
terrible message to the Nation that one can get away with abuse of 
power, obstruction, cheating, and spreading false narratives if you 
simply know the right people.
  Well, today, Senators, I reject that because we are a nation of laws. 
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States said this: 
``America will never be destroyed from outside. If we falter and lose 
our freedoms, it will be because we chose to destroy ourselves.''
  I urge you, Senators, to vote to convict and remove this President. 
Thank you so much for your time.
  Mr. Manager JEFFRIES. Mr. Chief Justice, distinguished Members of the 
Senate, President's counsel, I mentioned on the floor last week that 
Alexander Hamilton has played a starring role during this impeachment 
trial. But Ben Franklin has only made a cameo appearance, but that 
cameo appearance was an important one, when he made the observation, in 
the aftermath of that convention in 1787, that the Framers of the 
Constitution had created ``a Republic, if you can keep it.''
  Why would Dr. Franklin express ambiguity about the future of America 
during such a triumphant moment? Perhaps it was because the system of 
government that was created at that convention--checks and balances, 
separate and coequal branches of government, the independent judiciary, 
the free and fair press, the preeminence of the rule of law--all of 
those values, all of those ideas, all of those institutions have never 
before been put together in one form of government. So perhaps it was 
uncertain as to whether America could sustain them.
  But part of the brilliance of our great country is that year after 
year, decade after decade, century after century, we have held this 
democracy thing together. But now all of those ideas, all of those 
values, all of those institutions are under assault, not from without 
but from within. We created ``a Republic, if you can keep it.''
  House managers have proven our case against President Trump with a 
mountain of evidence. President Trump tried to cheat, he got caught, 
and then he worked hard to cover it up.
  President Trump corruptly abused his power. President Trump 
obstructed a congressionally and constitutionally required impeachment 
inquiry with blanket defiance. President Trump solicited foreign 
interference in an American election and shredded the very fabric of 
our democracy. House managers have proven our case against President 
Trump with a mountain of evidence.
  If the Senate chooses to acquit under these circumstances, then 
America is in the wilderness.
  If the Senate chooses to normalize lawlessness, if the Senate chooses 
to normalize corruption, if the Senate chooses to normalize 
Presidential abuse of power, then America is in the wilderness.
  If the Senate chooses to acquit President Trump without issuing a 
single subpoena, without interviewing a single witness, without 
reviewing a single new document, then America is truly in the 
wilderness.
  But all is not lost. Even at this late hour, the Senate can still do 
the right thing. America is watching. The world is watching. The eyes 
of history are watching. The Senate can still do the right thing.
  Scripture says--Second Corinthians, the fifth chapter and the seventh 
verse, encourages us to walk by faith, not by sight. Faith is the 
substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We have 
come this far by faith.
  And so I say to all of you, my fellow Americans, walk by faith. 
Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, the left and 
the right, all points in between, walk by faith. There are patriots all 
throughout the Chamber, patriots who can be found all throughout the 
land--in urban America, rural America, suburban America, smalltown 
America. Walk by faith. Through the ups and the downs, the highs and 
the lows, the peaks and the valleys, the trials and the tribulations of 
this turbulent moment, walk by faith--faith in the Constitution; faith 
in our democracy; faith in the rule of law; faith in government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people; faith in almighty God. Walk 
by faith.
  The Senate can still do the right thing. And if we come together as 
Americans, then together we can eradicate the cancer that threatens our 
democracy and continue our long, necessary, and majestic march toward a 
more perfect union.
  Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Mr. Chief Justice, I want to begin by thanking 
you for the distinguished way you have presided over these proceedings.
  Senators, we are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. If 
Lincoln could speak these words during the Civil War, surely we can 
live them now and overcome our divisions and our animosities.
  It is midnight in Washington. The lights are finally going out in the 
Capitol after a long day in the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. 
The Senate heard arguments only hours earlier on whether to call 
witnesses and require the administration to release documents it has 
withheld. Counsel for the President still maintains the President's 
innocence, while opposing any additional evidence that would prove 
otherwise.
  It is midnight in Washington, but on this night, not all the lights 
have been extinguished. Somewhere in the bowels of the Justice 
Department--Donald Trump's Justice Department--a light remains on. 
Someone has waited until the country is asleep to hit ``Send,'' to 
inform the court in a filing due that day that the Justice Department--
the Department that would represent justice--is refusing to produce 
documents directly bearing on the President's decision to withhold 
military aid from Ukraine. The Trump administration has them, it is not 
turning them over, and it does not want the Senate to know until it is 
too late. Send.
  That is what happened last Friday night. When you left home for the 
weekend, in a replay of the duplicity we saw during the trial when the 
President's lawyers argued here that the House must go to court and 
argued in court that the House must come here,

[[Page S788]]

they were at it again, telling the court in a midnight filing that they 
would not turn over relevant documents even as they argued here that 
they were not covering up the President's misdeeds.
  Midnight in Washington. All too tragic. A metaphor for where the 
country finds itself at the conclusion of only the third impeachment in 
history and the first impeachment trial without witnesses or documents, 
the first such trial--or nontrial--in impeachment history.
  How did we get here? In the beginning of this proceeding, you did not 
know whether we could prove our case. Many Senators, like many 
Americans, did not have the opportunity to watch much, let alone all, 
of the opening hearings in the House during our investigation, and none 
of us could anticipate what defenses the President might offer.
  Now you have seen what we promised: overwhelming evidence of the 
President's guilt. Donald John Trump withheld hundreds of millions of 
dollars from an ally at war and a coveted White House meeting with 
their President to coerce or extort that nation's help to cheat in our 
elections. And when he was found out, he engaged in the most 
comprehensive effort to cover up his misconduct in the history of 
Presidential impeachment: fighting all subpoenas for documents and 
witnesses and using his own obstruction as a sword and a shield; 
arguing here that the House did not fight hard enough to overcome their 
noninvocation of privilege in court, and in court that the House must 
not be heard to enforce their subpoenas but that impeachment is a 
proper remedy.
  Having failed to persuade the Senate or the public that there was no 
quid pro quo, having offered no evidence to contradict the record, the 
President's team opted, in a kind of desperation, for a different kind 
of defense: first, prevent the Senate and the public from hearing from 
witnesses with the most damning accounts of the President's misconduct, 
and second, fall back on a theory of Presidential power so broad and 
unaccountable that it would allow any occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania to 
be as corrupt as he chooses, while the Congress is powerless to do 
anything about it. That defense collapsed of its own dead weight.

  Presidents may abuse their power with impunity, they argued. Abuse of 
power is not a constitutional crime, they claimed. Only statutory crime 
is a constitutional crime, even though there were no statutory crimes 
when the Constitution was adopted. The President had to look far and 
wide to find a defense lawyer to make such an argument, unsupported by 
history, the Founders, or common sense. The Republican expert witness 
in the House would not make it. Serious constitutional scholars would 
not make it. Even Alan Dershowitz would not make it--at least he 
wouldn't in 1998. But this has become the President's defense. Yet this 
defense proved indefensible.
  If abuse of power is not impeachable--even though it is clear the 
Founders considered it the highest of all high crimes and 
misdemeanors--but if it is not impeachable, then a whole range of 
utterly unacceptable conduct of the President's would now be beyond 
reach. Trump could offer Alaska to the Russians in exchange for support 
in the next election or decide to move to Mar-a-Lago permanently and 
let Jared Kushner run the country, delegating to him the decision 
whether to go to war. Because those things are not necessarily 
criminal, this argument would allow that he could not be impeached for 
such abuses of power.
  Of course, this would be absurd--more than absurd, it would be 
dangerous. So Mr. Dershowitz tried to embellish his legal creation and 
distinguish among those abuses of power which would be impeachable from 
those which wouldn't. Abuses of power that would help the President get 
elected were permissible and therefore unimpeachable, and only those 
for pecuniary gain were beyond the pale. Under this theory, as long as 
the President believed his reelection was in the public interest, he 
could do anything, and no quid pro quo was too corrupt, no damage to 
our national security too great. This was such an extreme view that 
even the President's other lawyers had to run away from it.
  So what are we left with? The House has proven the President's guilt. 
He tried to coerce an ally into helping him cheat by smearing his 
opponent. He betrayed our national security in order to do it when he 
withheld military aid to our ally and violated the law to do so. He 
covered it up, and he covers it up still. His continuing obstruction is 
a threat to the oversight and investigatory powers of the House and 
Senate and, if left unaddressed, would permanently and dangerously 
alter the balance of power.
  These undeniable facts require the President to retreat to his final 
defense. He is guilty as sin, but can't we just let the voters decide? 
He is guilty as sin, but why not let the voters clean up this mess? And 
here, to answer that question, we must look at the history of this 
Presidency and to the character of this President--or lack of 
character--and ask, can we be confident that he will not continue to 
try to cheat in that very election? Can we be confident that Americans 
and not foreign powers will get to decide and that the President will 
shun any further foreign interference in our democratic affairs? And 
the short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is, no, you can't. You 
can't trust this President to do the right thing, not for one minute, 
not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can't. 
He will not change, and you know it.
  In 2016, he invited foreign interference in our election. Hey, 
Russia, if you are listening, hack Hillary's emails, he said, and they 
did, immediately. And when the Russians starting dumping them before 
the election, he made use of them in every conceivable way, touting the 
filthy lucre at campaign stops more than 100 times.
  When he was investigated, he did everything he could to obstruct 
justice, going so far as to fire the FBI Director and try to fire the 
special counsel and ask the White House Counsel to lie on his behalf.
  During the same campaign, while telling the country he had no 
business dealings with Russia, he was continuing to actively pursue the 
most lucrative deal of his life--a Trump Tower in the heart of Moscow. 
Six close associates of the President's would be indicted or go to jail 
in connection with the President's campaign, Russia, and the effort to 
cover it up.
  On the day after that tragic chapter appeared to come to an end with 
Bob Mueller's testimony, Donald Trump was back on the phone, this time 
with another foreign power--Ukraine--and once again seeking foreign 
help with his election, only this time, he had the full powers of the 
Presidency at his disposal. This time, he could use coercion. This 
time, he could withhold aid from a nation whose soldiers were dying 
every week. This time, he believed he could do whatever he wanted under 
article II. And this time, when he was caught, he could make sure that 
the Justice Department would never investigate the matter, and they 
didn't.
  Donald Trump had no more Jeff Sessions; he had just the man he wanted 
in Bill Barr, a man whose view of the imperial Presidency--a Presidency 
in which the Department of Justice is little more than an extension of 
the White House Counsel--is to do the President's bidding. So Congress 
had to do the investigation itself, and just as before, he obstructed 
that investigation in every way.
  He has not changed. He will not change. He has made that clear 
himself without self-awareness or hesitation. A man without character 
or ethical compass will never find his way.
  Even as the most recent and most egregious misconduct was discovered, 
he was unapologetic, unrepentant, and more dangerous, undeterred. He 
continued pressing Ukraine to smear his rivals even as the 
investigation was underway.
  He invited new countries to get involved in the act, calling on China 
to do the same. His personal emissary, Rudy Giuliani, dispatched 
himself to Ukraine, trying to get further foreign interference in our 
election. The plot goes on; the scheming persists; and the danger will 
never recede. He has done it before. He will do it again. What are the 
odds, if left in office, that he will continue trying to cheat? I will 
tell you: 100 percent. Not 5, not 10 or even 50, but 100 percent.
  If you have found him guilty and you do not remove him from office, 
he will continue trying to cheat in the election until he succeeds. 
Then what shall

[[Page S789]]

you say? What shall you say if Russia again interferes in our election 
and Donald Trump does nothing but celebrates their efforts? What shall 
you say if Ukraine capitulates and announces investigations into the 
President's rivals?
  What shall you say in the future, when candidates compete for the 
allegiance of foreign powers in their elections, when they draft their 
platforms so to encourage foreign intervention in their campaign? 
Foreign nations, as the most super of super-PACs of them all, if not 
legal, somehow permissible because Donald Trump has made it so and we 
refused to do anything about it but wring our hands.
  They will hack your opponents' emails; they will mount a social media 
campaign to support you; they will announce investigations of your 
opponent to help you--and all for the asking. Leave Donald Trump in 
office after you have found him guilty, and this is the future that you 
will invite.
  Now, we have known since the day we brought these charges that the 
bar to conviction, requiring fully two-thirds of the Senate, may be 
prohibitively high. And yet, the alternative is a runaway Presidency 
and a nation whose elections are open to the highest bidder.
  So you might ask how--given the gravity of the President's 
misconduct, given the abundance of evidence of his guilt, given the 
acknowledgement by Senators in both parties of that guilt--how have we 
arrived here with so little common ground? Why was the Nixon 
impeachment bipartisan? Why was the Clinton impeachment much less so? 
And why is the gulf between the parties even greater today?
  It is not for the reason that the President's lawyers would have you 
believe. Although they have claimed many times, in many ways, that the 
process in the House was flawed because we did not allow the President 
to control it, it was, in reality, little different than the process in 
prior impeachments. The circumstances, of course, were different. The 
Watergate investigation began in the Senate and had progressed before 
it got moving in the House. And there, of course, much of the 
investigative work had been done by the special prosecutor, Leon 
Jaworski. In Clinton, there was likewise an independent counsel who 
conducted a multiyear investigation that started with a real estate 
deal in Arkansas and ended with a blue dress.
  Nixon and Clinton, of course, played no role in those investigations 
before they moved to the House Judiciary Committee. But to the degree 
you can compare the process when it got to the Judiciary Committee in 
either prior and recent impeachments, it was largely the same as we 
have here. The President had the right to call witnesses, to ask 
questions, and chose not to.
  The House majorities in Nixon and Clinton did not cede their subpoena 
power to their minorities, and neither did we here, although then, as 
now, we gave the minority the right to request subpoenas and to compel 
a vote, and they did.
  So the due process the House provided here was essentially the same 
and, in some ways, even greater. Nevertheless, the President's counsel 
hopes that, through sheer repetition, they can convert nontruth into 
truth. Do not let them.
  Every single court to hear Mr. Philbin's arguments has rejected them:
  The subpoenas are invalid--rejected by the McGahn court.
  They have absolute immunity--rejected by the McGahn court.
  Privilege may conceal crime or fraud--rejected by the court in Nixon.
  But if the process here was substantially the same, the facts of the 
President's misconduct were very different from one impeachment to the 
next. The Republican Party of Nixon's time broke into the DNC, and the 
President covered it up. Nixon, too, abused the power of his office to 
gain an unfair advantage over his opponent, but in Watergate he never 
sought to coerce a foreign power to aid his reelection, nor did he 
sacrifice our national security in such a palpable and destructive way 
as withholding aid from an ally at war. And he certainly did not engage 
in the wholesale obstruction of Congress or justice that we have seen 
this President commit.
  The facts of President Clinton's misconduct pale in comparison to 
Nixon and do not hold a candle to Donald Trump. Lying about an affair 
is morally wrong, and when under oath it is a crime, but it had nothing 
to do with his duties in office.
  The process being the same, the facts of President Trump's misconduct 
being far more destructive than either past President, what then 
accounts for the disparate result in bipartisan support for his 
removal? What has changed?
  The short answer is, we have changed. The Members of Congress have 
changed. For reasons as varied as the stars, the Members of this body 
and ours in the House are now far more accepting of the most serious 
misconduct of a President as long as it is a President of one's own 
party. And that is a trend most dangerous for our country.
  Fifty years ago, no lawyer representing the President would have ever 
made the outlandish argument that if the President believes his 
corruption will serve to get him reelected, whether it is by coercing 
an ally to help him cheat or in any other form, that he may not be 
impeached, that this is somehow a permissible use of his power.
  But here we are. The argument has been made, and some appear ready to 
accept it. And that is dangerous, for there is no limiting principle to 
that position.
  It must have come as a shock--a pleasant shock--to this President 
that our norms and institutions would prove to be so weak. The 
independence of the Justice Department and its formerly proud Office of 
Legal Counsel now are mere legal tools at the President's disposal to 
investigate enemies or churn out helpful opinions not worth the paper 
they are written on. The FBI painted by a President as corrupt and 
disloyal. The intelligence community not to be trusted against the good 
counsel of Vladimir Putin. The press portrayed as enemies of the 
people. The daily attacks on the guardrails of our democracy, so 
relentlessly assailed, have made us numb and blind to the consequences.
  Does none of that matter anymore if he is the President of our party?
  I hope and pray that we never have a President like Donald Trump in 
the Democratic Party, one who would betray the national interest and 
the country's security to help with his reelection. And I would hope to 
God that, if we did, we would impeach him, and Democrats would lead the 
way.
  But I suppose you never know just how difficult that is until you are 
confronted with it. But you, my friends, are confronted with it. You 
are confronted with that difficulty now, and you must not shrink from 
it.
  History will not be kind to Donald Trump--I think we all know that--
not because it will be written by Never Trumpers but because whenever 
we have departed from the values of our Nation, we have come to regret 
it, and that regret is written all over the pages of our history.
  If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to 
acquit, your name will be tied to his with a chord of steel and for all 
of history; but if you find the courage to stand up to him, to speak 
the awful truth to his rank falsehood, your place will be among the 
Davids who took on Goliath. If only you will say ``enough.''
  We revere the wisdom of our Founders and the insights they had into 
self-governance. We scour their words for hidden meaning and try to 
place ourselves in their shoes. But we have one advantage that the 
Founders did not. For all their genius, they could not see but opaquely 
into the future. We, on the other hand, have the advantage of time, of 
seeing how their great experiment in self-governance has progressed.
  When we look at the sweep of history, there are times when our Nation 
and the rest of the world have moved with a seemingly irresistible 
force in the direction of greater freedom: more freedom to speak and to 
assemble, to practice our faith and tolerate the faith of others, to 
love whom we would and choose love over hate--more free societies, 
walls tumbling down, nations reborn.
  But then, like a pendulum approaching the end of its arc, the outward 
movement begins to arrest. The golden globe of freedom reaches its 
zenith and starts to retreat. The pendulum swings back past the center 
and recedes into a dark unknown. How much farther will

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it travel in its illiberal direction, how many more freedoms will be 
extinguished before it turns back we cannot say. But what we do here, 
in this moment, will affect its course and its correction.
  Every single vote, even a single vote by a single Member, can change 
the course of history. It is said that a single man or a woman of 
courage makes a majority. Is there one among you who will say 
``enough''?
  America believes in a thing called truth. She does not believe we are 
entitled to our own alternate facts. She recoils at those who spread 
pernicious falsehoods. To her, truth matters. There is nothing more 
corrosive to a democracy than the idea that there is no truth.
  America also believes there is a difference between right and wrong, 
and right matters here. But there is more. Truth matters. Right 
matters. But so does decency. Decency matters.
  When the President smears a patriotic public servant like Marie 
Yovanovitch in pursuit of a corrupt aim, we recoil. When the President 
mocks the disabled, a war hero who was a prisoner of war, or a Gold 
Star father, we are appalled because decency matters here. And when the 
President tries to coerce an ally to help him cheat in our elections 
and then covers it up, we must say ``enough.'' Enough.
  He has betrayed our national security, and he will do so again. He 
has compromised our elections, and he will do so again. You will not 
change him. You cannot constrain him. He is who he is. Truth matters 
little to him. What is right matters even less. And decency matters not 
at all.
  I do not ask you to convict him because truth or right or decency 
matters nothing to him but because we have proven our case and it 
matters to you. Truth matters to you. Right matters to you. You are 
decent. He is not who you are.
  In Federalist 55, James Madison wrote that there were certain 
qualities in human nature--qualities I believe, like honesty, right, 
and decency--which should justify our confidence in self-government. He 
believed that we possessed sufficient virtue that the chains of 
despotism were not necessary to restrain ourselves ``from destroying 
and devouring one another.''
  It may be midnight in Washington, but the sun will rise again. I put 
my faith in the optimism of the Founders. You should too. They gave us 
the tools to do the job, a remedy as powerful as the evil it was meant 
to constrain: impeachment. They meant it to be used rarely, but they 
put it in the Constitution for a reason--for a man who would sell out 
his country for a political favor, for a man who would threaten the 
integrity of our elections, for a man who would invite foreign 
interference in our affairs, for a man who would undermine our national 
security and that of our allies--for a man like Donald J. Trump.
  They gave you a remedy, and they meant for you to use it. They gave 
you an oath, and they meant for you to observe it. We have proven 
Donald Trump guilty. Now do impartial justice and convict him.
  I yield back.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The majority leader is recognized.


                Adjournment of the Court of Impeachment

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. Chief Justice, I ask unanimous consent that the 
Senate, sitting as a Court of Impeachment, stand adjourned under the 
previous order.
  There being no objection, at 2:59 p.m., the Senate, sitting as a 
Court of Impeachment, adjourned.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The CHIEF JUSTICE. The clerk will call the role.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.

                          ____________________