Mcconnell sorry, more than a week ago, i sent a letter to senator mcconnell outlining a proposed structure for a fair and honest impeachment trial in the senate. Nothing dill tower, nothing prolonged, but what joe friday said on dragnet. , just the facts, maam. President trump sadse he wants due process. Our proposal gives it to him. The tradition of due process is when you are accused, you get to confront your accuser and make your case. We urge President Trump to do that, through documents and witnesses. We have said from the beginning that there are two components that are necessary for a full and fair trial. First, the senate should hear testimony under oath from four key witnesses, all of whom would have eyewitness direct knowledge of what happened in relation to these charges. They should inclues michael duffey, associate director of National Security at the office of management and budget and second and just as importantly, the senate should issue subpoenas for a limited set of documents that we believe will shed additional light on the administrations Decision Making regarding the delay in Security Assistance funding to ukraine and its requests for certain investigations to be announced by the government of ukraine. The need for the senate to review documentary evidence has received far less attention than the need for witness testimony despite being an equally important aspect of the trial and getting the facts to come out. We dont know what these documents will say. Just as we dont know what the witnesses will say. They may actually be exculpatory of President Trump or they may be further condemn ig of President Trump, but they should come out. We should see these documents no matter what they say. Today, i sent a letter to all my senate colleagues, 99 of them, every democrat, every republican, detailing the specific documents were requesting sm the documents can be broken down into three evidentiary categories. First, documents related to the effort to induce and pressure ukraine to announce certain political investigations. Second, documents related to the order to hold and later release military assistance to ukraine. And third, documents related to the withholding of a white house meeting that was desperately sought by the newly elected president of ukraine. And its hard to overstate how important this meeting was to president zellens ki and hard to overstate how withholding it was so harmful to him and could have been used as a lever. Its especially astonishing that President Trump has hosted russian officials below the level of president in the oval office but withhold a meeting with the ukranian president. Why . Ukraine is our alley, russia is our adverse area. Withholding a meeting with one of our allies sends a stunning message to the world especially putin and raises many questions. The emails we are requesting are necessary to get to the bottom of it. Why this happened . Why secondary russian officials got meeting with President Trump and zellens ki was denied one. Our request for documents is not a new demand, nor would it create a timeconsuming production effort. Most of america wants to see all the facts come out, but not in a dilatory way. At the core of our justice, its called speedy and fair trial. That is just what we want. We want it fair and fair means documents, witnesses. Its hard to imagine a trial not having documents and witnesses. If it doesnt have documents and witnesses, its going to seem to most of the American People that it is a sham trial, a show trial, not to get tell facts. Its simply about getting the truth. Senator mcconnell has come up with no good reason while the trial shouldnt have these witnesses or documents. He does a lot of name calling and does a lot of partisanship and digging back in past history and misstating the case, but he still hasnt answered the question, what is wrong with witnesses, what is wrong with documents. One argument, leader mcconnell, give us one argument why they shouldnt be part of the trial. Duffey as a for mr. Witness before the stunning, explosive new information was released about President Trumps effort to freeze military aid to ukraine and the documents that he had sent. These have what happened over the weekend with his emails ta were made public has only bolstered the case that documents should be produced and witnesses testify. The White House Press secretary said his memo met nothing. Then release the documents surrounding it. Now new emails from top Trump Officials were released as you know, including one sent 91 minutes after President Trumps phone call with ukranian president in which President Trump asked for a favor. In the email the Top Administration official ordered the military assistance to ukraine be withheld and he demanded the order be kept hushhush. Why . If everything was on the up and up, if the call was perfect, why s one of his top aides say lets keep it hushhush. The new emails and the Trump Administration show why it is so important for the white house to produce the documents that we have requested. They will shed light on who ordered the aid cut and why they ordered it. If there was ever an argument hat we need mr. Duffey and others to come testify under oath and the argument that we need documents related to what was revealed about mr. Duffeys actions, this is it. We say to President Trump, if you are so confident you did nothing wrong, why wont you let your men testify . If you did nothing wrong, mr. President , why do you seem so eager to avoid the truth, to hide the truth . And why, leader mcconnell, if you want the truth and want a fair trial, whether you are a partisan or not, are you withholding . So far, including today, leader mcconnell has not come up with a single reason why we shouldnt have witnesses and documents. He does a lot of name calling and does a lot of finger pointing, but he hasnt given a single reason why there shouldnt be documents and witnesses. So we say to mr. President , we say to President Trump, release the emails, let your aides testify. We say to leader mcconnell, a fair trial with the facts, only the facts. Ready for your questions. Senator mcconnell said he would or he wants to wait until congress is back in session. Senator schumer the witnesses and documents are the main argument here. We must decide them and hopefully we can decide them in a bipartisan way before Going Forward with the trial. Leader mcconnell has said lets go forward with the trial and then decide documents, nothing would prevent him from having the arguments made by each counsel where there is nothing new and then dismissing the case. We arent going to stand for that. At the very minimum, will require votes from all the senators on each of the witnesses and about each of these sets of documents. And i dont think my colleagues, democrat or republican, are going to want to vote to withhold evidence in such an important trial. Senator, two questions, why do you think President Trump doesnt want to present witnesses and documents . The other thing, he said today, youre not impartial. Senator schumer the bottom line is, he can do all the name calling he wants. Give an answer to why we shouldnt have witnesses and documents. And he hasnt given a good answer, plain and simple. And until he does, hes not going to be able to escape the fact that he is probably and President Trump is probably, not certainly, but seems to the average person, they are hiding the truth and afraid of the truth. The president doesnt want to testify. Senator schumer he is afraid of the truth and hiding the truth. Any other questions . Thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org follow the impeachment process on cspan for coverage of the house, the senate and the administrations response. Watch live coverage on cspan. On demand at
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