[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 37 (Tuesday, February 25, 2020)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E209-E212]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




REFLECTIONS ON SENATE JUDGMENT NOT TO CONVICT AND REMOVE THE IMPEACHED 
        PRESIDENT FOR ABUSE OF POWER AND OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS

                                  _____
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 25, 2020

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, on Wednesday, February 5, 2020, the 
United States Senate determined not to convict and remove from office 
Donald John Trump, President of the United States, who was impeached by 
the House for high crimes and misdemeanors, a decision I firmly believe 
will be judged harshly by history for all time.
  I voted for the two articles of impeachment contained in H. Res. 755, 
the resolution of the House of Representatives and I rise to discuss in 
detail the overwhelming evidence assembled by the Committee on the 
Judiciary and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 
which clearly warranted the conclusion that the President abused the 
powers placed in him in trust by the Constitution and the American 
people by endeavoring to coerce a foreign government to announce a 
phony corruption investigation of his perceived chief election rival so 
he could remain in office and continue his misconduct.
  The President clearly abused his power by putting his personal 
interests above the national interest and jeopardizing the national 
security of the United States and, making it a perfect trifecta, 
enlisting the aid of a foreign power to sabotage the 2020 presidential 
election.
  When this scheme was discovered and made public, the President 
launched an all-out campaign to impede the ability of Congress to learn 
all the facts and hold the persons responsible accountable by 
dishonoring lawful subpoenas, refusing to provide requested 
information, and directing his subordinates in the Executive Branch not 
to testify or cooperate with Congress.
  The House impeachment managers proved these actions to the country 
and the world beyond dispute and clearly showed how the evidence 
warranted the President's conviction and removal by the Senate.
  Madam Speaker, it is beneficial to the public and for history to 
review the material facts that have led to where we are.
  In February 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, a stunning display of 
military aggression unseen since the end of World War II when the maps 
of post-war Europe were drawn.
  Five months later, on July 17, 2014, the Russia-backed Donbass 
People's Militia (DPM), an organization consisting of pro-Russian 
separatists who have taken up arms against the Ukrainian Armed Forces 
and the

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Government of Ukraine, shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, killing 
all 298 persons on board, including 80 children and 15 crew members.
  Presidential candidate Donald Trump would later dispute Russia's 
incursion into Ukraine in a nationally televised interview on July 31, 
2016, when he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin:

       He's not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. 
     He's not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it 
     down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want.

  In contrast, the United States, the European Union, and the 
international community, standing in solidarity with Ukraine, strongly 
condemned Russia's act of aggression and expelled it from membership in 
the G-8, the organization of the nation's eight richest, industrialized 
countries.
  In June 2016, at the Republican National Convention held in 
Cleveland, Ohio to nominate Donald Trump as its presidential candidate, 
the Platform Committee of the Republican Party made but a single change 
in the party's 2016 platform and that was to water down the platform to 
make the Republican Party more amenable and sympathetic to Russia and 
its interests in reestablishing dominance over Ukraine.
  In November 2016, Donald Trump was narrowly elected the 45th 
President of the United States, surprisingly winning the Electoral 
College 306-224, despite losing the national popular vote by a record 
2,833,220 votes to the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary 
Rodham Clinton, the former U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Senator 
from New York.
  On January 6, 2017, President-elect Donald John Trump was provided 
the unanimous assessment of the United States that concluded that 
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 
aimed at the U.S. presidential election in which Russia's goals were to 
undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate 
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the determined and 
resolute foe of Vladimir Putin, and facilitate the election of Vladimir 
Putin's preferred candidate, Donald John Trump.
  Russia's interference in the election processes of democratic 
countries is not new but a continuation of the ``Translator Project,'' 
an ongoing information warfare effort launched by Vladimir Putin in 
2014 to use social media to manipulate public opinion and voters in 
western democracies.
  Instead of supporting the unanimous assessment of the United States 
Intelligence Community, the President consistently attacked and sought 
to discredit and undermine the agencies and officials responsible for 
detecting and assessing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential 
election as well as those responsible for investigating and bringing to 
justice the conspirators who committed crimes against the United 
States.
  Between March 23, 2018 and February 15, 2019, the Congress 
appropriated $391 million in security assistance and foreign military 
financing support to Ukraine as follows: $26.5 million FMF funding on 
March 23, 2018; $250 million on September 28, 2018; and $115 million on 
February 15, 2019.
  As documented in the March 2019 Report On The Investigation Into 
Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election submitted by 
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the Trump presidential campaign 
benefited from Russia's ``sweeping and systematic'' interference in the 
2016 election through a sophisticated social media campaign coordinated 
by Russian intelligence officers and by releasing documents stolen from 
Democratic National Committee computers and the Clinton campaign.

  While the Special Counsel's report could not conclusively find 
evidence of a criminal conspiracy between entities or persons aligned 
with Russia and the Trump campaign, the report noted that the Special 
Counsel identified ten instances of unlawful conduct by the President 
that could constitute obstruction of justice but as an employee of the 
Justice Department the Special Counsel was bound to abide by the 
Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel 1974 Memorandum which 
prohibits charging a President with a crime while he is in office.
  On April 21, 2019, presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky was 
elected President of Ukraine, winning nearly 70 percent of the vote in 
the runoff election.
  On April 25, 2019, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., a distinguished 
former U.S. Senator and Vice-President of the United States under 
President Barack Obama, announced his candidacy for President of the 
United States.
  On May 6, 2019, the United States Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Louise 
Yovanovitch, was removed from her duty station and recalled to the 
United States, culminating a months-long smear campaign conceived and 
coordinated by Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of the City of New 
York, acting in his capacity as the current President's personal 
attorney.
  On May 9, 2019, the New York Times reported that Rudy Giuliani was 
planning to travel to Ukraine to prevail upon the new president of that 
country to launch an investigation into alleged corruption by former 
Vice-President Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and to ignore the widely 
debunked and discredited conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not 
Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election in ``sweeping 
and systematic fashion.''
  Four days later, on May 13, 2019, U.S. Attorney General William P. 
Barr announced that the U.S. Department of Justice was undertaking an 
investigation into the origins of interference in the 2016 election.
  Madam Speaker, it should be noted that the Trump Administration 
decision to shift responsibility for 2016 election interference from 
Russia to Ukraine is contrary to the assessment rendered unanimously by 
the U.S. Intelligence Community and furthers the `active measures' 
conspiracy theory hatched in Moscow by Russian President Vladimir Putin 
and the oligarchic regime governing the Russia Federation.
  In fact, a story published December 19, 2019 in the Washington Post, 
reports that senior advisors to the President believe he was influenced 
to perpetuate this crackpot conspiracy theory by Vladimir Putin.
  On May 20, 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was inaugurated as only the sixth 
democratically elected President of Ukraine but it was noteworthy that 
the American delegation attending the inauguration was not headed by 
Vice-President Mike Pence as originally scheduled but by U.S. Energy 
Secretary Rick Perry, who replaced the Vice-President at the 
President's direction and included lower-level functionaries Kurt 
Volker, Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations; Gordon 
Sondland, Ambassador to the European Union and a large donor to the 
Trump Inauguration Committee; and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, 
Director of European Affairs at the National Security Council.
  Two weeks later, in a nationally televised interview broadcast June 
13, 2019 on ABC News, the President stated that he would accept 
damaging information against an electoral rival from a foreign 
government, a position disowned in a public statement issued later that 
day by the Chair of the U.S. Federal Elections Commission, which 
reemphasized to all candidates and voters that accepting political help 
from a foreign government would be illegal and a violation of federal 
election law.
  On July 24, 2019, in testimony before the Committee on the Judiciary, 
on which I sit as the third senior member of the majority, Special 
Counsel Robert S. Mueller III affirmed the findings and conclusions in 
his voluminous report, including that the ``Russian government 
interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic 
fashion.''
  The very next day, on July 25, 2019, the President spoke with 
President Zelensky by telephone in a much-anticipated telephone 
conversation.
  In that call, President Zelensky advised the President that Ukraine 
was ready to purchase needed Javelin missiles from the United States to 
defend itself from ongoing armed aggression by Russia.
  In his immediate response to President Zelensky's request for 
military assistance, the President replied: ``I would like for you to 
do us a favor, though'' and announce the launch of a corruption 
investigation against his most feared and formidable electoral rival, 
former Vice-President Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and the alleged 
involvement of Ukraine in the 2016 election for President of the United 
States.
  The `favor' the President wished of the Ukraine President was to be 
performed not to further United States national security policy since 
the national security community was unanimous in its collective support 
of Ukraine in its struggle against Russian military encroachment but to 
benefit the President personally and politically in his capacity as a 
candidate for reelection to the office he currently occupies.
  On August 12, 2019, a whistleblower complaint was filed with the 
Inspector General of the Intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, who 
after receiving the complaint followed applicable procedure and 
notified in writing the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House 
Intelligence Committee that the whistleblower's complaint was `deemed 
credible' and ``related to one of the most important and significant of 
the [Director of National Intelligence]'s responsibilities to the 
American people.''
  On September 11, 2019, after many months, the White House's hold on 
needed military aid desperately needed by Ukraine was lifted as 
inexplicably and as swiftly as it was imposed.
  Indeed, the only material change in circumstances that had occurred 
between the imposition and lifting of the hold was the fact that the 
President and his Administration was now aware that Congress and the 
public had learned that congressionally appropriated security 
assistance to an ally under attack by our

[[Page E211]]

adversary was being withheld by the President for no apparent national 
security reason and that Congress had not been notified of the 
withholding by the Administration.
  In September 2019, Members of the House of Representatives were 
alerted to a complaint filed by a whistleblower within the Intelligence 
Community.
  The complaint alleged that on a July 25, 2019 call with the President 
of Ukraine, the President of the United States sought to withhold $391 
million in desperately needed foreign military aid to Ukraine unless 
and until it--either through procurement or manufacture--produced 
political dirt against former Vice-President Biden, who was perceived 
to pose the greatest threat to the current President's reelection in 
2020.

  On September 24, 2019, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the 
commencement of an impeachment inquiry.
  A key witness was Ambassador William Taylor, one of West Point's most 
distinguished alumna, a Vietnam combat veteran, and the former 
Ambassador and then charge d'affaires of the United States Embassy in 
Ukraine, who testified under oath that he told Gordon Sondland, our 
Ambassador to the European Union that it was ``crazy'' to withhold 
security assistance to Ukraine for a political campaign.
  Ambassador Taylor also testified that one of his staff members in the 
Embassy in Ukraine advised him on July 26, 2019, the day after the 
President's telephone call with President Zelensky, that he clearly 
overheard a conversation that day between Ambassador Sondland and the 
President in which the latter asked Ambassador Sondland whether 
President Zelensky was ``going to do the investigation.''
  That staffer, David Holmes, affirmed the correctness of Ambassador 
Taylor's account and went on to testify that in response to the 
President's question, Ambassador Sondland replied to the President that 
``[Zelensky] is going to do it'' and that President Zelensky ``will do 
anything you ask him to.''
  When Mr. Holmes asked Ambassador Sondland about the President's 
commitment to Ukraine, he testified that Ambassador Sondland replied 
that the President ``does not give a [expletive] about Ukraine and that 
the President only cares about big stuff . . . that benefits the 
President, like the Biden investigation, that Mr. Giuliani was 
pushing.''
  Indispensable to carrying out the plan to announce the launch of a 
phony corruption investigation into former Vice-President Biden was the 
removal of the then United States Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie 
Yovanovitch, the longest serving female member of the diplomatic corps, 
and an American diplomat with a demonstrated expertise and 
distinguished record of fighting corruption and leading Ukraine away 
from its notorious past when it was a satellite of the Soviet Union.
  So, led by Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal lawyer, a smear 
campaign was conducted against Ambassador Yovanovitch, accusing her 
falsely of impugning the President and allegedly abetting corruption in 
Ukraine.
  This led directly to the Ambassador being recalled from her duty 
station and referenced in the July 25, 2019 telephone call where the 
President stated to President Zelensky that ``[Ambassador Yovanovitch] 
from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was 
dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news'' and that ``she's going to 
go through some things.''
  David Hale, who as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs was 
the third ranking official in the State Department, testified that he 
witnessed the smear campaign against Ambassador Yovanovitch and urged 
his departmental superiors to place a full-page advertisement in local 
Ukrainian press in support of Ambassador Yovanovitch, but this 
suggestion was refused.
  In her appearance before the Intelligence Committee, Ambassador 
Yovanovitch testified that she was aghast that she was personally 
mentioned in a telephone call between the President and the President 
of Ukraine and stated that she felt threatened and intimidated when she 
heard the President remark that she was ``going to go through some 
things.''
  Ambassador Yovanovitch relived this fear in real time when she 
learned the President was live tweeting disparaging things about her as 
she testified, implying, for example, that she was somehow in part 
responsible for the 1993 situation in Mogadishu, Somalia.
  Three Administration officials with direct knowledge of the July 25, 
2019 telephone called testified under oath before the Intelligence 
Committee: Jennifer Williams, a State Department foreign service 
officer to the Office of Vice-President Mike Pence; and Lt. Col. 
Alexander Vindman, NSC Director of European Affairs, who was born in 
the Ukraine on the anniversary of D-Day, immigrated to the United 
States with his father and twin brother when he was three years old, 
was later commissioned an officer in the United States Army and 
deployed overseas to South Korea, Germany, and Iraq, where he was 
wounded in combat operations and awarded the Purple Heart.
  Ms. Williams characterized the President's conduct on the telephone 
call as ``unusual,'' inappropriate, and partisan in nature.
  Lt. Col. Vindman was gravely concerned because the President of the 
United States was requesting a foreign country to investigate an 
American citizen, an act so contrary to national policy and interest 
that he immediately reported the matter to a senior counsel lawyer on 
the National Security Council.
  The third person witnessing the call was Tim Morrison, who at the 
time of the July 25, 2019 telephone call was Senior Director for Europe 
and Russia on the National Security Council and a former Republican 
congressional professional staff member, who testified that the 
President's behavior on the telephone call gave him a ``sinking 
feeling'' because it could easily be characterized as pursuing partisan 
political interests.
  Mr. Morrison testified that he contacted NSC counsel and sought to 
have the record of the telephone call hidden on a secure server to 
avoid discovery by official Washington.
  The testimony of Gordon Sondland, appointed by the President as the 
Ambassador to the European Union and a million-dollar Trump donor, was 
chilling, especially his testimony that ``everyone was in the loop.''
  Ambassador Sondland testified that he communicated directly with the 
President who directed him to work on the Ukraine matter with Rudy 
Giuliani, who had no official role with the U.S. government.
  Ambassador Sondland stated under oath that Rudy Giuliani pressured 
the Ukraine government to investigate Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company 
that had Hunter Biden, the former vice-president's son as one of its 
board members.
  Further, Ambassador Sondland testified that the President conditioned 
a White House meeting with President Zelensky and the release of 
security assistance on his announcement of an investigation designed to 
blame any 2016 presidential election interference on Ukraine and thus 
undermine the unanimous assessment of the American Intelligence 
Community that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit 
candidate Trump and harm candidate Clinton.
  In addition, according to Ambassador Sondland, the highly sought and 
desired White House visit and security assistance was conditioned on 
the announcement by President Zelensky of an investigation into his 
perceived chief domestic political rival, former Vice-President Joseph 
R. Biden.
  It takes no great leap in logic to divine that the President's intent 
and purpose here was to replicate his 2016 campaign formula from 2016: 
invite foreign meddling, point to an investigation, and exploit it by 
rumor and innuendo on social media.
  Ambassador Sondland asked rhetorically, ``Was there a quid pro quo?'' 
and then said: ``As I testified previously, with regard to the 
requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is 
yes.''
  And according to Ambassador Sondland, ``[e]veryone was in the loop,'' 
including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; acting White House chief of 
staff Mick Mulvaney; Mulvaney's senior adviser, Rob Blair; Secretary 
Pompeo's counselor, Ulrich Brechbuehl; Lisa Kenna, the State Department 
executive secretary; National Security Advisor John Bolton, Trump's 
national security adviser at the time; Bolton's Deputy National 
Security Advisor Fiona Hill; and NRC senior official Timothy Morrison, 
and even Vice President Mike Pence who Ambassador Sondland testified he 
told in September 2019 that the Ukraine aid appeared to be stalled 
because of the demand for investigations.
  Finally, Dr. Fiona Hill, who preceded Tim Morrison in the Trump 
Administration as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia 
testified that after speaking with and listening to Ambassador Sondland 
she came to understand that United States policy for Ukraine had 
diverged into one track pursuing standard United States policy 
objectives of promoting democracy and the rule of law, fighting 
corruption, and protecting Ukraine from Russia; and another track 
solely concerned with achieving the more narrow personal and political 
goal of the President to prevail upon the new Ukrainian president to 
commit publicly to announcing an investigation of supposed interference 
by Ukraine in the 2016 presidential election as well as a manufactured 
wrongdoing by former Vice-President Joseph Biden.
  Dr. Hill testified that her direct supervisor, NSA Advisor John 
Bolton, characterized this second track as a ``drug deal'' which she 
stated to Ambassador Sondland that ``I do think this is all going to 
blow up. And here we are.''
  Madam Speaker, I will further discuss what message this evidence 
sends to us loud and clear.

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