[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 28 (Saturday, February 13, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S717-S733]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




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

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senate will begin as a Court of 
Impeachment.


                                 Prayer

  The Chaplain, Dr. Barry C. Black, offered the following prayer:
  Let us pray.
  O Lord, our God, yesterday this Chamber reverberated to a standing 
ovation for the courage of Officer Eugene Goodman in defending this 
building and human life. May our legislative jurors strive to emulate 
his courage in their defense of the United States Constitution. Lord, 
touch and move them to believe that the end does not justify the means. 
Help them to remember that the end is inherent and built into the 
means. Fill our Senators with the spirit that combines common sense 
with commitment, conscience, and courage.
  We pray in Your merciful Name. Amen.


                          Pledge of Allegiance

  The President pro tempore 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 PRESIDENT pro tempore. Senators, please be seated.
  If there is no objection, the Journal of proceedings of the trial are 
approved to date.
  And I would ask the Sergeant at Arms to make the proclamation.
  The Acting Sergeant at Arms, Jennifer A. Hemingway, made the 
proclamation as follows:

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

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 47, 
the Senate has provided up to 2 hours of argument by the parties, 
equally divided, on the question of whether or not it shall be in order 
to consider and debate under the impeachment rules any motion to 
subpoena witnesses or documents.
  Are both parties ready to proceed at this point?
  Mr. Counsel CASTOR. Yes, Mr. President.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. We have a motion.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. They may proceed.


                      Motion to Subpoena Witnesses

  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Good morning, Senators.
  Over the last several days, we have presented overwhelming evidence 
that establishes the charges in the Article of Impeachments. We have 
shown you how President Trump created a powder keg, lit a match, and 
then continued his incitement, even as he failed to defend us from the 
ensuing violence.
  We have supported our position with images, videos, affidavits, 
documents, tweets, and other evidence, leaving no doubt that the Senate 
should convict. We believe we have proven our case.
  But last night, Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington 
State issued a statement confirming that in the middle of the 
insurrection, when House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called the 
President to beg for help, President Trump responded:

       Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the 
     election than you are.

  Needless to say, this is an additional critical piece of 
corroborating evidence, further confirming the charges before you, as 
well as the President's willful dereliction of duty and desertion of 
duty as Commander in Chief of the United States, his state of mind, and 
his further incitement of the insurrection on January 6.
  For that reason, and because this is the proper time to do so under 
the resolution that the Senate adopted to set the rules for the trial, 
we would like the opportunity to subpoena Congresswoman Herrera 
regarding her communications with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy 
and to subpoena her contemporaneous notes that she made regarding what 
President Trump told Kevin McCarthy in the middle of the insurrection.
  We would be prepared to proceed by Zoom deposition of an hour or less 
just as soon as Congresswoman Herrera Beutler is available and to then 
proceed to the next phase of the trial, including the introduction of 
that testimony shortly thereafter.

[[Page S718]]

  Congresswoman Beutler further stated that she hopes other witnesses 
to this part of the story--other patriots, as she put it--would come 
forward. And if that happens, we would seek the opportunity to take 
their depositions via Zoom, also for less than an hour, or to subpoena 
other relevant documents as well
  Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. Mr. President, thank you.
  Senators, good morning, and good morning to the American people.
  The first thing I want to say on the issue of witnesses is that the 
House manager just got up here and described the Articles of 
Impeachment and the charges. There is no plural here. That is wrong. 
There is one Article of Impeachment, and there is one charge, and that 
is incitement of violence and insurrection.
  What you all need to know and the American people need to know is, as 
of late yesterday afternoon, there was a stipulation going around that 
there weren't going to be any witnesses. But after what happened here 
in this Chamber yesterday, the House managers realized they did not 
investigate this case before bringing the impeachment. They did not 
give the proper consideration and work. They didn't put the work in 
that was necessary to impeach the former President. But if they want to 
have witnesses, I am going to need at least over 100 depositions, not 
just 1.
  The real issue is incitement. They put into their case over 100 
witnesses, people who have been charged with crimes by the Federal 
Government, and each one of those, they said that Mr. Trump was a 
coconspirator with. That is not true, but I have the right to defend 
that.
  The only thing that I ask, if you vote for witnesses, do not handcuff 
me by limiting the number of witnesses that I can have. I need to do a 
thorough investigation that they did not do. I need to do the 911-style 
investigation that Nancy Pelosi called for. It should have been done 
already. It is a dereliction of the House managers' duty that they 
didn't.
  And now, at the last minute, after a stipulation had apparently been 
worked out, they want to go back on that. I think that is inappropriate 
and improper. We should close this case out today. We have each 
prepared our closing arguments. We each--I mean, I had 8 days to get 
ready for this thing, but we each had those 8 days equally, together, 
to prepare ourselves. And the House managers need to live with the case 
that they brought. But if they don't, please, in all fairness and in 
all due process, do not limit my ability to discover, discover, 
discover the truth. That would be another sham.
  And that is the President's position, my position.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Mr. President.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Mr. Raskin.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  First of all, this is the proper time that we were assigned to talk 
about witnesses. This is completely within the course of the rules set 
forth by the Senate. There is nothing remotely unusual about this.
  I think we have done an exceedingly thorough and comprehensive job 
with all the evidence that was available. Last night, this was breaking 
news, and it responded directly to a question that was being raised by 
the President's defense counsel, saying that we had not sufficiently 
proven to their satisfaction--although I think we have proven to the 
satisfaction of the American people, certainly--that the President, 
after the breach and invasion took place, was not working on the side 
of defending the Capitol but, rather, was continuing to pursue his 
political goals.
  And the information that came out last night by Congresswoman 
Beutler, apparently backed up by contemporaneous notes that she had 
taken, I think, will put to rest any lingering doubts raised by the 
President's counsel, who now says he wants to interview hundreds of 
people.
  There is only one person the President's counsel really needs to 
interview, and that is their own client, and bring him forward, as we 
suggested last week, because a lot of this is matters that are in his 
head. Why did he not act to defend the country after he learned of the 
attack? Why was he continuing to press the political case?
  But this piece of evidence is relevant to that.
  Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. If I may?
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Finally, I wasn't--I was a little bit mystified 
by the point about the Article of Impeachment, which I referred to. The 
dereliction of duty, the desertion of duty, is built into the 
incitement charge, obviously.
  If the President of the United States is out inciting a violent 
insurrection, he is, obviously, not doing his job at the same time. 
Just like, if a police officer is mugging you, yeah, he is guilty of 
theft and armed robbery, whatever it might be, but he is also not doing 
his job as a police officer. So it is further evidence of his intent 
and what his conduct is.
  Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. If I may?
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Counsel.
  Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. First of all, it is my understanding it has 
been reported that Mr. McCarthy disclaims the rumors that have been the 
basis of this morning's antics but, really, the rumors that have been 
the basis of this entire proceeding.
  This entire proceeding is based on rumor, report, innuendo. There is 
nothing to it, and they didn't do their work.
  Just like what happened with Mr. Lee 2 or 3 nights ago, some supposed 
conversation that happened, and they had to withdraw that. They had to 
back off of that because it was false. It was a false narrative.
  But it is one Article of Impeachment. Yeah, they threw a lot of stuff 
in it in violation of rule XXIII. Rule XXIII says you cannot combine 
counts. It is a defect in their entire case. It is one of the four 
reasons why you can vote to acquit in this case: jurisdiction, rule 
XXIII, due process, and the First Amendment. They all apply in this 
case.
  Let me take my own advice and cool the temperature in the room a 
little bit.
  It is about the incitement. It is not about what happened afterwards. 
That is actually the irrelevant stuff. That is the irrelevant stuff. It 
is not the things that were said from the election to January 6. It is 
not relevant to the legal analysis of the issues that are before this 
body.
  It doesn't matter what happened after the insurgence into the Capitol 
Building because that doesn't have to do with incitement. Incitement 
is--it is a point in time, folks. It is a point in time when the words 
are spoken, and the words say, implicitly say, explicitly say ``commit 
acts of violence or lawlessness.'' And we don't have that here.
  So for the House managers to say we need depositions about things 
that happened after, it is just not true. But--but if he does, there 
are a lot of depositions that need to be happening. Nancy Pelosi's 
deposition needs to be taken. Vice President Harris's deposition 
absolutely needs to be taken, and not by Zoom. None of these 
depositions should be done by Zoom. We didn't do this hearing by Zoom. 
These depositions should be done in person, in my office, in 
Philadelphia. That is where they should be done.
  (Laughter.)
  I don't know how many civil lawyers are here, but that is the way it 
works, folks. When you want somebody's deposition, you send a notice of 
deposition, and they appear at the place where the notice says. That is 
civil process.
  I don't know why you are laughing. It is civil process. That is the 
way lawyers do it. We send notices of deposition.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. I would remind everybody that we will have 
order in the Chamber during these proceedings.
  Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. I haven't laughed at any of you, and there 
is nothing laughable here. He mentioned my client coming in to testify. 
That is not the way it is done. If he wanted to talk to Donald Trump, 
he should have put a subpoena down, like I am going to slap subpoenas 
on a good number of people if witnesses are what is required here for 
them to try to get their case back in order, which has failed miserably 
for four reasons: There is no jurisdiction here. There has been no due 
process here. They have completely violated and ignored and stepped on 
the Constitution of the

[[Page S719]]

United States. They have trampled on it like people who have no respect 
for it.
  And if this is about nothing else, it has to be about the respect of 
our country, our Constitution, and all of the people that make it up. 
So that I ask, when considering or voting on this witness matter--and, 
to be clear, this may be the time to do it, but, again, everybody needs 
to know--all of the backroom politics, I am not so much into it all, 
and I am not too adept at it either. But there was a stipulation. They 
felt pretty comfortable after day 2, until their case was tested on day 
3.
  Now is the time to end this. Now is the time to hear the closing 
arguments. Now is the time to vote your conscience. Thank you.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Mr. Raskin.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  We were involved in no discussions about a stipulation, and I have no 
further comment.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. I am going to require a deposition on that.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. I would remind everybody, as Chief Justice 
Roberts noted on January 21, 2020, citing the trial of Charles Swain, 
1905, all parties in this Chamber must refrain from using language that 
is not conducive to civil discourse.
  I listened to Chief Justice Roberts say that. I agreed with him. And 
I thought, for our colleagues, I would repeat it as I did last night.


                             Vote on Motion

  So the question is, Shall it be in order to consider and debate, 
under the Rules of Impeachment, any motion to subpoena witnesses or 
documents?
  Mr. SCHUMER. I ask for the yeas and nays, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. A request for the yeas and nays has been 
made.
  Is there a sufficient second?
  There appears to be a sufficient second.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--yeas 55, nays 45, as follows:

                         [Rollcall Vote No. 58]

                                YEAS--55

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Collins
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Lujan
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Reed
     Romney
     Rosen
     Sanders
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--45

     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     Moran
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Tuberville
     Wicker
     Youn
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President.
  The LEGISLATIVE CLERK. Mr. Sullivan.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Just a point of inquiry. There is a little confusion 
here. Was that a vote on one witness or many witnesses?
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Debate is not allowed during the vote. I 
advise the Senator from Alaska--
  Mr. SULLIVAN. It is not debate. It is a point of inquiry on what we 
just voted on.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. That is not--I am advised that is not 
allowed during the vote.
  Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, point of order. Can you read the motion 
back to us?
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Points of order and debate are not allowed 
during the vote. That is established Senate procedure, and we always 
follow that.
  On the question of whether it shall be in order to consider and 
debate, under the rules of impeachment, any motion to subpoena 
witnesses and documents, the motion is agreed to by a vote of 55 to 45.
  The majority leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                                 Recess

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, as I understand it, there are discussions 
underway, and so I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess until 
12:30 p.m.
  There being no objection, at 11:43 a.m., the Senate, sitting as a 
Court of Impeachment, recessed until 12:32 p.m.; whereupon, the Senate 
reassembled when called to order by the President pro tempore.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. Castor.
  Mr. Counsel CASTOR. May I be recognized?
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Yes, you are. You are recognized.


                              Stipulation

  Mr. Counsel CASTOR. Senators, Donald John Trump, by his counsel, is 
prepared to stipulate that if Representative Herrera Beutler were to 
testify under oath as part of these proceedings, her testimony would be 
consistent with the statement she issued on February 12, 2021, and the 
former President's counsel is agreeable to the admission of that public 
statement into evidence at this time.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Thank you, Mr. Castor.
  Mr. Raskin.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  The managers are prepared to enter into the agreement. I will now 
read the statement. This is the statement of Congresswoman Jaime 
Herrera Beutler, February 12, 2021:

       In my January 12 statement in support of the article of 
     impeachment, I referenced a conversation House Minority 
     Leader Kevin McCarthy relayed to me that he had with 
     President Trump while the January 6 attack was ongoing. Here 
     are the details:
       When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 
     and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, 
     the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was 
     antifa that had breached the Capitol. McCarthy refuted that 
     and told the president that these were Trump supporters. 
     That's when, according to McCarthy, the president said: 
     ``Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the 
     election than you are.''
       Since I publicly announced my decision to vote for 
     impeachment, I have shared these details in countless 
     conversations with constituents and colleagues, and multiple 
     times through the media and other public forums.
       I told it to the Daily News of Longview on January 17. I've 
     shared it with local county Republican executive board 
     members, as well as other constituents who asked me to 
     explain my vote. I shared it with thousands of residents on 
     my telephone town hall on February 8.

  Mr. President, I now move that the Senate admit the statement into 
evidence.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
  Without objection, the statement will be admitted into evidence.
  And does either party wish to make any further motions related to 
witnesses or documents at this time?
  Mr. Counsel CASTOR. Mr. President, the President's counsel have no 
further motions.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Mr. Raskin.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. And, Mr. President, we have no further motions 
either.


                         Admission of Evidence

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Then the Chair would note that neither 
party wishes to make further motions under section 6 of S. Res. 47. 
Therefore,

[[Page S720]]

the next question is on admission of the evidence submitted by both 
parties pursuant to section 8 of the resolution
  The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, so now as we move to another matter, I am 
advised that the House managers have no objection to the admission of 
evidence proposed to be admitted by the former President's counsel 
under the provisions of section 8 of S. Res. 47 and that the 
President's counsel have no objections to the evidence proposed to be 
admitted into evidence by the House managers.
  Pursuant to section 8 of the resolution, as agreed to by Leader 
McConnell and myself a few days ago, both parties have made timely 
filings of this evidence with the Secretary of the Senate and have 
provided copies to each other. I, therefore, ask unanimous consent that 
the Senate dispense with the provisions of section 8(a) of S. Res. 47; 
and that the materials submitted by both parties be admitted into 
evidence subject to the provisions of section 8(c) of that resolution, 
which provides that the admission of this evidence does not constitute 
a concession by either party as to the truth of the matters asserted by 
the other party; and that each Senator shall decide for him or herself 
the weight to be given such evidence. This request has the approval of 
both parties and the Republican leader.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Closing Arguments

  Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 47, the Senate has provided for 
up to 4 hours in closing arguments. They will be equally divided 
between the managers on the part of the House of Representatives and 
the counsel for the former President. And pursuant to rule XXII of the 
Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on 
Impeachment Trials, the argument shall be opened and closed on the part 
of the House of Representatives.
  The Chair recognizes Mr. Manager Raskin to begin the presentation on 
the part of the House of Representatives.
  Mr. Raskin, under rule XXII, you may reserve time if you wish.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Members of the Senate, before I proceed, it was suggested by defense 
counsel that Donald Trump's conduct during the attack, as described in 
Congresswoman Beutler's statement, is somehow not part of the 
constitutional offense for which former President Trump has been 
charged. I want to reject that falsehood and that fallacy immediately.
  After he knew that violence was underway at the Capitol, President 
Trump took actions that further incited the insurgence to be more 
inflamed and to take even more extreme, selective, and focused action 
against Vice President Mike Pence.
  Former President Trump also, as described by Congresswoman Beutler's 
notes, refused requests to publicly, immediately, and forcefully call 
off the riots. And when he was told that the insurgents inside the 
Capitol were Trump supporters, the President said:

       Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the 
     election than you are.

  Think about that for a second. This uncontradicted statement that has 
just been stipulated as part of the evidentiary record, the President 
said:

       Well, Kevin, I guess these people--

  Meaning the mobsters, the insurrectionists--

       are more upset about the election than you are.

  That conduct is obviously part and parcel of the constitutional 
offense that he was impeached for; namely, incitement to insurrection; 
that is, continuing incitement to the insurrection. The conduct 
described not only perpetuated his continuing offense but also provides 
to us here, today, further decisive evidence of his intent to incite 
the insurrection in the first place.
  When my opposing counsel says that you should ignore the President's 
actions after the insurrection began, that is plainly wrong, and it, of 
course, reflects the fact that they have no defense to his outrageous, 
scandalous, and unconstitutional conduct in the middle of a violent 
assault on the Capitol that he incited.
  Senators, think about it for a second. Say you light a fire, and you 
are charged with arson. And the defense counsel says: Everything I did 
after the fire started is irrelevant. And the court would reject that 
immediately and say: That is not true at all. It is extremely relevant 
to whether or not you committed the crime. If you run over and try to 
put out the flames, if you get lots of water and say, ``Help, help, 
there is a fire,'' and you call for help, a court will infer that--
could infer that you didn't intend for the fire to be lit in the first 
place. They would accept your defense, perhaps, that it was all an 
accident. It was all an accident. Accidents happen with fire. But if, 
on the other hand, when the fire erupts, you go and you pour more fuel 
on it, you stand by and you watch it, gleefully, any reasonable person 
will infer that you not only intended the fire to start but that once 
it got started and began to spread, you intended to continue to keep 
the fire going. And that is exactly where we are, my friends.
  Of course, your conduct, while a crime is ongoing, is relevant to 
your culpability, both to the continuation of the offense but also 
directly relevant, directly illuminating to what your purpose was 
originally; what was your intent?
  And any court in the land would laugh out any--would laugh out of 
court any criminal defendant who said: What I did after I allegedly 
killed that person is irrelevant to whether or not I intended to kill 
them. I mean, come on.
  Donald Trump's refusal not only to send help but also to continue to 
further incite the insurgence against his own Vice President--his own 
Vice President--provides further decisive evidence of both his intent 
to start this violent insurrection and his continued incitement once 
the attack had begun to override the Capitol.
  All right. Senators, that was in response to this new evidentiary 
particle that came in.


                      Managers' Closing Arguments

  But in my closing, I want to thank you for your remarkable attention 
and your seriousness of purpose befitting your office.
  We have offered you overwhelming and irrefutable and certainly 
unrefuted evidence that former President Trump incited this 
insurrection against us.
  To quote the statement Representative Liz Cheney made in January:

       On January 6, 2021, a violent mob attacked the United 
     States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and 
     stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This 
     insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most 
     sacred space in our Republic.

  She continued--Representative Cheney continued:

       Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but 
     what we know now is enough. The President of the United 
     States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the 
     flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. 
     None of this would have happened without the President. The 
     President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to 
     stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater 
     betrayal by the President of the United States of his office 
     and his oath to the Constitution.
       I will vote to impeach the President.

  Representative Cheney was right. She based her vote on the facts, on 
the evidence, and on the Constitution. And the evidence--video, 
documentary, eyewitness--has only grown stronger and stronger and more 
detailed right up to today, right up to 10 minutes ago, over the course 
of this Senate trial.
  And I have no doubt that you all noticed that, despite the various 
propaganda reels and so on, President Trump's lawyers have said almost 
nothing to contest or overcome the actual evidence of former President 
Trump's conduct that we presented, much less have they brought their 
client forward to tell us his side of the story.
  We sent him a letter last week, which they rejected out of hand. The 
former President of the United States refused to come and tell us. And 
I ask any of you: If you were charged with inciting violent 
insurrection against our country and you were falsely accused, would 
you come and testify? I know I would. I would be there at 7 in the 
morning waiting for the doors to open. I am sure that is true of 100 
Senators in this room. I hope it is true of 100 Senators in this room.
  The Senate was lectured several times yesterday about cancel culture. 
Well, not even 2 weeks ago the President's most reliable supporters in 
the House--I am sorry; not the President.

[[Page S721]]

The former President's most reliable supporters in the House tried to 
cancel out Representative Cheney because of her courageous and 
patriotic defense of the Republic and the truth and the Constitution.
  They tried to strip her of her leading role as chair of the House 
Republican Conference. But, you know what--I hope everybody takes a 
second to reflect on this--the conference rejected this plainly 
retaliatory and cowardly attempt to punish her for telling the truth to 
her constituents and her country in voting for impeachment.
  Who says you can't stand up against bullies? Who says? In my mind, 
Liz Cheney is a hero for standing up for the truth and resisting this 
retaliatory cancel culture that she was subjected to. But she beat them 
on a vote of 145 to 61, more than a 2-to-1 vote.
  You know, Ben Franklin, a great champion of the Enlightenment, an 
enemy of political fanaticism and cowardice, and, of course, another 
great Philadelphian, once wrote this: I have observed that wrong is 
always growing more wrong until there is no bearing it anymore and that 
right, however opposed, comes right at last.
  Comes right at last. Think about that. This is America, home of the 
brave, land of the free--the America of Ben Franklin, who said:

       If you make yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you.

  Don't make yourself a sheep. The wolves will eat you.
  The America of Thomas Jefferson, who said at another difficult 
moment:

       A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches 
     pass over, their spirits dissolve, and the people, recovering 
     their true sight, restore their government to its true 
     principles.

  The America of Tom Paine, who said:

       The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

  Now, we showed you hour after hour of realtime evidence demonstrating 
every step of Donald Trump's constitutional crime. We showed you how he 
indoctrinated the mob with his Orwellian propaganda about how the 
election he lost by more than 7 million votes and 306 to 232 in the 
electoral college--which he had described as a landslide when he won by 
the exact same margin in 2016--was actually a landslide victory for him 
being stolen away by a bipartisan conspiracy and fraud and corruption.
  We showed you how 61 courts and 88 judges--Federal, State, local, 
trial, appellate--from the lowest courts in the land to the United 
States Supreme Court across the street and 8 Federal judges he himself 
named to the bench, all found no basis in fact or law for his 
outlandish and deranged inventions and concoctions about the election.
  In the meantime, President Trump tried to bully State-level officials 
to commit a fraud on the public by literally ``finding'' votes. We 
examined the case study of Georgia, where he called to threaten 
Republican Brad Raffensperger to find him 11,780 votes. That is all he 
wanted, he said, 11,780 votes--don't we all--11,780 votes, that is all 
he wanted to nullify Biden's victory and to win the election.
  Raffensperger ended up with savage death threats against him and his 
family, telling him he deserved a firing squad. Another election 
official urged Trump to cut it out or people would get hurt and killed, 
a prescient warning indeed. Raffensperger ended up saying that he and 
his family supported Donald Trump, gave him money, and now Trump 
``threw us under the bus.''
  We saw what happened in Lansing, MI, with the extremist mob he 
cultivated, which led to two shocking Capitol sieges and a 
criminal conspiracy by extremists to kidnap and likely assassinate 
Governor Whitmer.

  We saw him trying to get State legislatures to disavow and overthrow 
their popular election results and replace them with Trump electors. We 
showed you the process of summoning the mob, reaching out, urging 
people to come to Washington for a ``wild'' time.
  As we celebrate Presidents Day on Monday, think, imagine: Is there 
another President in our history who would urge supporters to come to 
Washington for a ``wild'' time?
  You saw how he embraced the violent extremist elements like the Proud 
Boys, who were told in a nationally televised Presidential candidate 
debate to ``stand back and stand by,'' which became their official 
slogan as they converged on Washington with other extremist and 
seditious groups and competed to be the lead storm troopers of the 
attack on this building.
  You saw the assembly of the mob on January 6. And how beautiful that 
angry mob must have looked to Donald Trump as he peered down from the 
lectern with the seal of the President of the United States of America 
emblazoned on it.
  That crowd was filled with extremists in tactical gear, armed to the 
teeth and ready to fight, and other brawling MAGA supporters, all of 
them saying: Stop the steal right now. And he said he was going to 
march with them to the Capitol, even though the permit for the rally 
specifically forbade a march. But he said he would march with them, 
giving them more comfort that what they were doing was legitimate, it 
was OK.
  But, of course, he stayed back, as he presumably didn't want to be 
too close to the action at the Capitol, as the lawyers called it--not 
an insurrection, they urged us yesterday; it is an action. He didn't 
want to be too close to the action when all hell was about to break 
loose.
  Now, incitement, as we have discussed, requires an inherently fact-
based evidentiary inquiry, and this is what we did. We gave you many 
hours of specific, factual details about, to use Congresswoman Cheney's 
words, how the President summoned the mob, assembled the mob, incited 
it, lit the match, sending them off to the Capitol where they thought, 
as they yelled out, that they had been invited by the President of the 
United States.
  And then, of course, they unleashed unparalleled violence against our 
overwhelmed and besieged but heroic police officers, who you 
thoughtfully honored yesterday, when the officers got in their way as 
they entered the Capitol at the behest of the President of the United 
States to stop the steal.
  Now, I am convinced most Senators must be convinced by this 
overwhelming and specific detail, because most Americans are. But say 
you still have your doubts; you think the President really thought that 
he was sending his followers to participate in a peaceful, nonviolent 
rally, the kind that might have been organized by Julian Bond, who my 
distinguished opposing counsel brought up; Ella Baker; Bob Moses; our 
late, beloved colleague John Lewis, for the Student Nonviolent 
Coordinating Committee.
  Maybe the President really thought this was going to be like the 
March on Washington organized by Bayard Rustin and Dr. Martin Luther 
King, who said:

       Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial moral and 
     political questions of our time.

  So let's say you are still flirting with the idea that Donald Trump's 
conduct was totally appropriate, as he proclaimed right off the bat, 
and he is the innocent victim of a mass accident or catastrophe, like a 
fire or a flood--as we were invited to frame it on our opening day by 
distinguished cocounsel or opposing counsel--and you think maybe we are 
just looking for somebody to blame for this nightmare and catastrophe 
that has befallen the Republic. We are just looking for someone to 
blame.
  Well, here is the key question, then, in resolving your doubts if you 
are in that category: How did Donald Trump react when he learned of the 
violent storming of the Capitol and the threats to Senators, Members of 
the House, and his own Vice President, as well as the images he saw on 
TV of the pummeling and beating and harassment of our police officers?
  Did he spring into action to stop the violence and save us? Did he 
even wonder about his own security since an out-of-control, anti-
government mob could come after him too? Did he quickly try to get in 
touch with or denounce the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the rally 
organizers, the Save America rally organizers, and everyone on the 
extreme right to tell them that this was not what he had in mind, it 
was a big mistake, call it off, call it off, call it off--as 
Representative Gallagher begged him to do on national television?
  No. He delighted in it. He reveled in it. He exalted in it. He could 
not understand why the people around him did not share his delight.
  And then a long period of silence ensued while the mob beat the 
daylights

[[Page S722]]

out of police officers and invaded this building, as you saw on 
security footage, and proceeded to hunt down Vice President Mike Pence 
as a traitor and denounced and cursed Speaker Pelosi, both of whom you 
heard mob members say that they wanted to kill. They were both in real 
danger, and our government could have been thrown into absolute turmoil 
without the heroism of our officers and the bravery and courage of a 
lot of people in this room.
  Here is what Republican Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio said. 
He is a former pro football player:

       We are imploring the president to help, to stand up, to 
     help defend the U.S. Capitol and the United States Congress, 
     which was under attack. We are begging, essentially, and he 
     was nowhere to be found.

  ``Nowhere to be found.'' And as I have emphasized this morning, that 
dereliction of duty, that desertion of duty was central to his 
incitement of insurrection and inextricable from it--inextricable, 
bound together. It reveals his state of mind that day, what he was 
thinking as he provoked the mob to violence and further violence. It 
shows how he perpetuated his continuing offense on January 6, his 
course of conduct charged in the Article of Impeachment as he further 
incited the mob during the attack, aiming it at Vice President Mike 
Pence himself, while failing to quell it in either of his roles as 
Commander in Chief or his real role that day: ``inciter in chief.''
  And it powerfully demonstrates that the ex-President knew, of course, 
that violence was foreseeable, that it was predictable and predicted 
that day since he was not surprised and not horrified. No. He was 
delighted. And through his acts of omission and commission that day, he 
abused his office by siding with the insurrectionists at almost every 
point, rather than with the Congress of the United States, rather than 
with the Constitution.
  In just a moment, my colleague Mr. Cicilline will address President 
Trump's conduct, his actions and inactions, his culpable state of mind 
during the attack, as he will establish yesterday's explosive 
revelations about House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's desperate call 
to Trump--and Trump's truly astounding reaction--confirming that Trump 
was doing nothing to help the people in this room or this building.
  It is now clear beyond a doubt that Trump supported the actions of 
the mob, and so he must be convicted. It is that simple.
  When he took the stage on January 6, he knew exactly how combustible 
the situation was. He knew there were many people in the crowd who were 
ready to jump into action, to engage in violence at any signal that he 
needed them to fight like hell to stop the steal. And that is exactly 
what he told them to do.
  Then he aimed them straight here, right down Pennsylvania, at the 
Capitol, where he told them the steal was occurring; that is, the 
counting of the electoral college votes. And we all know what happened 
next. They attacked this building. They disrupted the peaceful transfer 
of power. They injured and killed people, convinced that they were 
acting on his instructions and with his approval and protection.
  And while that happened, he further incited them while failing to 
defend us. If that is not ground for conviction, if that is not a high 
crime and misdemeanor against the Republic and the United States of 
America, then nothing is.
  President Trump must be convicted for the safety and security of our 
democracy and our people.
  Mr. Cicilline.
  Mr. Manager CICILLINE. Mr. President, distinguished Senators, as we 
have demonstrated, there is overwhelming evidence that President Trump 
incited the violence and knew violence was foreseeable on January 6. He 
knew that many in the crowd were posed for violence at his urging and, 
in fact, many in the sea of thousands in the crowd were wearing body 
armor and helmets and holding sticks and flagpoles. And then he not 
only provoked that very same crowd but aimed them at the Capitol. He 
literally pointed at this building, at us, during his speech. He 
pointed to the building where Congress was going to certify the 
election results and where he knew the Vice President himself was 
presiding over the process.
  No one is suggesting that President Trump intended every detail of 
what happened on January 6, but when he directed the sea of thousands 
before him--who, reportedly, were ready to engage in real violence--
when he told that crowd to fight like hell, he incited violence 
targeted at the Capitol, and he most certainly foresaw it. My 
colleague, Manager Dean, will stand up after and walk you through the 
overwhelming evidence that supports those claims.
  I want to start, though, by talking about what happened after that. 
There was a lot of discussion yesterday about what the President knew 
and when he knew it. There are certain things that we do not know about 
what the President did that day, because the President--that is, former 
President Trump--has remained silent about what he was doing during one 
of the bloodiest attacks on our Capitol since 1812.
  Despite a full and fair opportunity to come forward, he has refused 
to come and tell his story. As Manager Raskin said, we would all do 
that. In fact, I would insist on it. If I were accused of a grave and 
serious crime that I was innocent of, I would demand the right to tell 
my side of the story. President Trump declined.
  But there are certain facts that are undisputed, that we know to be 
true despite the President's refusal to testify; which is, counsel 
either ignored entirely or didn't and couldn't dispute.
  Before I go to those facts, let me quickly just touch on a few 
things. First, President Trump and his counsel have resorted to 
arguments that the evidence presented was somehow manufactured or 
hidden from them. I want to be very clear about this because this is 
important. In terms of the timing of when they received the materials 
here, defense counsel had access to all materials when they were 
entitled to have them under S. Res. 47, and they cannot and have not 
alleged otherwise.
  As to their desperate claim that evidence was somehow manufactured, 
they have not alleged that one tweet from their client was actually 
inaccurate--nor can they. We got these tweets--which are, of course, 
statements from the former President--from a public archive, and they 
are all correct.
  We also know the President's claims about evidence being manipulated 
also are untrue because they didn't even object to the introduction of 
the evidence when they had the opportunity to do so. So I hope we can 
now set those issues aside and turn to the facts of this case and 
really set the record straight about the undisputed facts in this case, 
about what the President knew that day and when he knew it.
  At the outset, let me say this. As you may recall, in direct response 
to a question yesterday, President Trump's counsel stated, and I quote:

       At no point was the President informed the Vice President 
     was in any danger.

  As we walk through these undisputed facts, you will see, quite 
clearly, that is simply not true.
  As you can see here, from just after 12 p.m. to just before 2 p.m., 
President Trump delivered his statements at the rally, which incited an 
initial wave of protesters coming down to the Capitol, and his speech 
was still ongoing, and you saw the evidence of people broadcasting that 
on their phones.
  He finished his speech at 11:11 p.m., at which point a much larger 
wave surged toward us here at the Capitol, ripping down scaffolding and 
triggering calls for law enforcement assistance.
  Thirty minutes later, at 1:49 p.m., as the violence intensified, 
President Trump tweeted a video of his remarks at the rally with the 
caption:

       Our country has had enough, we will not take it anymore, 
     and that's what this is all about.

  During the half-hour following that tweet, the situation here 
drastically deteriorated. Insurrectionists breached the Capitol 
barriers, then its steps, then the complex itself.
  By 2:12, the insurrectionist mob had overwhelmed the police and 
started their violent attack on the Capitol.
  And as you all know, this attack occurred and played out on live 
television. Every major network was showing it. We have shown you, 
during the course of this trial, side-by-side exactly what the 
President would have seen on TV or his Twitter account.

[[Page S723]]

  We have also shown you that he would have seen around 2:12 p.m. 
images of Vice President Pence being rushed off the Senate floor. I 
won't replay all of that for you, but for timing purposes, here is the 
footage reacting to Vice President Pence leaving the floor.
  (Text of video presentation.)

       Unidentified Speaker. No audio. They just cut out. It 
     looks--and sometimes the Senate.
       Unidentified Speaker. It seemed like they just ushered Mike 
     Pence out really quickly.
       Unidentified Speaker. Yes, they did. That is exactly what 
     just happened there.
       Unidentified Speaker. They ushered Mike Pence out. They 
     moved him fast. There was--I saw the motions too.

  Defense counsel seems to suggest that somehow the President of the 
United States was not aware of this; that the President had no idea 
that his Vice President had been evacuated from the Senate floor for 
his safety because violent rioters had broken into the Capitol with 
thousands more coming and with the Capitol Police completely 
overwhelmed.

  This was on live television.
  So defense counsel is suggesting that the President of the United 
States knew less about this than the American people--this is just not 
possible--that the Secret Service failed to mention that his Vice 
President was being rushed from the Senate for his own protection, but 
nobody in the White House thought to alert him; that none of our law 
enforcement agencies raised a concern to the Commander in Chief that 
the Vice President was being evacuated from the Senate floor as a 
violent mob assaulted the Capitol. It simply cannot be. And with each 
passing minute on the timeline of events on January 6, it grows more 
and more inconceivable.
  Let's continue forward in time.
  Between 2:12 to 2:24, the Senate recessed. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was 
ushered off the floor. The Capitol Police announced a breach and a 
lockdown, and the insurrectionist mob began chanting: ``Hang Mike 
Pence.'' And it was unfolding on live TV in front of the entire world.
  So, again, let me ask you: Does it strike you as credible that 
nobody, not a single person, informed the President that his Vice 
President had been evacuated or that the President didn't glance at the 
television or his Twitter account and learn about the events that were 
happening?
  Remember, this was the day of the electoral college. Remember his 
obsession with stopping the certification. It is just not credible that 
the President at no point knew his Vice President was in this building 
and was in real danger.
  Senators, I submit to you these facts, this timeline is undisputed. 
At 2:24 p.m., after rioters breached the barriers, after calls for 
assistance, after rioters stormed the building, after Vice President 
Pence was rushed from the Senate floor, and just before Vice President 
Pence was further evacuated for his safety, President Trump decided to 
attack his own Vice President on Twitter.
  The undisputed facts confirmed that not only must President Trump 
have been aware of the Vice President's danger but he still sent out a 
tweet attacking him, further inciting the very mob that was in just a 
few feet of him, inside of this very building.
  The Vice President was there with his family, who was in danger for 
his life. They were chanting, ``Hang Mike Pence,'' and had erected a 
noose outside.
  And as we have shown, the mob responded to President Trump's attack 
instantly. The tweet was read allowed on a bullhorn, if you remember 
that video. Insurrectionists began chanting again about Mike Pence.
  And in those critical moments, we see President Trump engaging in a 
dereliction of his duty by further inciting the mob, in real-time, to 
target the Vice President, with knowledge that the insurrection was 
ongoing. And that is, of course, included in the conduct charged in 
this Article of Impeachment.
  The former President's counsel's suggestion otherwise is completely 
wrong. His further incitement is impeachable conduct that continued 
during the course of this assault itself, and it is part of a 
constitutional crime and was entirely and completely a part of his 
indefensible failure to attack the Congress.
  There has been some confusion as to the phone call I referenced with 
Senator Lee. So I want to be clear about certain facts that are not in 
dispute. First, Senator Lee has confirmed that the call occurred at 
2:26 p.m. So I added that to the timeline above.
  Remember, by this phone call, the Vice President has just been 
evacuated on live television for his own safety. And Donald Trump had, 
after that, tweeted an attack on him, which the insurgents read on a 
bullhorn. And a few minutes after Donald Trump's tweet, he didn't reach 
out to check on the Vice President's safety. (Text deleted.) The call 
was interrupted. Senator Tuberville has since explained, and I quote:

       I looked at the phone and it said the White House on it, 
     [and] I said hello, the President said a few words. I said 
     ``Mr. President they're taking the Vice President out and 
     they want me to get off the phone and I've got to go.''

  That was his second evacuation that day. A minute later, live feeds 
documented the insurgents chanting:

       Mike Pence is a traitor.

  At this point, even if somehow he had missed it earlier, it is 
inconceivable that the President--the former President--was unaware 
that the Vice President was in danger. And what does the President do 
after hearing that? Does he rush to secure the Capitol? Does he do 
anything to quell the mob? Does he call his Vice President to check on 
his safety? We all know the answers to those questions too. There can 
be no dispute. He took none of those steps, not a single one.
  Even after learning that Senators were being evacuated and that Vice 
President Pence had also been evacuated, he did nothing to help the 
Vice President.
  And here is some more evidence that we have since learned. At some 
point over the following 30 minutes, President Trump spoke to Minority 
Leader Kevin McCarthy. And as Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler has 
revealed--evidence that now has been stipulated as part of the 
evidentiary record--in that conversation, Kevin McCarthy is pleading 
with the former President to do something. He first tries to assign the 
blame to another group, and Leader McCarthy says: No, these are your 
supporters, Mr. President.
  What does the President say in response? Not ``I'll send people right 
away; I didn't realize you were in danger.'' He says:

       Well, Kevin--

  And I quote. I quote:

     Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the 
     election than you are.
       I guess these people are more upset about the election than 
     you are.

  The President, just as he conveyed in that tweet at 6:01, was 
essentially saying: You got what you deserve. Let me say that again. 
Not only was the President fully aware of the Vice President's 
situation and the situation that we were all in, when he was asked for 
help, when he was asked to defend the Capitol less than 30 minutes 
after inciting this violence against his own Vice President, President 
Trump refused that request for assistance, and he told us why--his 
singular focus: stopping the certification of the election of his 
opponent.

  He incited the violence to stop the certification. He attacked the 
Vice President and further incited the insurrection to pressure the 
Vice President to stop the certification of the election. He called 
Senator Tuberville to stop the certification, and he refused to send 
help to Congress. This Congress and the Vice President of the United 
States were in mortal danger because he wanted to stop the 
certification. He did these things--attacking the Vice President, 
calling Senator Tuberville, refusing Senator McCarthy's request--with 
full knowledge of the violent attack that was underway at that point. 
He chose retaining his own power over the safety of Americans. I can't 
imagine more damning evidence of his state of mind.
  The call ended with a screaming match interrupted by violent rioters 
breaking through the windows of Representative McCarthy's office.
  Senators, the President knew this was happening. He didn't do 
anything to help his Vice President or any of you or any of the brave 
officers and other employees serving the American people that day. His 
sole focus was stealing the election for himself.

[[Page S724]]

  He apparently has still not thought of anyone else. (Text deleted.)
  Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. Objection. This is not in evidence. 
Objection. This is not in evidence.
  If you wanted a stipulation to this--
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The counsel will sit down.
  Mr. Manager CICILLINE. Senators, remember--
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Chair has no way of knowing whether 
the evidence is admitted into evidence or not. The counsel for the 
President will have the chance to speak, and the Chair will consider 
the issue.
  Mr. Manager CICILLINE. Senators, remember, as one of you said, during 
this attack, they could have killed us all--our staff, the officers 
protecting all of us, everyone.
  President Trump not only incited it but continued inciting it as it 
occurred with attacks on his Vice President and then willfully refused 
to defend us, furthering his provocation and incitement by the mob, 
siding with the mob, siding with the violent insurrectionists, 
criminals who killed and injured police officers sworn to protect us, 
because they were ``more upset about the election'' than Leader 
McCarthy.
  Those facts are undisputed. President Trump has not offered any 
evidence or any argument to disprove them. His lawyers almost entirely 
ignored these facts in their short presentation. We have only his 
counsel's false claim yesterday that ``at no point was the President 
informed that the Vice President was in any danger,'' a claim that is 
refuted not just by common sense but by the timeline you have seen and 
also the Vice President's legal team.
  So there can be no doubt, at the moment we most needed a President to 
preserve, protect, and defend us, President Trump instead willfully 
betrayed us. He violated his oath. He left all of us and officers like 
Eugene Goodman to our own devices against an attack he had incited and 
he alone could stop. That is why he must be convicted.
  I would like to conclude by making one final point that follows 
directly from what I discussed. Our case and the Article of Impeachment 
before you absolutely includes President Trump's dereliction of duty on 
January 6, his failure as ``inciter in chief'' to immediately quell or 
call off the mob, his failure as Commander in Chief to immediately do 
everything in his power to secure the Capitol. That is a further basis 
on which to convict, and there can be no doubt of that. The ongoing 
constitutional misconduct is like any continuing offense, and the proof 
of that is overwhelming.
  Most directly, his dereliction of duty offers conclusive, irrefutable 
evidence that he acted willfully, as we charge. He wasn't furious or 
sad or shocked, like virtually everyone else in America. He was 
reported by those around him as ``delighted.'' Rather than rush to our 
aid or demand his mob retreat, he watched the attack on TV and praised 
the mob to Leader McCarthy as more loyal to him, more upset about the 
election. That was all that mattered. His reaction is also further 
evidence of his intent. He acted exactly the way a person would act if 
they had indeed incited the mob to violence to stop the steal.
  Moreover, as I have shown, President Trump's dereliction and 
desertion of duty includes his decision to further incite the mob even 
as he failed to protect us. While the mob hunted Vice President Pence 
in these very halls, he attacked Vice President Pence. While he tried 
to stop the steal, he spread the big lie. We all saw how his mob 
responded in real time. This further incitement was part of his 
dereliction of duty. It was also part of his course of conduct 
encouraging and provoking the mob to violence.
  President Trump's dereliction of duty also highlights how foreseeable 
the attack was to him. In his tweet just after 6 p.m., he said:

       These are the things and events that happen when a sacred 
     landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously 
     stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & 
     unfairly treated for so long.

  This tweet continued his endorsement of the attack, his failure to 
condemn it, his desertion of duty, but it also reveals his view this 
was of course what would happen when Congress refused his demand to 
reject the election that he continued to tell his supporters was stolen 
and he had actually won in a landslide. Again, he wasn't surprised. He 
saw this as a predictable result of his repeated demands that his 
followers stop the steal by any means possible.
  This was all connected. His dereliction of duty, his desertion of 
duty was part and parcel of the crime charged in the impeachment, and 
it is certainly a basis on which to vote for conviction. If you believe 
that he willfully refused to defend us and the law enforcement officers 
fighting to save us and that he was delighted by the attack and that he 
saw it as a natural result of his call to stop the steal and that he 
continued to incite and target violence as the attack unfolded, we 
respectfully submit you must vote to convict and disqualify so that the 
events on January 6 can never happen again in this country.
  Mr. House Manager RASKIN. I would like to call up Ms. Dean.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I have a point of order.
  Mr. President, moments ago, House Manager Cicilline--
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator will withhold. I am advised by 
the Parliamentarian that debate is not in order.
  Mr. LEE. I appeal the ruling of the Chair that debate is not in 
order.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  Mr. LEE. There is clearly a quorum.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. A quorum has been suggested, and the clerk 
will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to suspend the quorum 
call.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection? Objection is heard.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I withdraw my appeal.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The appeal is withdrawn.
  The Chair would advise everybody that the evidentiary record is 
closed. S. Res. 47 described the scope of those things not admitted 
into evidence as those referenced at trial. New evidence is not 
permitted in closing argument. References to such new evidence will be 
stricken.
  Who seeks recognition?
  The House managers have the floor if they wish to resume.
  The House managers.
  Ms. Manager DEAN. Mr. President, esteemed Senators, good afternoon.
  We are grateful for your kind attention this week as we engaged in a 
process formulated and put to paper by the Founders in my home city of 
Philadelphia, which is getting its fair share of attention this week, 
in 1787--234 years ago.
  My colleague Mr. Cicilline addressed the importance of the 
President's dereliction of duty. I will focus on three specific aspects 
of this case which the defense has raised questions about.
  First, the defense suggests that this was just one speech and one 
speech cannot incite insurrection, and the defense suggested, because 
the attack was preplanned by some insurrectionists, Donald Trump is 
somehow not culpable. Both of these things are, mainly, not true nor 
are they what we allege.
  So let's be clear. We are not suggesting that Donald Trump's January 
6 speech by itself incited the attack. We have shown that his course of 
conduct leading up to and including that speech incited the attack. The 
defense is correct that the insurrection was preplanned. That supports 
our point. We argue and the evidence overwhelmingly confirms that 
Donald Trump's conduct over many months incited his supporters to 
believe, one, his big lie, that the only way he could lose was if the 
election were rigged; two, that, to ensure the election would not be 
stolen to prevent the fraud, they had to stop the steal; and, three, 
they had to fight to stop the steal or they would not have a country 
anymore.
  This conduct took time, and it culminated in Donald Trump's sending a 
``save the date'' on December 19, 18 days before the attack, telling 
his base exactly when, where, and who to fight. While he was doing 
this, he spent $50 million from his legal defense fund to

[[Page S725]]

simultaneously broadcast his message to ``stop the steal'' over all 
major networks. Donald Trump invited them; he incited them; then he 
directed them.
  Here are a few clips that will help bring that story to light.
  (Video presentation of 7-19-2020.)

       The big lie.

  (Text of video presentation of 7-19-2020.)

       Mr. Wallace. Can you give a direct answer you will accept 
     the election?
       President TRUMP. I have to see. Look, I have to see. No, 
     I'm not going to just say yes.

  (Text of video presentation of 7-30-2020.)

       President TRUMP. This election will be the most rigged 
     election in history.

  (Text of video presentation of 7-31-2020.)

       President TRUMP. This is going to be the greatest election 
     disaster in history.

  (Text of video presentation of 8-24-2020.)

       President TRUMP. The only way they can take this election 
     away from us is if this is a rigged election. We're going to 
     win this election.

  (Text of video presentation of 9-12-2020.)

       President TRUMP. It's a rigged election. That's the only 
     way we are going to lose.

  (Text of video presentation of 9-23-2020.)

       Unidentified Speaker. Do you commit to making sure that 
     there's a peaceful transfer of power?
       President TRUMP. Get rid of the ballots, and you'll have a 
     very trans---you'll have a very peaceful--there won't be a 
     transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation.

  (Text of video presentation of 9-25-2020.)

       President TRUMP. That's the only way we're going--that's 
     the only way we're going to lose is if there's mischief, 
     mischief, and it'll have to be on a big scale, so be careful.

  (Text of video presentation of 10-8-2020.)

       President TRUMP. But this will be one of the greatest 
     fraudulent--most fraudulent elections ever.

  (Text of video presentation of 10-26-2020.)

       President TRUMP. I'm not going to let this election be 
     taken away from us. That's the only way they're going to win 
     it.

  (Text of video presentation of 11-4-2020.)

       President TRUMP. This is a fraud on the American public.
       (People chanting: ``Yeah.'')
       This is an embarrassment to our country.
       (People chanting: ``Yeah.'')
       We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did 
     win this election.
       (People chanting: ``Yeah.'')

  (Text of video presentation of 11-5-2020.)

       President TRUMP. We were winning in all the key locations 
     by a lot, actually, and then our numbers started miraculously 
     getting whittled away in secret, and this is a case where 
     they're trying to steal an election. They're trying to rig an 
     election, and we can't let that happen.

  (Text of video presentations of 12-2-2020.)

       President TRUMP. You can't let another person steal that 
     election from you. All over the country, people are together 
     in holding up signs: ``Stop the steal.''
       President TRUMP. If we don't root out the fraud--the 
     tremendous and horrible fraud--that has taken place in our 
     2020 election, we don't have a country anymore.

  (Text of video presentation of 12-22-2020.)

       President TRUMP. We cannot allow a completely fraudulent 
     election to stand.

  (Text of video presentations of 1-4-2021.)

       President TRUMP. We're going to fight like hell, I'll tell 
     you right now.
       (People chanting: ``Yeah.'')
       President TRUMP. If you don't fight to save your country 
     with everything you have, you're not going to have a country 
     left.
       President TRUMP. We will not bend. We will not break. We 
     will not yield. We will never give in. We will never give up. 
     We will never back down. We will never ever surrender.

  (Text of video presentations of 1-6-2021.)

       President TRUMP. All of us here today do not want to see 
     our election victory stolen. We will never give up. We will 
     never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when 
     there's theft involved.
       (People chanting: ``Yeah.'')
       President TRUMP. And to use a favorite term that all of you 
     people really came up with: We will stop the steal.
       President TRUMP. Because you'll never take back our country 
     with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be 
     strong.
       President TRUMP. Make no mistake, this election was stolen 
     from you, from me, from the country.
       And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don't fight 
     like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

  Our point is this: This was not one speech. This was a deliberate, 
purposeful effort by Donald Trump, over many months, that resulted in 
the well-organized mob attack on January 6.
  That brings me to my second point, the violence.
  Defense counsel argues that there is no way that Donald Trump could 
have known what would happen. Yet we are not suggesting nor is it 
necessary for us to prove that Donald Trump knew every detail of what 
would unfold on January 6 or even how horrible and deadly the attack 
would become, but he did know, as he looked out on that sea of 
thousands in front of him--some wearing body armor and helmets, others 
carrying weapons--that the result would be violence. The evidence 
overwhelmingly demonstrates this.
  A few points on this.
  Donald Trump knew the people he was inciting leading up to January 6. 
He saw the violence they were capable of. He had a pattern and practice 
of praising and encouraging supporters of violence, never condemning 
it.
  It is not a coincidence that those same people--the Proud Boys, the 
organizer of the Trump caravan, the supporters and speakers at the 
second Million MAGA March--all showed up on January 6.
  And Donald Trump's behavior was different. This was not just a 
comment by an official or a politician fighting for a cause; this was 
months of cultivating a base of people who were violent, praising that 
violence, and then leading them--leading that violence, that rage 
straight to a joint session of Congress, where he knew his Vice 
President was presiding.
  And Donald Trump had warnings about the crowd in front of him on 
January 6. There were detailed posts online of attack plans. Law 
enforcement warned that these posts were real threats and even made 
arrests in the days leading up to the attack. There were credible 
reports that many would be armed and ready to attack the Capitol.
  Despite these credible warnings of serious, dangerous threats to our 
Capitol, when the crowd was standing in front of the President, ready 
to take orders and attack, he said:

       We're going to the Capitol.
       And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight 
     like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

  Here is a short clip.
  (Text of video presentation of 9-29-2020.)

       President TRUMP. What do you want to call them? Give me a 
     name. Give me a name. Who would you like me to condemn? Who 
     would you like me to condemn?
       Mr. Wallace. White supremacists and--
       President TRUMP. Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by.

  (Video presentation of 10-31-2020.)
  (Text of video presentation of 11-1-2020.)

       President TRUMP. It is something. Do you see the way our 
     people, they--you know, they were protecting his bus 
     yesterday because they are nice. So his bus--they had 
     hundreds of cars: Trump, Trump. Trump and the American flag. 
     That's what--you see Trump and American flag.

  (Text of video presentation of 12-12-2020.)

       At the first Million MAGA March we promised that if the GOP 
     would not do everything in their power to keep Trump in 
     office, that we would destroy the GOP. And as we gather here 
     in Washington, DC, for a second Million MAGA March, we are 
     done making promises. It has to happen now. We are going to 
     destroy the GOP.
       (People chanting: ``Destroy the GOP.'')

  (Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

       President TRUMP. Because you'll never take back our country 
     with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be 
     strong.

  (Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
  Senators, the violence on January 6 was demonstrably foreseeable. 
Trump even said so himself at 6:01 p.m. the day of the attack. The last 
thing he said before he went to sleep, ``These are the things that 
happen.'' He foresaw this, and he admitted as much.
  That brings me to my final point, the insurrectionists.
  Defense counsel has suggested these people came here on their own. 
The defense brief states that the insurrectionists ``did so [for] their 
own accord and for their own reasons and are being criminally 
prosecuted.''

[[Page S726]]

  It is true that some insurrectionists are being prosecuted, but it is 
not true that they did so of their own accord and for their own 
reasons. The evidence makes clear the exact opposite--that they did 
this for Donald Trump at his invitation, at his direction, at his 
command. They said this before the attack, during the attack. They said 
it after the attack.
  Leading up to January 6, in post after post, the President's 
supporters confirmed this was for Donald Trump; it was at his 
direction.
  One supporter wrote:

       If Congress illegally [certified] Biden, . . . Trump would 
     have absolutely no choice but to demand us to storm the 
     Capitol and kill/beat them up for it.

  They even say publicly, openly, and proudly that President Trump 
would help them commandeer the National Guard so all they have to do is 
overwhelm 2,000 Capitol Police officers.
  During his speech on January 6, Trump supporters chanted his words 
back to him. They even live-tweeted his commands, as Ms. DeGette showed 
you.
  During the attack, the insurrectionists at the Capitol changed Donald 
Trump's words from his tweets, rallies, and from the speech of the 6th.
  They held signs that said--and chanted--``Fight for Trump.'' ``Stop 
the steal.''
  They read his tweets over bullhorns, amplifying his demands.
  Another rioter, while live-streaming the insurrection from the 
Capitol, said:

       He'll be happy. We're fighting for Trump.

  What is more, the insurrectionists were not hiding. They believed 
they were following the orders from our Commander in Chief. They felt 
secure enough in the legitimacy of their actions to take selfies, to 
post photos and videos on social media.
  After the attack, rioter after rioter confirmed this too.
  Jenna Ryan, who was later accused for her role in the insurrection, 
said:

       I thought I was following my President. I thought we were 
     following what we were called to do.
       President Trump requested that we be in DC on the 6th.

  When it became clear that Donald Trump would not protect them, some 
of his supporters said they felt ``duped''; they felt ``tricked.''
  Listen to some of this evidence.
  (Text of video presentation of 1-6-2021.)

       Ms. Pierson. And even if they think for a second that 
     they're going to get away with this today, they got another 
     thing coming because today is just a day, and today is just 
     the beginning. They haven't seen a resistance until they have 
     seen a patriot fight for their country. If you die today--

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The parties will withhold. The parties 
will withhold.
  The evidentiary record is closed.
  S. Res. 27 describes the scope of those things admitted into evidence 
as those referenced in trial. New evidence is not permitted in closing 
arguments. References to such new evidence will be stricken.
  Who yields time?
  Ms. Manager DEAN. Mr. President, the statement was in evidence; the 
slide was not, so we will withdraw the slide, but the statement was in 
evidence.
  They told you themselves they were following the President's orders, 
and you will see something clearly--Donald Trump knew who these people 
were.
  As the slide shows, the people he cultivated, whose violence he 
praised, were all there on January 6--the Proud Boys, who Donald Trump 
told to ``stand back and stand by'' in September of 2020; Keith Lee, 
organizer of the Trump caravan that tried to drive the Biden campaign 
bus off the road; Katrina Pierson, the speaker at the second Million 
MAGA March--they were all there.
  The video you are about to see is in the Record.
  Oh, correction. The Record did include, appropriately, the last 
video, so we will keep that in the Record, and I will keep it in my 
closing remarks.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Senators will take their seats. The Senate 
will be in order.
  The Representative may continue.
  Ms. Manager DEAN. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I have to say, that of all the trials I have ever been a part of, 
this is certainly one of them.
  As the slides show, the people he cultivated, whose violence he 
praised, were all there on January 6--the Proud Boys, who Donald Trump 
told to ``stand back and stand by'' in September of 2020; Keith Lee, 
the organizer of the Trump caravan that tried to drive the Biden 
campaign bus off the road; Katrina Pierson, the speaker at the second 
Million MAGA March--they were all there.
  Here is one final clip, also submitted in the Record.
  (Video presentation of 1-6-2021.)
  Senators, some of the insurrectionists are facing criminal charges. 
Donald Trump was acting as our Commander in Chief; he was our 
President. He used his office and the authority it commands to incite 
an attack, and when Congress and the Constitution were under attack, he 
abandoned his duties, violated his oath, failing to preserve, protect, 
and defend.
  That is why we are here--because the President of the United States, 
Donald J. Trump, incited and directed thousands of people to attack the 
legislative branch. He knew what his supporters were capable of. He 
inflamed them, sent them down Pennsylvania Avenue, not on any old day 
but on the day we were certifying the election results. As they were 
banging on our doors, he failed to defend us because this is what he 
wanted. He wanted to remain in power. For that crime against the 
Republic, he must be held accountable.

  Senators, the insurrectionists are still listening.
  Before I end, I must admit, until we were preparing for this trial, I 
didn't know the extent of many of these facts. I witnessed the horror, 
but I didn't know. I didn't know how deliberate the President's 
planning was, how he had invested in it, how many times he incited his 
supporters with these lies, how carefully and consistently he incited 
them to violence on January 6.
  While many of us may have tuned out his rallies, I also did not know 
the extent that his followers were listening, were hanging on his every 
word, and honestly, I did not know how close the mob actually came to 
their violent end, that they were just steps away from all of us, that 
the death toll could have been much higher but for the bravery of men 
and women who protect us.
  But now we know. We know the bravery of people like Officer Goodman 
and all the men and women of the Capitol Police, of the custodians who 
with pride and a sense of duty in their work cleaned up shattered 
glass, splintered wood, and blood-stained floors. We know the sacrifice 
of life and limb.
  We know what Donald Trump did. We know what he failed to do. Though 
it is difficult to bear witness and face the reality of what happened 
in these halls, what happens if we don't confront these facts? What 
happens if there is no accountability?
  For those who say we need to get past this, we need to come together, 
we need to unify, if we don't set this right and call it what it was--
the highest constitutional crime by the President of the United 
States--the past will not be past. The past will become our future for 
my grandchildren and for their children.
  Senators, we are in a dialogue with history, a conversation with our 
past with a hope for our future. Two hundred and thirty-four years from 
now, it may be that no one person here among us is remembered. Yet, 
what we do here, what is being asked of each of us here in this moment, 
will be remembered. History has found us. I ask that you not look the 
other way.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. I would now like to bring up Mr. Neguse
  Mr. Manager NEGUSE. Mr. President, distinguished Senators, there is 
an old quote from Henry Clay, a son of Kentucky, that ``courtesies of a 
small and trivial character are the ones [that] strike deepest in the 
grateful and appreciating heart.''
  I want to say on behalf of all the House managers that we are very 
grateful for the courtesies that you have extended to us and the 
President's counsel during the course of this trial.
  You have heard my colleague Manager Dean go through the overwhelming 
evidence that makes clear that President Trump must be convicted and 
disqualified for his high crime. I am not going to repeat that 
evidence; it speaks for itself.

[[Page S727]]

  Earlier in this trial, you might recall a few days ago that I 
mentioned my expectation that President Trump's lawyers might do 
everything they could to avoid discussing the facts of this case, and I 
can understand why. I mean, the evidence that all of us presented, that 
Manager Dean has summarized, is pretty devastating. So rather than 
address it, the President has offered up distractions, excuses, 
anything but actually trying to defend against the facts.
  They said things like President Trump is now a private citizen, so 
the criminal justice system can deal with it, or that we haven't set a 
clear standard for incitement--we talked a lot about due process--and 
that all politicians say words like ``fight.''
  I would like to take a minute to explain why each of those 
distractions are precisely that--distractions--and why they do not 
prevent in any way this Senate from convicting President Trump.
  No. 1, every President is one day a private citizen, so the argument 
that because President Trump has left office, he shouldn't be impeached 
for conduct committed while he was in office doesn't make sense. I 
mean, why would the Constitution include the impeachment power at all 
if the criminal justice system serves as a suitable alternative once a 
President leaves office? It wouldn't.
  Impeachment is a remedy separate and apart from the criminal justice 
system, and for good reason. The Presidency comes with special powers, 
extraordinary powers not bestowed on ordinary citizens, and if those 
powers are abused, they can cause great damage to our country, and they 
have to be dealt with in a separate forum, this forum.
  It would be unwise to suggest that, going forward, the only 
appropriate response to constitutional offenses committed by a 
President are criminal charges when the President returns to private 
life. That is not the kind of political system any of us want, and it 
is not the kind of constitutional system the Framers intended.
  Second, it is true we have not cited criminal statutes establishing 
elements of incitement because, again, this isn't a criminal trial. It 
is not a criminal case. President Trump is charged with a 
constitutional offense, and you are tasked with determining whether or 
not he committed that high crime as understood by our Framers.
  So the relevant question, which President Trump's lawyers would have 
you ignore, is, Would our Framers have considered a President inciting 
a violent mob to attack our government while seeking to stop the 
certification of our elections--would they have considered that an 
impeachable offense? Who among us, who among us really thinks the 
answer to that question is no?
  Third, due process. So just to be absolutely clear, the House, with 
the sole power of impeachment, determines what the process looks like 
in the House, and the Senate does the same for the trial.
  During this trial, the President has counsel. They have argued very 
vigorously on his behalf. We had a full presentation of evidence, 
adversarial presentations, motions. The President was invited to 
testify. He declined. The President was invited to provide exculpatory 
evidence. He declined. You can't claim there is no due process when you 
won't participate in the process.
  And we know this case isn't one that requires a complicated legal 
analysis. You all--you lived it. The managers and I, we lived it. Our 
country lived it. The President, in public view, right out in the open, 
incited a violent mob, a mob that temporarily, at least, stopped us 
from certifying an election. If there were ever an exigent 
circumstance, this is it.
  No. 4, we all know that President Trump's defense, as we predicted, 
spent a lot of time--all the time comparing his conduct to other 
politicians using words like ``fight.'' Of course, you saw the hours of 
video. As I said on Thursday, we trust you to know the difference 
because what you will not find in those video montages that they showed 
you is any of those speeches, those remarks culminating in a violent 
insurrection on our Nation's Capitol. That is the difference.
  The President spent months inflaming his supporters to believe that 
the election had been stolen from him, from them, which was not true. 
He summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and when the violence erupted, 
he did nothing to stop it; instead, inciting it further.
  Senators, all of these arguments offered by the President have one 
fundamental thing in common--one. They have nothing to do with whether 
or not--factually, whether or not the President incited this attack. 
They have given you a lot of distractions so they don't have to defend 
what happened here on that terrible day, and they do that because they 
believe those distractions are going to work, that you will ignore the 
President's conduct instead of confronting it.
  I think they are wrong. Some of you know this already. I am the 
youngest member of our manager team by quite a few years, so perhaps I 
am a bit naive, but I just don't believe that. I really don't. I don't 
believe their effort is going to work, and here is why: because I know 
what this body is capable of.
  I may not have witnessed it, but I have read about it in the history 
books. I have seen the C-SPAN footage, archives, sometimes have watched 
them for hours--yes, I have actually done that--and the history of our 
country in those books and in those tapes, the history of this country 
has been defined right here on this floor.
  The 13th Amendment, the amendment abolishing slavery, was passed in 
this very room. In this room--not figuratively, literally where you all 
sit and where I stand. In 1964, this body, with the help of Senators 
like John Sherman Cooper and so many others, this body secured passage 
of the Civil Rights Act. We made the decision to enter World War II 
from this Chamber.
  We have certainly had our struggles, but we have always risen to the 
occasion when it mattered the most, not by ignoring injustice or 
cowering to bullies and threats but by doing the right thing, by trying 
to do the right thing, and that is why so many nations around the world 
aspire to be like America. They stand up to dictators and autocrats and 
tyrants because America is a guiding light for them, a North Star. They 
do so, they look to us because we have been a guiding light, a North 
Star in these moments because the people who sat in your chairs, when 
confronted with choices that define us, rose to the occasion.
  I want to offer one more example of a decision made in this room by 
this body that resonated with me. The first day I stood up in this 
trial, I mentioned that I was the son of immigrants, like many of you, 
and many Senators graciously approached me after my presentation and 
asked me where my parents were from, and I told folks who asked that my 
folks were from East Africa.
  In 1986, this body considered a bill to override President Reagan's 
veto of legislation opposing sanctions on South Africa during 
apartheid. Two Senators who are sitting in this room, one Democrat and 
one Republican, voted to override that veto.
  That vote was not about gaining political favor. In fact, it was made 
despite potentially losing political favor. And I have to imagine that 
that vote was cast, like the decisions before it, because there are 
moments that transcend party politics and that require us to put 
country above our party because the consequences of not doing so are 
just too great. Senators, this is one of those moments.

  Many folks who are watching today's proceedings may not know this, 
but House Members like me, Manager Raskin, and fellow managers, we are 
not allowed on the Senate floor without express permission. No one is. 
Certainly, the Senators are aware of that.
  This floor is sacred. It is one of the reasons why I, like so many of 
you, were so offended to see it desecrated by that mob and to see those 
insurrectionists diminishing it and devaluing it and disrespecting 
these hallowed Halls that my whole life I held in such awe.
  Because of those rules that I just mentioned, this will be the only 
time I have the privilege to stand before you like this. When the trial 
is over, I will go back to being not impeachment manager but to being 
just a House Member. The trial will end, and we will resume our lives 
and our work.
  But for some, there will be no end--no end to the pain of what 
happened on January 6. The officers who struggled to recover from the 
injuries they sustained to protect us, they struggle to

[[Page S728]]

recover today, and the families who continue to mourn those whom they 
lost on that terrible, tragic day.
  I was struck yesterday by defense counsel's continued references to 
hate. One of my favorite quotes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.--it is 
one that has sustained me during times of adversity, and I suspect it 
has sustained some of you:

       I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a 
     burden to bear.

  This trial is not born from hatred--far from it. It is born from a 
love of country--our country--and our desire to maintain it and our 
desire to see America at its best. And in those moments that I spoke 
of--the Civil Rights Act and so much more--we remember those moments 
because they helped define and enshrine America at its best.
  I firmly believe that our certification of the electoral college 
votes in the early hours of January 7, our refusal to let our Republic 
be threatened and taken down by a violent mob, will go down in history 
as one of those moments too. And I believe that this body can rise to 
the occasion once again today by convicting President Trump and 
defending our Republic.
  And the stakes--the stakes--could not be higher, because the cold, 
hard truth is that what happened on January 6 can happen again. I fear, 
like many of you do, that the violence we saw on that terrible day may 
be just the beginning. We have shown you the ongoing risks and the 
extremist groups that grow more emboldened every day.
  Senators, this cannot be the beginning. It can't be the new normal. 
It has to be the end. That decision is in your hands.
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Mr. President, Senators, my daughter Hannah said 
something to me last night that stopped me cold and brought me up 
short. The kids have been very moved by all the victims of the 
violence, the officers and their families, but Hannah told me last 
night she felt really sorry for the kid of the man who said goodbye to 
his children before he left home to come and join Trump's actions. 
Their father had told them that their dad might not be coming home 
again, and they might never see him again. In other words, he was 
expecting violence and he might die, as insurrectionists did. And that 
shook me.
  Hannah said: How can the President put children and people's families 
in that situation and then just run away from the whole thing?
  That shook me, and I was filled with self-reproach because, when I 
first saw the line about ``your father going to Washington and you 
might not see him again,'' I just thought about it, well, like a 
prosecutor, like a manager. I thought: What damning evidence that 
people were expecting lethal violence at a protest called by the 
President of the United States in saying their final goodbyes to their 
kids. But Hannah--my dear Hannah--thought of it like a human being. She 
thought of it--if you will forgive me--like a patriot, someone who just 
lost her brother and doesn't want to see any other kids in America go 
through that kind of agony and grief.
  Senators, when I say all three of my kids are better than me, you 
know that I am not engaged in idle flattering. Maybe some of you feel 
the same way about your kids. They are literally better people. They 
have got a lot of their mom inside of them. They are better than me. 
And Hannah saw through the legality of the situation. She saw through 
the politics of the situation, all the way to the humanity of the 
situation and the morality of the situation. That was one of the most 
patriotic things I ever heard anybody say.
  The children of the insurrectionists, even the violent and dangerous 
ones--they are our children too. They are Americans, and we must take 
care of them and their future. We must recognize and exorcise these 
crimes against our Nation, and then we must take care of our people and 
our children--their hearts and their minds. As Tommy Raskin used to 
say: It's hard to be human.
  Many of the Capitol and Metropolitan police officers and Guards men 
and women who were beaten up by the mob also have kids. You remember 
Officer Fanone, who had a heart attack after being tased and roughed up 
for hours by the mob, and then begging for his life telling the 
insurrectionists that he had four daughters, and that just about broke 
my heart all over again. We talked about this for a long time last 
night. My kids felt terrible that other kids' fathers and mothers were 
pulled into this nightmare by a President of the United States.
  Senators, we proved to you he betrayed his country. We proved he 
betrayed his Constitution. We proved he betrayed his oath of office. 
The startling thing to recognize now is that he is even betraying the 
mob. He told them he would march with them, and he didn't. They 
believed the President was right there with them, somewhere in the 
crowd, fighting the fantasy conspiracy--steal the election and steal 
their country away from them. They thought they were one big team 
working together. He told them their great journey together was just 
beginning, and now there are hundreds of criminal prosecutors getting 
going all over the country and people getting set to say goodbye to 
members of their family.

  And the President who contacted them, solicited them, lured him, 
invited them, and incited them, that President has suddenly gone quiet 
and dark, nowhere to be found. He cannot be troubled to come here to 
tell us what happened and tell us why this was the patriotic and the 
constitutional thing to do.
  Senators, this trial, in the final analysis, is not about Donald 
Trump. The country and the world know who Donald Trump is. This trial 
is about who we are--who we are. My friend, Dar Williams, said that 
sometimes the truth is like a second chance. We have got a chance here 
with the truth.
  We still believe in the separation of powers. President Trump tried 
to sideline or run over every other branch of government, thwart the 
will of the people at the State level, and usurp the people's choice 
for President.
  This case is about whether our country demands a peaceful, nonviolent 
transfer of power to guarantee the sovereignty of the people. Are we 
going to defend the people who defend us, not just honor them with 
medals, as you rightfully did yesterday, but actually back them up 
against savage, barbaric insurrectionary violence? Will we restore the 
honor of our Capitol and the people who work here? Will we be a 
democratic nation that the world looks to for understanding democratic 
values and practices and constitutional government and the rights of 
women and men? Will the Senate condone the President of the United 
States inciting a violent attack on our Chambers, our offices, our 
staff, and the officers who protect us?
  When you see the footage of Officer Hodges stuck in the doorway, 
literally being tortured by the mob--if the government did that to you, 
that would be torture. And when you see that footage, and he is 
shouting in agony for his dear life, it is almost unwatchable. When the 
Vice President of the United States escapes a violent mob that has 
entered this Capitol Building seeking to hang him and calling out 
``traitor, traitor, traitor,'' and when they shut down the counting of 
the electoral college votes, is this the future you imagined for our 
kids? Is it totally appropriate, as we have been told? Or as 
Representative Cheney said, is it the greatest betrayal of the 
Presidential oath of office in the history of our country?
  And if we can't handle this together as a people--all of us--
forgetting the lines of party and ideology and geography and all of 
those things, if we can't handle this, how are we ever going to conquer 
the other crises of our day?
  Is this America? Is this what we want to bequeath to our children and 
our grandchildren?
  I was never a great Sunday school student. Actually, I was pretty 
truant most of the time. But one line always stuck with me from the 
Book of Exodus as both beautiful and haunting, even as a kid, after I 
asked what the words meant.

       Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.
       Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.

  The officer who got called the N-word 15 times and spent hours with 
his colleagues battling insurrectionists who had metal poles and 
baseball bats and hockey sticks, bear spray, and Confederate battle 
flags posed the right question to the Senate and to all of us:

       Is this America?


[[Page S729]]


  Dear Senators, it is going to be up to you, and whatever committees 
and subcommittees you are on, whatever you came to Washington to do to 
work on--from defense to agriculture, to energy, to aerospace, to 
healthcare--this is almost certainly how you will be remembered by 
history. That might not be fair. It really might not be fair, but none 
of us can escape the demands of history and destiny right now. Our 
reputations and our legacy will be inextricably intertwined with what 
we do here and with how you exercise your oath to do impartial 
justice--impartial justice.
  I know and I trust you will do impartial justice, driven by your 
meticulous attention to the overwhelming facts of the case and your 
love for our Constitution, which I know dwells in your hearts.
  ``The times have found us,'' said Tom Paine, the namesake of my son. 
``The times have found us.'' Is this America? What kind of America will 
we be? It's now literally in your hands. Godspeed to the Senate of the 
United States.
  We reserve any remaining time.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The House has reserved 28 minutes.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Proceed.


                      Counsels' Closing Arguments

  Mr. Counsel VAN DER VEEN. I will promise that I will be the only one 
talking, and it will not be so long.
  Before I start my prepared closing, I really want to clean up a few 
things from the mess that was the closing of the House managers. I do 
not want to ruin my closing because I think the ending is pretty good.
  What they didn't--they started off by misstating the law, and they 
started off by misstating the intent of our stipulation. What we did 
today was stipulate to an article that was published in a magazine, 
apparently, they have had for weeks, according to the documents they 
produced today, but for some reason this morning popped up with it.
  The stipulation was that they can put that in. We did not stipulate 
to its contents for truthfulness, and they tried to portray that in 
their closing as the stipulation. The stipulation was read into the 
Record. The proponents of that conversation--the real ones--have denied 
its content, its veracity.
  With respect to--and I am not going to talk much about the tortured 
analysis of our arson wars that started off or the truly sideways 
analogies that were used with fires. What I do want to talk about, 
though, is the doctoring of evidence.
  First of all, they sent us their evidence on Tuesday the 9th at 2:32 
p.m. by email. I was in the room trying the case already when they sent 
their evidence--due process.
  They used evidence that was flat wrong two or three nights ago with 
Senator Lee and had to withdraw it. They tried to use it again today.
  They tried to use evidence that they had never presented in the case 
in their closing argument. That is a very desperate attempt by a 
prosecuting team--nine of them--by a prosecuting team that knew that 
their case has collapsed.
  Their closing did not mention one piece of law. They didn't talk 
about the Constitution once. They didn't talk about the First Amendment 
and its application. They didn't talk about due process and how it 
applies to this proceeding for my client.
  The basic rule of any court is that when you close a case out, you 
close on the facts that were admitted in the trial. It is a basic, 
fundamental principle of due process and fairness. And that was 
violently breached today on multiple occasions. And you have to ask 
yourself why? Why did they resort to those tactics at this moment in 
time?
  Senators, good afternoon. Mr. President.
  What took place here at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 was a grave 
tragedy. Over the course of this trial, you have heard no one on either 
side of this debate argue that the infiltration of the Capitol was 
anything less than a heinous act on the home of American democracy.
  All of us, starting with my client, are deeply disturbed by the 
graphic videos of the Capitol attack that have been shown in recent 
days. The entire team condemned and have repeatedly condemned the 
violence and law breaking that occurred on January 6 in the strongest 
possible terms. We have advocated that everybody be found and punished 
to the maximum extent of the law. Yet the question before us is not 
whether there was a violent insurrection of the Capitol. On that point, 
everyone agrees.
  Based on the explicit text of the House Impeachment Article, this 
trial is about whether Mr. Trump willfully engaged in an incitement of 
violence and even insurrection against the United States, and that 
question they have posed in their Article of Impeachment has to be set 
up against the law of this country.
  No matter how much truly horrifying footage we see of the conduct of 
the rioters and how much emotion has been injected into this trial, 
that does not change the fact that Mr. Trump is innocent of the charges 
against him.
  Despite all of the video played, at no point in their presentation 
did you hear the House managers play a single example of Mr. Trump 
urging anyone to engage in violence of any kind. At no point did you 
hear anything that could ever possibly be construed as Mr. Trump 
encouraging or sanctioning an insurrection.
  Senators, you did not hear those tapes because they do not exist, 
because the act of incitement never happened. He engaged in no language 
of incitement whatsoever on January 6 or any other day following the 
election.
  No unbiased person honestly reviewing the transcript of Mr. Trump's 
speech on the Ellipse could possibly believe that he was suggesting 
violence. He explicitly told the crowd that he expected the protest 
outside the Capitol to be peaceful and patriotic.
  They claim that is not enough.
  His entire premise was that the proceedings of the joint session 
should continue. He spent nearly the entire speech talking about how he 
believes the Senators and Members of Congress should vote on the 
matter.
  It is the words. The Supreme Court ruled in Brandenburg that there is 
a very clear standard for incitement. In short, you have to look at the 
words themselves. The words have to either explicitly or implicitly 
call for--the words--call for lawlessness or violence. Whether the 
speech--you have to determine whether the speech was intended to 
provoke the lawlessness and whether the violence was the likely result 
of the word itself. They fail on all three prongs.
  The false and defamatory claim that Mr. Trump gave a speech 
encouraging his supporters to go attack the Capitol has been repeated 
so often, uncritically, without any examination of the underlying 
facts, that the American--the Americans--listening at home were 
probably surprised to learn it is not true.
  Furthermore, some of the people in this room followed Mr. Trump's 
statements and tweets in the weeks leading up to January 6 very 
closely. We know that he was not trying to foment an insurrection 
during the time because no one--from the Speaker of the House to the 
Mayor of Washington, DC--behaved in a fashion consistent with the 
belief that violence was being advocated for.

  Mr. Trump did not spend the weeks prior to January 6 inciting 
violence. He spent those weeks pursuing his election challenge through 
the court system and other legal procedures, exactly as the 
Constitution and the Congress prescribe.
  To believe based on the evidence you have seen that Mr. Trump 
actually wanted and, indeed, willfully incited an armed insurrection to 
overthrow the U.S. Government would be absurd.
  The gathering on January 6 was supposed to be an entirely peaceful 
event. Thousands and thousands of people, including Mr. Trump, showed 
up that day with that intention. A small percentage--a small fraction 
of those people--then engaged in truly horrible behavior. But as we now 
know, that those actors were preplanned and premeditated and acted even 
before this speech was completed, to which is the basis of the Article 
of Impeachment. It was preplanned and premeditated by fringe--left and 
right--groups. They hijacked the event for their own purposes.
  The House managers' false narrative is a brazenly dishonest attempt 
to smear, to cancel--constitutional canceled culture--their No. 1 
political opponent, taking neutral statements, commonplace political 
rhetoric, removing words and facts from context

[[Page S730]]

and ascribing to them the most sinister and malevolent intentions 
possible.
  Their story was based not on evidence but on the shear personal and 
political animus.
  The flimsy theory of incitement you heard from the House managers 
could be used to impeach, indict, or expel countless other political 
leaders. Many leading figures in other parties have engaged in far more 
incendiary and dangerous rhetoric, and we played some of them. I am not 
going to replay it. I am not going to replay you the words. You all saw 
the evidence. I am not going to replay mob scenes. I don't want to give 
those people another platform, any more view from the American people 
as to what they did. They should be canceled.
  Democrat politicians spent months prior to January 6 attacking the 
very legitimacy of our Nation's most cherished institutions and 
traditions. They didn't just question the integrity of one election; 
they challenged the integrity of our entire Nation--everything from our 
Founding Fathers, our Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, 
law enforcement officers, and the United States Military. They said 
that our society was rooted in hatred. They even said that America 
deserved--and I will quote--``a reckoning.''
  As you heard yesterday, throughout the summer, Democrat leaders, 
including the current President and Vice President, repeatedly made 
comments that provided moral comfort to mobs attacking police officers. 
During that time, many officers across the country were injured. As we 
all know, two sheriff's deputies in Los Angeles were ambushed and shot 
at point-blank range.
  Members of this very body have been in danger. Senators from Maine to 
Kentucky, and most points in between, have been harassed by mobs.
  Last August, a menacing leftwing mob swarmed Senator Rand Paul and 
his wife as they left the White House, and they had to be rescued by 
police.
  For months, our Federal courthouse in Portland was placed under siege 
by violent anarchists who attacked law enforcement officers daily and 
repeatedly and tried to set fire to the building.
  Speaker Pelosi did not call the violent siege of the Federal building 
an insurrection. She called the Federal agents protecting the 
courthouse ``stormtroopers.''
  The White House complex was besieged by mobs that threw bricks, 
rocks, and bottles at Secret Service agents, set fire to a historic 
structure, and breached a security fence to infiltrate the Treasury 
grounds.
  When my client's administration sent in the National Guard to secure 
the Nation's Capital City amidst the violence, Democrat leaders 
demanded that the forces be withdrawn.
  The Washington, DC, Mayor said the presence of the National Guard was 
an affront to the safety of the District. It must be fully investigated 
whether political leadership here in Washington, DC, took an inadequate 
and irresponsible force posture on January 6 because of their 
commitment to the false narrative of what happened last June.
  Hopefully we can all now agree that the administration acted properly 
by taking action to stop a riotous mob, establishing an appropriate 
security perimeter, and preventing the White House from potentially 
being overrun.
  The House managers argued this week that an alleged brief delay in 
issuing a public statement from Mr. Trump on January 6 was somehow 
evidence that he committed incitement or supported the violence. Yet 
for months last year Joe Biden and Vice President Harris and countless 
other Democrats repeatedly refused to condemn the extremists as riots 
were occurring daily, as businesses were being ramshackled, as 
neighborhoods were being burned, as bombs were exploding. They 
repeatedly refused to tell their violent supporters to stand down.
  Some even suggested that the mobs' actions were justified. Vice 
President Harris literally urged her followers to donate money to a 
fund to bail out the violent, extreme rioters so that they could get 
out and continue to do it over and over again. She later said that 
those folks were not going to let up and that they should not.
  All of this was far closer to the actual definition of ``incitement'' 
than anything President Trump has ever said or done, never mind what he 
said on the 6th. It is a hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy that the House 
managers have laid at the feet of this Chamber.
  The House managers suggested that this recent history is irrelevant 
to the current proceedings, but not only is Democrats' behavior 
surrounding last year's riots highly relevant as precedent and not only 
does it reveal the dishonesty and insincerity of this entire endeavor, 
it also provides crucial context that should inform our understanding 
of the events that took place on January 6.
  Many of the people who infiltrated the Capitol took pictures of 
themselves and posted them on social media. To some, it seems, they 
thought that it was all a game. They apparently believed that violent 
mobs, destruction of property, rioting, assaulting police, and 
vandalizing historic treasures was somehow now acceptable in the United 
States. Where might they have gotten that idea? I would suggest to you 
that it was not from Mr. Trump. It was not Mr. Trump. It was not anyone 
in the Republican Party that spent the 6 months immediately prior to 
the Capitol assault giving rhetorical aid and comfort to mobs, making 
excuses for rioters, celebrating radicalism, and explaining that angry, 
frustrated, and marginalized people were entitled to blow off steam 
like that.
  Let me be very clear. There can be no excuse for the depraved actions 
of the rioters here at the Capitol or anywhere else across this 
country. One hundred percent of those guilty of committing crimes 
deserve lengthy prison sentences for their shameful and depraved 
conduct. But this trial has raised the question about words, actions, 
and consequences.
  As a nation, we must ask ourselves, how did we arrive at this place 
where rioting and pillaging would become commonplace? I submit to you 
that it was month after month of political leaders and media 
personalities, bloodthirsty for ratings, glorifying civil unrest and 
condemning the reasonable law enforcement measures that are required to 
quell violent mobs.
  Hopefully we can all leave this Chamber in uniform agreement that all 
rioting--all rioting--is bad and that law enforcement deserves our 
respect and support. That has been Mr. Trump's position from the very 
beginning.
  The real question in this case is, Who is ultimately responsible for 
such acts of mayhem and violence when they are committed? The House 
Democrats want two different standards--one for themselves and one for 
their political opposition.
  They have carried out a grossly unconstitutional effort to punish Mr. 
Trump for protected First Amendment speech. It is an egregious 
violation of his constitutional rights. Since he uttered not a single 
word encouraging violence, this action can only be seen as an effort to 
censor disfavored political speech and discriminate against a 
disapproved viewpoint. It is an unprecedented action with the potential 
to do grave and lasting damage to both the Presidency and the 
separation of powers and the future of democratic self-government.
  Yesterday we played you a video of countless Democrat Members of the 
Senate urging their supporters to fight. We showed you those videos not 
because we think you should be forcibly removed from office for saying 
those things but because we know you should not be forcibly removed 
from office for saying those things. But recognize the hypocrisy
  Yesterday in questioning, House Manager Raskin admitted that the 
House Democrats had invented an entirely new legal standard. In fact, 
they have created a new legal theory: the Raskin doctrine. The Raskin 
doctrine is based on nothing more than determining protected speech 
based on the party label next to your name. Regardless of what you have 
heard or what you have seen from the House managers, if you pay close 
attention, you will see that any speech made by Democrat elected 
officials is protected speech, while any speech made by Republican 
elected officials is not protected.
  The creation of the Raskin doctrine actually reveals the weakness of 
the House managers' case. Elected officials--and we reviewed this in-
depth yesterday--under Supreme Court precedent Wood and Bond--by the 
way,

[[Page S731]]

Bond didn't burn his draft card; he actually still had it. It was part 
of his defense. But in Bond and in Wood, the Court clearly directed all 
to know that elected officials hold the highest protections of speech, 
the highest protections, and I remind you why: because you all need to 
be free to have robust political discussion because your discussion is 
about how our lives are going to go, and that shouldn't be squelched by 
any political party on either side of the aisle, no matter who is the 
majority party at the time.
  Why would the House managers make up their own legal standard? I will 
tell you why. Because they know they cannot satisfy the existing 
constitutional standard set forth by the United States Supreme Court 
that has existed for more than half a century. They argue Mr. Trump, as 
an elected official, has no First Amendment rights. It is the complete 
opposite of the law. We have shown you, without contradiction, that is 
wrong.
  They also know that they cannot satisfy the three-part test of 
Brandenburg, as elucidated in the Bible Believers case.
  There was absolutely no evidence that Mr. Trump's words were directed 
to inciting imminent lawless action. There was no evidence that Mr. 
Trump intended his words to incite violence. And the violence was 
preplanned and premeditated by a group of lawless actors who must be 
prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but it proves that his 
words weren't what set this into motion, what was the incitement.
  With no ability and no evidence to satisfy the existing 
constitutional standard, what are the House managers to do? They had to 
make up their own law. This is not only intellectually dishonest, 
folks; it is downright scary.
  What type of precedent would be set if the Senate did vote to 
convict? Can Congress now ignore Supreme Court precedent on the 
contours of protected free speech? Will Congress be permitted to 
continually make up their own legal standards and apply those new 
standards to elected officials' speech? This would allow Congress to 
use the awesome impeachment power as a weapon to impeach their fellow 
colleagues in the opposing party. This is not a precedent that this 
Senate can set here today.
  If the Senate endorses the House Democrats' absurd new theory, you 
will set a precedent that will trouble leaders from both parties 
literally for centuries to come, but that will not be the only 
disgraceful precedent to come from this case.
  This has been perhaps the most unfair and flagrantly unconstitutional 
proceeding in the history of the United States Senate. For the first 
time in history, Congress has asserted the right to try and punish a 
former President who is a private citizen. Nowhere in the Constitution 
is the power enumerated or implied. Congress has no authority, no 
right, and no business holding a trial of Citizen Trump, let alone a 
trial to deprive him of some fundamental civil rights.
  There was mention of a January exception argument. The January 
exception argument is a creation of the House managers' own conduct by 
delaying. They sat on the Article. They could have tried the President 
while he was still in office if they really believed he was an imminent 
threat. They didn't. The January exception is a red herring. It is 
nonsense because Federal, State, and local authorities can investigate. 
Their January exception always expires on January 20.
  House Democrats and this deeply unfair trial have shamefully trampled 
every tradition, norm, and standard of due process in a way I have 
never ever seen before. Mr. Trump was given no right to review the so-
called evidence against him at trial. He was given no opportunity to 
question its propriety. He was given no chance to engage in 
factfinding.
  Much of what was introduced by the House was unverified second- or 
thirdhand reporting cribbed from a biased news media, including stories 
based on anonymous sources whose identities are not even known to them, 
never mind my client. They manufactured and doctored evidence, so much 
so that they had to withdraw it.
  We only had--we had the evidence after we started the trial. They 
went on for 2 days, so in the evening, I was able to go back and take a 
really close look at the stuff. Myself and Mr. Castor and Ms. Bateman 
and Mr. Brennan, we all worked hard and looked at the evidence, four 
volumes of books in little, tiny print. We started--we literally had 
12, 14 hours to really look at the evidence before we had to go on, and 
just in that short time of looking at the evidence, we saw them 
fabricating Twitter accounts. We saw the masked man sitting at his desk 
with the New York Times there.
  And when we looked closely, we found that the date was wrong; the 
check had been added. They fabricated evidence. They made it up. They 
never addressed that in their closing--as though it were acceptable, as 
though it were all right, as though that is the way it should be done 
here in the Senate of the United States of America. Fraud--flatout 
fraud. Where I come from, in the courts I practice in, there are very 
harsh repercussions for what they pulled in this trial.
  As we have shown, the House managers were caught creating false 
representations of tweets, manipulating videos, and introducing into 
the Record completely discredited lies, such as the ``fine people'' 
hoax, as factual evidence.
  Most of what the House managers have said and shown you would be 
inadmissible in any respectable court of law. They were not trying a 
case; they were telling a political tale--a fable--and a patently false 
one at that.
  House Democrats have denied due process and rushed the impeachment 
because they know that a fair trial would reveal Mr. Trump's innocence 
of the charges against him. The more actual evidence that comes out, 
the clearer it is that this was a preplanned and premeditated attack, 
which his language in no way incited.
  Because their case is so weak, the House managers have taken a 
kitchen-sink approach to the supposedly single Article of Impeachment. 
They allege that Mr. Trump incited the January 6 violence. They allege 
that he abused power by attempting to pressure Georgia Secretary of 
State Raffensperger to undermine the results of the 2020 election, and 
they allege that he gravely endangered the democratic system by 
interfering with the peaceful transition of power. There are at least 
three things there.
  Under the Senate rules, each of these allegations must have been 
alleged in a separate Article of Impeachment. I need not remind this 
Chamber that rule XXIII of the Rules of Procedure and Practice in the 
Senate when Sitting on Impeachment Trials provides, in pertinent part, 
that an Article of Impeachment ``shall not be divisible . . . 
thereon.''
  Why is that? Because the Article at issue here alleges multiple 
wrongs in the single Article, it would be impossible to know if two-
thirds of the Members agreed on the entire Article or just on parts of 
it as the basis for a vote to convict. Based on this alone, the Senate 
must vote to acquit Mr. Trump. You have got to at least obey your own 
rules if it is not the Constitution you are going to obey.
  In short, this impeachment has been a complete charade from beginning 
to end. The entire spectacle has been nothing but an unhinged pursuit 
of a longstanding political vendetta against Mr. Trump by the 
opposition party.
  As we have shown, Democrats were obsessed with impeaching Mr. Trump 
from the very beginning of his term. The House Democrats tried to 
impeach him in his first year. They tried to impeach him in his second 
year. They did impeach him in his third year. And they impeached him 
again in his fourth year. And now they have conducted a phony 
impeachment show trial when he is a private citizen out of office.
  This hastily orchestrated and unconstitutional circus is the House 
Democrats' final, desperate attempt to accomplish their obsessive 
desire of the last 5 years.
  Since the moment he stepped into the political arena, my client--
since my client stepped in, they have been possessed by an overwhelming 
zeal to vanquish an independent-minded outsider from their midst and to 
shame, demean, silence, and demonize his supporters in the desperate 
hope that they will never, ever pose an electoral challenge.
  We heard one of the Congressmen on the screen: If you don't impeach 
him, he might be elected again.
  That is the fear. That is what is driving this impeachment.

[[Page S732]]

  When you deliberate over your decision, there are four distinct 
grounds under which you must acquit my client.
  First is jurisdiction. There is no jurisdiction. And if you believe 
that, you still get to say it.
  Two, rule XXIII--it had to be divisible. Each allegation had to be 
singularly set out in front of you so it could be voted on and to see 
if two-thirds of you think that they proved that case or not. They 
didn't do that. You have got to ask yourself why. They know the Senate 
rules. They got them, and so did I. Why did they do it? Because they 
hadn't investigated, first of all. But, also, what they found out is 
when they were preparing all this, they couldn't do it. So if they 
threw in as much as they could and made as many bold, bald allegations 
as they could, then maybe two-thirds of you would fall for it. That is 
why the rules don't allow it to go that way.
  Due process--I have exhausted that subject. It is a really good 
reason for all of you--all of you--in this Chamber to stop the 
politics, to read the Constitution and apply it to this proceeding and 
acknowledge that the lack of due process--way over the top, shocking. 
And you must not stand for it.
  And, of course, the First Amendment--the actual facts of this case. 
There were no words of incitement.
  Four grounds. Nobody gets to tell you which ground to pick, and 
nobody gets to tell you how many grounds to consider.
  Senators, do not let House Democrats take this maniacal crusade any 
further. The Senate does not have to go down this dark path of enmity 
and division. You do not have to indulge the impeachment lust, the 
dishonesty, and the hypocrisy.
  It is time to bring this unconstitutional political theater to an 
end. It is time to allow our Nation to move forward. It is time to 
address the real business pressing this Nation--the pandemic, our 
economy, racial inequality, economic and social inequality. These are 
the things that you need to be thinking and working on for all of us in 
America--all of us.
  With your vote, you can defend the Constitution. You can protect due 
process. And you can allow America's healing to begin. I urge the 
Senate to acquit and vindicate the Constitution of this great Republic.
  Thank you.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Who yields time
  Mr. Manager RASKIN. Mr. President, Senators, I understand--I am told 
we have around 27 minutes, but I will return all of that but perhaps 5 
back to you. There are just a few things I need to address. In an 
extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented act of self-restraint on my 
part, I will resist the opportunity to rebut every single false and 
illogical thing that you just heard. And I am going to be able to 
return to you, you know, perhaps 22, 23 minutes.
  A few points: One, we have definitely made some progress in the last 
few days because a few days ago, the President's team--although I think 
it was perhaps a member who has since left the team--lectured us that 
this was not an insurrection and said that impeachment managers were 
outrageous in using the word ``insurrection.'' Today, counsel, in his 
closing statement, said it was a violent insurrection, and he denounced 
it. And I would certainly love to see President Trump also call it a 
violent insurrection and denounce it too. And I believe--although, I 
don't have a verbatim text--that counsel called for long sentences for 
the people who were involved. Again, I would love to hear that come 
from the President as well.
  The distinguished counsel complains that there is no precedent with 
the developed body of law that the Senate has for impeaching and 
convicting a President who incites violent insurrection against the 
Congress and the government of the United States. Well, I suppose that 
is true because it never occurred to any other President of the United 
States--from George Washington, to John Adams, to Thomas Jefferson, to 
James Madison, to James Monroe, to Abraham Lincoln, to Ronald Reagan, 
to George W. Bush, to Barack Obama--to incite a violent insurrection 
against the Union.
  You are right. We have got no precedent for that, and so they think 
that that somehow is a mark in their favor--that is a score for them--
that this Senate has to be the first one to define incitement of 
violent insurrection against the Union. And so the gentleman puts it on 
me. He says: Inciting a President for committing incitement to violent 
insurrection against the Union is the new Raskin doctrine.
  We have tried to convince them that there are well-known principles 
and elements of incitement, which we have talked to you about ad 
nauseam, and that this is an intrinsically, inherently fact-based 
judgment. But if that is the Raskin doctrine--that a President of the 
United States cannot incite violent insurrection against the Union and 
the Congress--then I embrace it, and I take it as an honor. Most law 
professors never even get a doctrine named after them, so I will accept 
that.
  And, finally, the counsel goes back to Julian Bond's case because, I 
think, in the final analysis, their best argument--as pathetically weak 
as it is--is really about the First Amendment. But, remember, they keep 
talking about stifling President Trump's speech. Someone tell me when 
his speech has ever been stifled. He says exactly what he wants 
whenever he wants. If and when you convict him for incitement of 
insurrection, he will continue to say whatever he wants on that day. 
Remember, they referred yesterday to interference with his liberty, 
which I found absolutely bizarre because everybody knows he will not 
spend 1 minute in prison or jail from conviction on these charges. It 
is a civil remedy to protect all of us--to protect the entire country, 
our children, our Constitution, our future. That is what impeachment 
trial convictions are all about--are all about.
  Julian Bond--see, I knew Julian Bond, so forgive me. Most people say: 
Don't even respond to this stuff. I have got to respond to this. Julian 
Bond was a civil rights activist who decided to go into politics, like 
the people in this room, like all of us who are in politics. And they 
tried to keep him out. He was a member of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent 
Coordinating Committee, which really launched the voting rights 
movement in America. It is a great story that Bob Moses tells in his 
book called ``Radical Equations'' about--you know, he was a graduate 
student, mathematics, at Harvard. He was a graduate student in 
mathematics at Harvard. He went to Mississippi. You know why? Because 
he saw a picture in the New York Times of Black civil rights 
protesters, college students, I think, North Carolina A&T. He saw a 
picture of them on the cover of the New York Times, and they were 
sitting in at a lunch counter. He looked at the picture, and he said: 
They looked the way that I felt. They looked the way that I felt.

  He said he had to go down south to Mississippi, and they launched the 
voting rights movement. That is where the phrase ``One-person, one-
vote'' comes from. It was not invented by the Supreme Court. They would 
go door-to-door to try to register people to vote.
  But anyway, Julian Bond was a part of that movement, the Student 
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--nonviolence. It was the end, and it 
was the means--nonviolence.
  And he ran for the State legislature in Georgia, a path other civil 
rights activists followed, like our great, late, beloved colleague John 
Lewis, who is in our hearts today. And when he got elected, they wanted 
to try to keep him from being sworn in to the Georgia Legislature. And 
so they said the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is taking a 
position against the Vietnam war. You are a member of SNCC. We are not 
going to admit you because you took a position against the Vietnam war. 
And the Supreme Court, in its wisdom, said you cannot prevent someone 
from swearing an oath to become a member of a legislative body because 
of a position that they took or a group they were part of--took before 
they got sworn in.
  That is the exact opposite of Donald Trump. He got elected to office. 
He swore an oath to the Constitution to preserve, protect, and defend 
the Constitution. He served as President for 4 years, right up until 
the end, when he wanted to exercise his rights under the imaginary 
January exception, and he incited a violent mob and insurrection to 
come up here, and we all know what happened.

[[Page S733]]

  He is being impeached and convicted for violating his oath of office 
that he took. He is not being prevented from taking his oath in the 
first place.
  The First Amendment is on our side. He tried to overturn the will of 
the people, the voice of the people. He lost that election by more than 
7 million votes. Some people don't want to admit it. Counsel for the 
President could not bring themselves to admit that the election is over 
in answer to the question from the distinguished gentleman from 
Vermont. He refused to answer that. He said it was irrelevant, despite 
all of the evidence you have heard about the big lie and how that set 
the stage for his incitement of the insurrectionary violence against 
us.
  The First Amendment is on our side. We are defending the Bill of 
Rights. We are defending the constitutional structure. We are defending 
the separation of powers. We are defending the U.S. Senate and the U.S. 
House against a President who acted no better than a marauder and a 
member of that mob by inciting those people to come here. And in many 
ways, he was worse. He named the date; he named the time; and he 
brought them here; and now he must pay the price.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the Senate is now ready to vote on the 
Article of Impeachment. And after that is done, we will adjourn the 
Court of Impeachment.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will read the Article of 
Impeachment.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Article I: Incitement of Insurrection.
       The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives 
     ``shall have the sole Power of Impeachment'' and that the 
     President ``shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, 
     and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and 
     Misdemeanors''. Further, section 3 of the 14th Amendment to 
     the Constitution prohibits any person who has ``engaged in 
     insurrection or rebellion against'' the United States from 
     ``hold[ing] any office . . . under the United States''. In 
     his conduct while President of the United States--and in 
     violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute 
     the office of President of the United States and, to the best 
     of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the 
     Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his 
     constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully 
     executed--Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and 
     Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of 
     the United States, in that:
       On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the 
     Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the 
     United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate 
     met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of 
     Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the 
     months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump 
     repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the 
     Presidential election results were the product of widespread 
     fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or 
     certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the 
     Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd 
     at the Ellipse in Washington, DC. There, he reiterated false 
     claims that ``we won this election, and we won it by a 
     landslide''. He also willfully made statements that, in 
     context, encouraged--and foreseeably resulted in--lawless 
     action at the Capitol, such as: ``if you don't fight like 
     hell you're not going to have a country anymore''. Thus 
     incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had 
     addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, 
     interfere with the Joint Session's solemn constitutional duty 
     to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, 
     unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and 
     killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of 
     Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, 
     and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and 
     seditious acts.
       President Trump's conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his 
     prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of 
     the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior 
     efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during 
     which President Trump urged the secretary of state of 
     Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to ``find'' enough votes to 
     overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and 
     threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.
       In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the 
     security of the United States and its institutions of 
     Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic 
     system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and 
     imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed 
     his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people 
     of the United States.
       Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has 
     demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national 
     security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to 
     remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly 
     incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. Donald 
     John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from 
     office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of 
     honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

                           Vote on Article I

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Each Senator, when his or her name is 
called, will stand in his or her place and vote guilty or not guilty, 
as required by rule XXIII of the Senate Rules on Impeachment.
  Article I, section 3, clause 6 of the Constitution regarding the vote 
required for conviction of impeachment provides that ``no person shall 
be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the Members 
present.''
  The question is on the Article of Impeachment. Senators, how say you? 
Is the respondent, Donald John Trump, guilty or not guilty?
  A rollcall vote is required.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  The result was announced--guilty 57, not guilty 43, as follows:


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

  
  On page S733, February 13, 2021, second column, the following 
appears: The result was announcedguilty 57, not quilty 43, as 
follows:
  
  The Record has been corrected to read: The result was 
announcedguilty 57, not guilty 43, as follows:


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


                         [Rollcall Vote No. 59]

                                YEAS--57

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Burr
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Lujan
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Padilla
     Peters
     Reed
     Romney
     Rosen
     Sanders
     Sasse
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Toomey
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                                NAYS--43

     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Capito
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     McConnell
     Moran
     Paul
     Portman
     Risch
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Tuberville
     Wicker
     Youn
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. On this vote, the yeas are 57, the nays 
are 43.
  Two-thirds of the Senators present not having voted guilty, the 
Senate adjudges that the respondent Donald John Trump, former President 
of the United States, is not guilty as charged in the Article of 
Impeachment.
  The Presiding Officer directs the judgment to be entered in 
accordance with the judgment of the Senate, as follows:

       The Senate, having tried Donald John Trump, former 
     President of the United States, upon one Article of 
     Impeachment exhibited against him by the House of 
     Representatives, and two-thirds of the Senators present not 
     having found him guilty of the charge contained therein, it 
     is, therefore, ordered and adjudged that the said Donald John 
     Trump be, and is hereby, acquitted of the charge in said 
     Article.

  The majority leader is recognized.


      Communication to the Secretary of State and to the House of 
                            Representatives

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I send an order to the desk.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the order.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Ordered, that the Secretary be directed to communicate to 
     the Secretary of State, as provided by rule XXIII of the 
     Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on 
     Impeachment Trials, and also to the House of Representatives, 
     the judgment of the Senate in the case of Donald John Trump, 
     and transmit a certified copy of the judgment to each.

  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, the order will be 
entered.
  The majority leader.

                          ____________________