>> the senate will convene as a court of impeachment, the chaplain will lead us in prayer . >> let us pray. arise old lord, as we enter the final argument phase of this impeachment trial. mighty god, we continue to keep our eyes on you. on whom our faith depends. from start to finish. may our senators embrace your promise to do for them immeasurably, abundantly above all that they can ask or imagine, lord, help our lawmakers to store your promises in their hearts and permit you to keep them from stumbling. grant that they will lead a legacy of honor as they seek your will in all they do. we pray in your amazing name, amen. >> please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance . [pledge of allegiance] >> with no objection, the journal of proceedings of the trial are approved today. the deputy sergeant at arms will make the proclamation. >> hear ye, hear ye. all persons are commanded to keep silent on pain of imprisonment while the senate of the united states is sitting for the trial of the articles of impeachment exhibited by the house of representatives againstdonald john trump , president of the united states. >> chief justice. >> the majority leader is recognized. >> today the senate will hear of the four hours of closing statements by the twosides . we will take a 30 minute lunch break after the house is made its initial sensation , then we will come back and finish this afternoon. >> pursuant to the provisions of senate resolution for 88, the senate has provided for up to four hours of closing arguments equally divided but between the managers on the part of the house of representatives and counsel for the president. pursuant to rule 22 of the rules of procedure and practice in the senate when sitting on impeachment trials, the argument shall be open and close on the part of the house of representatives . the presiding officer recognizes mister manager schiff to begin the presentation on the part of the house of representatives. >> mister chief justice, members of the u.s. senate, counsel for the president. almost hundred 70 years ago, senator daniel webster of massachusetts took to the well of the old senate chamber, not far from where i'm standing. he delivered what would become perhaps his mostfamous address , 7 march speech. webster sought to rally his colleagues to adopt a compromise of 1850, a package of legislation he and others hope would forestall a civil war brewing over the question of slavery. he said, it is fortunate that there is a senator of the unitedstates , a body not yet moved with propriety, not yet lost to a just sense of its own dignity and its own responsibilities and a body to which the country looks with confidence. for a wise, moderate patriotic and feeling councils. it is not to be denied we live in the midst of strong agitations that are surrounded by principal dangers to our institutions of government. the imprisoned whims are let loose but i have a duty to perform and i mean to perform it with fidelity, not with a sense of surrounding dangers but not without hope. webster was wrong to believe the compromise of 1850 can prevent secession of the south but i hope he was not wrong to put his faith in the senate. because the design of the constitution and intention of the framers was that the senate would be a chamber removedfrom the sway of temporary political whims . in federalist 65 hamilton road, where else than in the senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified or sufficiently independent? what other body would be likely to feel confident enough in its own situation to preserve on audit and uninfluenced the necessary impartiality between an individual accused and the representatives of the people to the accusers and in the same essay hamilton explained this about impeachment. the subject to its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men and the abuse or violation of some public trust. they are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be dominated political as they relate cheaply to injuries done to the society itself. the prosecution of them for this reason will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community. divided into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger the decision will be regulated by the strength ofparties and by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt . daniel webster and alexander hamilton placed their hopesin you , the senate to be the court of greatest impartiality, to be a neutral representative for the people and determining uninfluenced by party or pre-existing factions the innocence or guilt of the president of the united states. today you have aduty to perform . with fidelity, not without a sense of surrounding dangers but alsonot without hope . i submit to you on behalf of the house of representatives that your duty demands that you convict president trump. i don't pretend this is an easy process, it's not designed to be easy. it shouldn't be easy to impeach or convict the president. impeachment is an extraordinary remedy, a tool only to be used in rare instances of grave misconduct but it is in the constitution for a reason . and in america no one is above the law, even those elected president of the united states. i would say especiallythose elected president of the united states . you've heard arguments from the presidents council impeachment would overturn the results of the 2016 election. you heard that in seeking the removal of the president house is seeking to interfere in the next election. senators, neither is true . and these arguments demonstrate a misguided or i think intentional effort to mislead about the role that impeachment plays in our democracy . if you believe as we do and as we have proven the president's efforts to use his official power to cheat in the 20/20 election jeopardize our national security and are antithetical to our democratic tradition and you must come to no other conclusion than the president threatens the fairness of the next election and risks putting foreign interference between the voters and their ballots . professor dershowitz and the other counselors to the president have argued if the president thinks something is in his interest is by definition in theinterest of the american people . we have said throughout this process that we cannot and should not leave our common sense at the door. the logical conclusion is to this argument is that the president is the state . that his interests are the nation's interests . that's his will is necessarily hours. you and i and the american people know otherwise. but we do not have to be constitutional scholars to understand this is a position equally at odds with our constitution and our democracy . believing in this argument or allowing the president to get away with this conduct based on this extreme view and render him above the law. but we know that this cannot be true . what you decide on these articles will have implications for the future of the presidency not only for this president for all future presidents . whether or not the office of the presidency of the united states of america is above the law , that is the question . as alexis de toccqueville writes, the greatness of america lies not in being more enlightened than other nations but rather in her ability to repair her faults. in may 1974 barry goldwater, another republican congressional leaders went to the white house to tell president nixon it was time for him to resign. and that he can no longerhold back the tide of impeachment over watergate . contrary to popular belief, the republican party did not abandon nixon as thewatergate scandal came to light . it took years of disclosures and crisis and court battles. the party stood with nixon through watergate because he was a popular conservative president and his ace was with him so they were to read but ultimately as goldwater would tell nixon quote, there are only so many lies you can take and now there have been one too many. the president would have us believe he did not withhold aid to force these sham investigations, that his july 25 call with the ukrainians was perfect. that his meeting with president zelensky on the sidelines of the un is no different than a head of state meeting in the oval office . his only interest in having ukraine announced investigations into the bidens was an ultrasonic concern over corruption, that the ukrainians interfered in our 2016election, not russia . putin knows better than our own intelligence agencies. how many falsehoods can we take ? when will it be one too many? let us take a few minutes to remind you one last time of the facts of the president's misconduct as you consider how you will vote on this important matter for our nation. those facts compel the president's conviction and the twoarticles of impeachment . >> mister chief justice and the senators, over the past two weeks, the house has presented to you overwhelming and unconverted evidence that president trump has committed grave abuses of power that harmed our national security and were intended to defraud our election. president trump abuse the extraordinary powers he alone holds as president of the united states to coerce an ally to interfere in our upcoming presidential election for the benefit of his own reelection. he then use those unique powers to wage an unprecedented campaign to obstruct congress and cover up his wrongdoing. as a president schemed to corrupt our elections regressed over several months it became as one witness described, more insidious. the president and his agents wielded the powers of the presidency and the full weight of the us government to increase pressure on ukraine's new president to coerce him to announce 2 sham investigations that would smear his election opponent and raise his political standing. by early september of last year the presidents pressure campaign appeared on the verge of succeeding until that is the president got caught. and the scheme was exposed. in response, president trump ordered a massive cover-up unprecedented in american history. he tried to conceal the facts from congress using every tool and legal windowdressing he could to block evidence and muzzle witnesses. he tried to prevent the public from learning how he placed himself above country and yet, even as president trump has orchestrated this cover-up and obstructed congress impeachment inquiry, he remains unapologetic, unrestrained and intent on continuing his sham to defraud our elections. as i said stand here today, delivering the house closing arguments, president trump and his constitutional crimes, his crimes against the american people and the nation remain in progress. as you make your final determination on the president's guilt, it is therefore worth revisiting that totality of the president's misconduct. doing so lays bare the ongoing threat president trump poses to our democratic system of government. both to our upcoming elections that some suggest should be the arbiter of the president's misconduct and to the constitution itself that we also or to support and defend. donald trump was the central player in a corrupt scheme assisted principally by his private attorney rudy giuliani. early in 2019, giuliani conspired with two corrupt former ukrainian prosecutors to fabricate and promote phony investigations of wrongdoing by former vice president joe biden as well as the russian propaganda that it was ukraine, not russia that act the dnc in 2016. and in the course of their presentation to you, the presidents council has made several remarkable admissions that the firm core elements of this scheme including specifically about giuliani's role in representation of the president. the president's counsel has conceded that giuliani sought to present ukraine to investigate the bidens and alleged ukraine election interference on behalf of his client, the president and not the presidents focus on these sham investigations was significantly informed by giuliani who views the president adopted. compounding this damning admission the president's counsel has conceded that giuliani was not conducting foreign policy on behalf of the president . they have confirmed that in pursuing the two investigations, giuliani was working solely in the presidents private personal interest and the presidents personal interest is now clear, to cheat in the next election. as giuliani would later admit for the presidents scheme to succeed he first needed to remove the american ambassador to the ukraine, marie yovanovitch , and anticorruption champion . giuliani viewed as an obstacle who and i quote was getting, was going to make the investigation difficult for everybody. working with now indicted associates lev parnas and igor fruman, they orchestrated a smear campaign that culminated in her removal in april. the president sudden order to remove our ambassador came three days after ukraine's presidential election in late april. which saw a performer, vladimir zelensky swept into office on an anticorruption platform. president trump called to congratulate zelensky after his victory and invited president zelensky to the white house and agreed to send a vice president pence to his inauguration but after rudy giuliani was denied a meeting with president zelensky resident trump abruptly ordered vice president penceto cancel his trip . instead, a lower-level delegation led by three of president trumps political appointees, secretary of energy rick perry, ambassador to the european union, gordon sondland and special representative for ukraine negotiations kurt volker attended the inauguration the following week area the three returned from ukraine impressed with president zelensky and in a meeting with president trump in the oval office they relayed their positive impression of the new ukrainian president and encouraged president trump to schedule the white house meeting he promised in his first call. but president trump reacted negatively. he railed at ukraine tried to take me down in 2016 and in order to schedule a white house visit for president zelensky, president trump told the delegation that they would have to and i quote, talk to rudy. it is worth pausing here to consider the importance of this meeting in late may. this is the moment president trump successfully hijacked the tools of our government to serve as corrupt personal interests. when the president domestic political errand as one witness described began to overtake and subordinate us foreign policy and national security interests. by this point in the scheme rudy giuliani was advocating very publicly for rain to pursue the 2 sham investigations but his request to meet with president zelensky was rebuffed by the new ukrainian president. according to reports and ambassador bolton'saccount soon to be available , if not to this body then into bookstores near you, the president also unsuccessfully tried to get bolton to call the new ukrainian president to ensure he would meet with giuliani. the desire for the ukraine to announce the phony investigations was for a clear and corrupt reason to cause resident trump wanted to politically benefit, wanted the political benefit of a foreign country announcing that it would investigate his rival . that is how we know without a doubt that the object of the presidents scheme was to benefit his reelection campaign. in other words, to cheat in the next election. ukraine resisted announcing the investigation throughout june, so the president and his agent rudy giuliani turned up the pressure. this time by wielding the power of the united states government. in mid-june the department of defense publicly announced it would be releasing 250 million dollars of military assistance to the ukraine, almost immediately after seeing this, the president quietly ordered a freeze on the assistance to ukraine. none of the 17 witnesses in our investigation were provided with a credible reason for the hold when it was implemented and all relevant agencies opposed the freeze. in july giuliani and the presidents opponent, appointees made clear to the ukraine that a meeting at the white house would only be scheduled ukraine announced the sham investigations area according to a july 19 email, the white house has tried to suppress this drug deal, as ambassador bolton called it which was well known among the presidents was senior officials including his chief of staff mick mulvaney and secretary of state mike pompeo and it was related directly to senior ukrainian official by like gordon sondland at the white house. everyone was in the loop. although president zelensky explained he did not want to be a pawn in washington politics, president trump did not care. in fact, on july 25 for president trump spoke to president zelensky, president trump personally conveyed the terms of his quid pro quo to gordon sondland who then relayed the message to ukraine's president. later that morning during the now infamous phone call, president trump explicitly requested that ukraine investigate the bidens andthe 2016 election . zelensky responded as president trump instructed, and he assured president trump he would undertake these investigations. after hearing this commitment, president trump reiterated his invitation to the white house at the end of the call. now, no later than a few days after the call, the highest levels of the ukrainian government learned about the hold on military assistance. senior ukrainian official decided to keep it quiet, recognizing the harm it would cause to ukraine's defense, to the new governments standing at home and to its negotiating posture with russia. officials in the ukraine and united states hoped that the hold would be reversed before it became public . as we now know, that was not to be. as we have explained during the trial, the presidents scheme did not begin with the july 25 call and itdid not end there either . as instructed a top aide to president zelensky met with giuliani in early august and they began working on a press statement for zelensky to issue that would now the two sham investigations and lead to a white house meeting area zelensky, let's be very clear here. the documentary evidence alone, text messages, the emails that we've shown you confirm definitely not presidents corrupt, definitively, the presidents corrupt quid pro quo from the white house meeting. subsequent testimony further affirms that the president withheld this official act. this highly coveted oval office meeting to apply pressure on ukraine to do his personal bidding. the evidence is unequivocal. despite this pressure by mid august president zelensky resisted such an explicit announcement of the two politically motivated investigations desired by president trump. as a result the white house meeting remained unscheduled. just as it remains unscheduled to this day. during this same time frame in august, the president persisted in maintaining the hold on the aide despite warnings that he was breaking the law by doing so. as an independent watchdog recently confirmed that he did area according the evidence, resented to you, the presidents entire cabinet believed he should release the aide because it was in the national security interest of our country. during the entire month of august, there was no internal review of the aide. congress was not notified, nor was there any credible reason provided within the executive branch. with no explanation offered and with the explicit, clear yet unsuccessful quid pro quo for the white house meeting and in the front of his mind, ambassador sondland testified that the only logical conclusion was that the president was also withholding military assistance to increase the pressure on ukraine to announce the investigations. as sondland and another witness testified, this conclusion was as simple as 2+2 equals four. if the white house meeting wasn't sufficient leverage to extract the amount he wanted, trump reviewed the frozen aid as his hammer. secretary pompeo confirmed in an august 22 email, it was also clear that vice president pence was aware of the quid pro quo for the a and was directly informed of that in warsaw on september 1 after the freeze had become public and ukraine came desperate. sondland pulled aside the top aide in warsaw and told him that everything, both the white house meeting and also the security of business were conditioned on the announcement of the investigations that sondland, giuliani and others had been negotiating with the same age earlier inaugust . this is an important point the president claims that the ukraine did not know of the freeze in aid , so we know this to be false. as a former deputy foreign minister has admitted publicly, they found out about it within days of the july 25 call and kept it quiet , but no one can dispute that even after the hole became public on august 28 , president trump's representatives continued their efforts to secure ukraine's announcement of the investigation. this is enough to prove extortion in court and it is certainly enough to prove it here. if that wasn't enough however, on september 7 more than a week after that aid freeze came public, president trump confirmed directly to sondland that you wanted president zelensky in a public spot and that his release of the aide was conditioned on the announcement of the 2 sham investigations. having received direct confirmation from president trump, sondland relayed the presidents message to president zelensky himself . resident zelensky could resist no longer. america's military assistance makes up 10 percent of his countries defense budget. and president trump's visible lack of support for ukraine harmed his leverage in negotiations with russia. president zelensky affirmed to sondland on that same telephone call that you would announce the investigations in an interview on cnn. president trump and his pressure campaign appeared to have succeeded area two days after president zelensky confirmed his intentions to meet president trump and his demands, the house of representatives announced its investigation into the very issue. shortly thereafter the inspector general of the intelligence community notified the intelligence community that the whistleblower complaint was being improperly handled or was improperly withheld from congress with white house knowledge. in other words, the president got caught. and 2 days later on september 11 the president released the eighth. to this day however, ukraine still has not received all of the money congress has appropriated in the white house meeting has yet to be scheduled. the identity of the whistleblower, moreover is irrelevant. the house did not rely on the whistleblowers complaint even as it turned out to be remarkably accurate. it does not matter who initially sounded the alarm when they saw smoke. what matters is that the firefighters, congress , were summoned and found the blaze and we know that we did. the facts about the presidents misconduct are not seriously in dispute as several republican senators have acknowledged publicly area we have proof that the president abused his power in precisely the manner charged in article 1. president trump withheld a white house meeting and essential congressionally appropriated military assistance from ukraine in order to pressure ukraine to interfere in the upcoming presidential election on his behalf. the sham investigation president trump wanted announced had no legitimate purpose and was not in the national interest despite the presidents counsel, troubling reliance on conspiracy theories to claim the president acted in the public interest. the president was not focused on fighting corruption. in fact, he was trying to pressure ukraine's president to act corruptly by announcing these baseless investigations. and the evidence makes clear that the president's decision to withhold ukraine's military aid is not connected in any way to purported concerns about corruption or burden sharing. rather, the evidence was presented to you is damning, chilling, disturbing and disgraceful. president trump weapon eyes our government and the vast powers and trusted to him by the american people and the constitution to target his political rival and corrupt our precious elections. subverted our national security and our democracy in the process. he put his personal interest over those of the country. and he violated his oath of office in the process. but the presidents grave abuse of power did not end there. and conduct unparalleled in american history, once he got caught, president trump engaged in categorical and indiscriminate obstruction of any investigation into his wrongdoing. he ordered every government agency and every official to define the housesimpeachment inquiry . and he did so for a simple reason. to conceal evidence of his wrongdoing from congress and the american people. the presidents obstruction was unlawful and unprecedented, but it also confirms his guilt . innocent people don't try to hide every document and witness, especially those that would clear them. that's what guilty people do. that's what guilty people do. innocent people do everything they can to clear their name and provide evidence that shows that they are innocent. but it would be a mistake to view the presidents obstruction narrowly as the presidents counsel has tried to portray it. the president did not find the houses impeachment inquiry as part of a routine interbranch dispute or because he wanted to protect the constitution right and the privileges of his presidency. he said it consistent with his bow to fight all subpoenas. the second article of impeachment goes to the heart of our constitution and our democratic system of government . the framers of the constitution purposefully entrusted the power of impeachment in the legislative branch that it may protect the american people from a corrupt president. the president was able to undertake such comprehensive obstruction only because of the exceptional powers entrusted to him by the american people. and he wielded that power to make sure congress would not receive a single record or a single document related to his conduct and to bar his closest aides testifying about his scheme. throughout the houses inquiry , just as they did during the trial the presidents council offered bad faith and the meritless legal arguments as transparent legal windowdressing intended to legitimize and justify the presidents efforts to hide evidence of his misconduct. we have explained why all of these legal excuses hold no merit. why the houses subpoenas were valid, how the house appropriately exercise its impeachment authority, how the presidents strategy was to stall and obstruct. we explained how the president after the fact reliance on unproven and in some cases brand new legal privileges are shockingly transparent cover for a president to dictate a blanket obstruction. we've underscored how the presidents defiance of congress is unprecedented in the history of our republic. and we all know that an innocent person would eagerly provide testimony and documents to clear his name as the president apparently thought he was doing mistakenly when he released the call records of his 2 telephone calls with president zelensky and even as the president has claimed to be protecting the presidency, remember that the president never actually invoked executive privilege throughout this entire inquiry. a revealing fact given the laws prohibition on invoking executive privilege to shield wrongdoing. and yet, according to the presidents council, the president is justified in resisting the houses impeachment inquiry. they assure that the house should have taken the president to court to defy the obstruction. a presidents argument is as shameless as it is hypocritical. the presidents council is arguing in this trial at the house should have gone to court to enforce its subpoenas while at the same time the president own department of justice is arguing in court that the house could not enforce the subpoenas through the courts . and you know what remedy they say in court is available to the house? impeachment. for obstruction of congress. this is not the first time this argument has been made. resident nixon made it to. but it was roundly rejected by the house judiciary committee 45 years ago. when the committee passed on an article for obstruction of congress or a far less serious obstruction than we have here. the committee concluded that it was inappropriate to enforce its subpoenas in court and as the slide shows, the committee concluded it was inappropriate to seek the aid of the courts to enforce its subpoenas against a president. this conclusion is based on the constitutional provision besting the power of impeachment solely in the house of representatives and the express denial by the framers of the constitution of any role for the courts in the impeachment process. and again, the committee reports on nixon, article of impeachment. >> once we strip the presidents obstruction of this legal windowdressing, the consequences are as clear as they are dire for our democracy. to condone the presidents obstruction would strike a deathblow to the impeachment clause. in the constitution. and if congress cannot enforce this soul power vested in both chambers alone , the constitution final line of defense against a corrupt presidency will be in the serrated. a president who can obstruct impeachment power becomes unaccountable. he or she is effectively above the law. and such a president is more likely to engage in corruption with impunity. this will become the new normal. with this president and for future generations. so where does this leave us? as many of you in this chamber have publicly acknowledged in the past few days, the facts are not seriously in dispute. we have proved that the president committed grave offenses against the constitution. the question that remains is whether that conduct warrants conviction and removal from office. should the senate simply accept or even condone such corrupt conduct? buy a president? absent conviction andremoval, how can we be assured that this president will not do it again ? if we are to rely on the next election, to judge the presidents efforts to cheat in that election, how can we know that the election will be free and fair? how can we know that every vote will be free from foreign interference, solicited by the president himself? with president trump, the past is prologue. this is neither the first time the president solicited foreign interference in his own election nor is it the first time thepresident tried to obstruct an investigation into hismisconduct . but you will determine , you will determine, you will determine whether it will be his last. as we speak, the president continues his wrongdoing unchecked and unashamed . donald trump has not stopped trying to pressure ukraine to smear his opponent had nor has he stopped obstructing congress. his political agent, rudolph giuliani recently returned to the scene of the crime. in the ukraine. to manufacture more dirt for his clients. the president of the united states. president trump remains a clear and present danger to our national security area and to our credibility around the world. he is decimating our global standing as a beacon of democracy while corrupting our free and fair elections here at home. what is a greater protection to our country ? ensuring that we the american people alone, not some foreign power choose our commander-in-chief? the american people alone should decide who represents us in any office without foreign interference, particularly the highest office in the land . and what could undermine our national security more than to withhold from a foreign ally fighting a hot war against our adversary? hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid to buy sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenades launchers, radar and nightvision goggles . so that they may fight the war over there. keeping us safe here. we allow the presidents misconduct to stand, what message do we send? what message do we send to russia, our adversary , intent on fracturing democracy around the world? what will we say to our european allies already concerned with this president ? about whether the united states will continue to support our nato commitments that have been a pillar of our foreign policy since world war ii? what message do we send to our allies in the free world? and if we allow the presidents misconduct to stand, what will we say to the 68,000 men and women in uniform in europe right now who courageously and admirably wake up every day ready and willing to fight for america's security and prosperity. for democracy in europe and around the world. what message do we send them and we say america's national security is for sale? that cannot be the message we want to send. to our ukrainian friends, for our european allies or to our children and our grandchildren. who will inherit this precious republic. and i'm sure it is not the message that you wish to send to our adversaries. the late senator john mccain was an astounding man. a man of great principle, a great patriot. he fought admirably in vietnam and was imprisoned as a pow for over five years. refusing an offer by the north vietnamese to be released early because his father was a prominent admiral. as you all are aware, senator mccain was a great supporter of ukraine. a great supporter of europe. a great supporter of our troops. senator mccain understood the importance of this body, this distinguished body. and in serving the public, once saying glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself. to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely and who rely on you. the ukrainians and the europeans and the americans around the world and here at home are watching what we do. they are watching to see what the senate will do. and they are relying on this distinguished body to be constant to the principles america was founded on. and which we've tried to uphold for more than 240 years. doing the right thing, and being constant to our principles requires a level of moral courage that is difficult but by no means impossible. it is that moral courage shown by public servants throughout this country and throughout the impeachment inquiry in the house. people like ambassador marie yovanovitch. her decades of nonpartisan service were turned against her in a vicious smear campaign. that reached all the way to the president. despite this effort, she decided to honor a duly authorized congressional subpoena . and to speak the truth to the american people. for this, she was the subject of yet more smears, against her career and her character, even as he testified in a public hearing for congress. her courage matters. people like ambassador bill taylor, a west point graduate who wears a bronze star and an air medal for valor and a combat intricateinterest in infantrymen's badge. when his country called on him he answered again , and again and again, in battle and foreign affairs and in the face of a corrupt effort by the president to extort a foreign country into helping his reelection campaign. an effort that ambassador taylor rightly believed was crazy. his courage mattered. people like lieutenant colonel alexander vindman who came to this country as a young child, fleeing authoritarianism in europe. he could have done anything with his life. but he chose public service. putting on a uniform and receiving a purple heart after being wounded in battle fighting courageously in iraq. when he heard that fateful july 25 call and in which the president sold out our country to his own personal gain, lieutenant colonel vindman reported it and came before congress to speak the truth about what happened . lieutenant colonel vindman's courage matters. to the other public servants who came forward and told the truth in the face of vicious smears, intimidation and white house efforts to silence you, your courage mattered. you did the right thing. you did your duty, no matter what happens today or from this day forward, that courage mattered. whatever the outcome in this trial, you will remain vigilant in the house. i know there are dedicated public servants who know the difference between right and wrong. but make no mistake, these are perilous times. if we determine that the remedy for a president who cheats in an election is to pronounce him vindicated and attacked those who expose his misconduct. >> senators, before we break i want to take a moment to say something about the staff that worked tirelessly on the impeachment inquiry and this trial for months now. there's a small army of public servants down the hall from this chamber in offices throughout the house and yes, in that windowless bunker in the capital who have committed their lives to this effort because they, like the managers and the american people believe that a president free of accountability is a danger for the beating heart of our democracy. i'm grateful to all of them but let me mention a few. daniel goldman, rihanna workflow, patrick boland, william evans, patrick fallon, seanmisko, nicholas mitchell , daniel noble, the emma le pen go, emily simons, suzanne grooms, crystal boyd, norma eisen, barry burke, joshua max, ashley at the end , terry mccullough, dick meltzer and wendy parker. some of those staff including some singled out in this chamber have been made to endure the most vicious false attacks to the point where they feel their lives have been put at risk. attacks on them the degrade our institution and all who serve in it. you have asked me why i hired certain of my staff andi will tell you , becausethey are brilliant . hard-working, patriotic and the best people for the job. they deserve better than the attacks they have been forced to suffer. members of the senate, mister chief justice, i want to close this portion of our statement by reading you the words of our dear friend and former colleague in the house late allies of cummings who said this on the date that the speaker announced the beginning of the impeachment inquiry . as elected representatives he said of the american people we speak not only for those who are here with us now for generations yet unborn. our voices today are messages to a future we may never see . >> .. >> .. just as you are not making determination as to the president guilt or innocence, for yourselves alone. no, you and we represent the american people, the ones at home and at work who are hoping that their country will remain what it is has always believedt to be, a beacon of hope, of democracy and of inspiration to those striving around the world to create their own more perfect virginians. for those who are standing up to lawlessness and to tyranny. donald trump has betrayed his oath to protect and defend the constitution. but it's not too late for us to honor ours, to wield our power to defend our democracy. as president abraham lincoln said at the close of his cooper union address on february 27, 1860, neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by admin assist of destruction to the government nor of dungeons to ourselves. let us have faith that right makes might end in that faith let us to the end there to do our duty as we understand it. today we urge you in the face of overwhelming evidence of the president's guilt and knowing that if left the office he will continue to seek foreign interference in the next election, the vote to convict and invoke articles of impeachment and remove from office donald j. trump, the 45th president of the united states. mr. chief justice, we reserve the balance of our time. >> majority leader is recognized. >> mr. chief justice, colleagues, we will take a 30 minute break for lunch. >> without objection, so ordered. >> adam schiff and the house democratic managers concluding their closing arguments on the impeachment trial of president donald j. trump calling on senators to approve both articles of impeachment. they're taking a 30 minute break for lunch here we will hear from the president's defense team following that. europe c-span2 we will take your calls in just a bit. we're keeping our eye out for comments across the capital especially on the senate side about today's arguments so far. we want to make sure to get you in the conversation this afternoon. the democrats house managers using just about an hour or so of their time allotted engine from adam schiff reserving the balance of their time or later. though be a total up to four hours of closing arguments for the house managers and for the defense team. here are the numbers on the two articles of impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction of congress. if you think the present is guilty the line is (202)748-8920. if you think the president is not guilty, (202)748-8921. if you're undecided that bind is (202)748-8922. you can also text as an let us know your thoughts by text, (202)748-8903. make sure you include your name and where you're texting from. we'll get to your calls and comets shortly. some reaction to the argument so far we are from jason crow from val demings and adam schiff in the last hour. lee zeldin who's on the republican defense come presidents defense team republican members of the house one of those seven members tweeted this. my only criticism of val demings closing argument is just now is that it wasn't angry, hysterical, loud and wacky enough. holy cow, the president just a few minutes ago i hope republicans in the american people realize that totally partisan impeachment hoax is exactly that, a hoax. read the transcripts, listen to what the president and foreign minister ukraine said no pressure, nothing will ever satisfy the do-nothing radical left dimms. before we get to your calls will show you some of the comments of jason crow from colorado who is talking about the historical context of impeachment. >> mr. chief justice, members of the ascent, counsel for the president. almost 170 years ago senator daniel webster of massachusetts took to the well of the old chamber not far from where i'm standing. he delivered what would become perhaps his most famous address, the seventh of march speech. webster sought to rally his colleagues to adopt the compromise of 1850, package of legislation that he and others hope would forestall a civil war brewing over the question of slavery. he said, it is fortune there are the sin of united states, a body body not yet moved from impropriety, not lost to adjustments of its own dignity and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with confidence for wise, moderate, patriotic and healing counsel's. it is not to be denied we live in the midst of strong agitation and are surrounded by very considerable dangers to our institutions of government. the imprisoned wins are let loose but i've a duty to perform at the need to perform it with fidelity am not without a sense of surrounding dangers, but not without hope. webster was wrong to believe the compromise of 1850 1850 could t succession of the south but i he he was not brought to put his faith in the senate. because the design of the constitution and the attention of the framers was that the senate would be a chamber remove from this way of temporary political winds. federalist 65 hamilton wrote quote, where else then in the senate could be found the tribunal sufficiently dignified or sufficiently independent? what other body would be likely to feel confident enough in its own situation to preserve an influence the necessary impartiality between an individual accused and the representatives of the people, his accusers. hamilton explained this about impeachment. the subjects of its jurisdiction of those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men or in other words, from the use or violation of some public trust. they are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be dominated political as a really cheaply done to the society itself. the prosecution of them for this reason will seldom fail to agitate the passion of the whole community. and divided in the parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused come in such cases there will always be the greatest danger the decision will be regulated more by the strength of parties and by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt. daniel webster and alexander hamilton placed their hopes in you, the senate, to be the court of greatest impartiality, to be a neutral representative of the people in determining an influenced by party or pre-existing faction the innocence or guilt of the president of the united states. today you have a duty to perform with fidelity, not without a sense of surrounding dangers, but also not without hope. i submit to you on that of the house of representatives that your duty demands that you convict president trump. i don't pretend this is an easy process. it's not designed to be easy. it shouldn't be easy to impeach or convict a president. impeachment is an extraordinary remedy, a tool only to be used in rare instances of grave misconduct. but it is in the constitution for a reason. in america, no one is above the law, even those elected president of the united states. and i would say especially those elected president of the united states. you've heard arguments from the president's counsel of impeachment would overturn the results of the 2016 election. you've heard that in seeking the removal of disqualification of the president, the house is seeking to interfere in the next election. senators, neither is true. and these arguments demonstrate a deeply misguided or i think intentional effort to mislead about the role that impeach the place in our democracy. if you believe as we do and as we are proven that the president's efforts to use official powers to cheat and a 2020 election, jeopardize our national security and are antithetical to our democratic tradition, then you must come to no other conclusion that the president threatens the fairness of the next election and risks putting foreign interference between the voters and their ballots. professor dershowitz and the other counselors to the president had argued if the president thinks something is in his interest, then it is by definition and interest of the american people. we have said throughout this process we cannot and should not leave our commonsense at the door. the logical conclusion this argument is that the president is the state, that his interest of the nation's interests, that his will is necessarily ours. you and i and the american people know otherwise. we do not have to be constitutional scholars to understand that this is a position deeply at odds with our constitution and our democracy. but believing in this argument or allowing the president to get away with misconduct based on this extreme view would render him above the law. but we know that this cannot be true. what you decide on these articles will have lasting implications for the future of the presidency, not only for this president but for all future presidents. whether or not the office of the presidency of the united states of america is above the law, that is the question. as alexis de tocqueville wrote in his 1835 were, democracy in democracy in america, quote, the greatness of america lies not in being made more enlightened and any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults. in may of 1974 barry goldwater and other congressional republican leaders went to the white house to tell president nixon that it was time for him to resign. and that they could no longer hold back the tide of impeachment over watergate. contrary to popular belief the republican party did not abandon nixon as the watergate scandal came to light. it took years of disclosures and crisis and court battles. the party stood with nixon's watergate because he was a popular conservative president and his base was with him. so they were, too. but ultimately as goldwater would tell nixon, quote, there are only so many lies you can take, and now there had been one too many. the president would have us believe he did not withhold a to force the sham investigations. that is july 25 call with the ukrainians was perfect, that is meeting with president zelensky on the sidelines of the unit is so different and had a state meeting in the oval office. that is only interest in having ukraine announced investigations into the bidens wasn't altruistic concern over corruption. at the ukrainians interfered in our 2016 election, not russia. that putin knows better than her own intelligence agencies. how many falsehoods can we take? when will it be one too many? >> jason called colorado one of the freshmen members on the house managers, the democratic, democrats making their closing arguments in the impeachment trial of president donald trump, that both sides have is up to four hours equally divided. they gaveled out at noon, adam schiff reserving the bowels of the time expected back 12:30 p.m. eastern or so. live coverage is here on c-span2 and opening up own lines -- phone lines in it from you is a present guilty or not guilty. that text light is 202-748-8903. tell us where you're texting from antony. a couple of those, bob from new jersey, the blue state he says not guilty of my fellow democrats have been on this bs impeach journey since the day after he was elected. hard to believe that anymore. sad time in her country. the dimock party has divide this country for the past three years. disgusting we need term limits. my name is donald, the potus is not guilty. democrats are trying to over the united states, where. we the people will decide. guilty, , the republicans are in lockstep supporting trump's continued corruption of our republic. also feeling that way guilty from andrea in philadelphia. good afternoon. andrea, philadelphia, pennsylvania, go ahead. [inaudible] yes, thank you. thank you for taking my call. i feel that he is actually possibly 100% guilty. there's a question about question about it and i'm really hurt, not hurt but i am very upset at the hearing adam schiff statement when he went to break about how congressional staff members are being threatened. that is very disturbing to me and very upsetting to me. i'm sad they didn't bring that up during whole impeachment trial about how staffers are being threatened. but to me that's very thuggish, very gangster. he reminds me of some of the things i learned and heard about in nazi germany, this gestapo type of behavior, brutality that republicans in the senate is that taking position on. is this really, breaks my face. and what the country stands for nothing it has me wondering if i need to leave his country. i'm really disappointed, just beyond words about this. this is very upsetting to me. >> host: florida, deborah, also thinking the present is guilty. tell us why. >> caller: yes. he is guilty. i don't know what else he has to prove. he has demonstrated all behavior of criminal person, a person who has a criminal mind, who will do anything to win, cheat, lie, steal. he threatens, he bullies people. he's the worst president ever in the united states. i have such anxiety over this. i have stopped watching the news because i cannot stand it anymore. how the republican party can just roll their eyes and cover their ears and weekend none of this is going on. it reminds me of the time when hitler took over and killed millions of jews. i mean, and people stood by and just cheered him on, and this is what they're doing with trump. they are allowing him to --, let me ask you. you said jed anxiety. to believe that anxiety is clearing the president, is finding the president guilty of those two counts going to solve that anxiety? in a broader sense politically. >> caller: yes, no. what calls my anxiety is all republicans, not one of them has stood and gone with their gut. they are, like they owe him something. yet such power over his party. not one has stood up and stood ground and said this meant is corrupt, this is not the way we should run america. he is making a fool out of us. he is putting us in danger. he is putting our military, our ambassador over seas, there in jeopardy. >> host: remind you of the timeline from roll call. senate plans to vote wednesday, plans to equip trump. so the talk about the 4 p.m. vote on wednesday. today is devoted to the final closing arguments, one hour down, three more. if the use all of the time equally divided between the house managers and the president's defense team. we expect the senate to return in the next ten, 15, 20 minutes or so. we continue taking your calls in common. if you are unsure where you stand on, after all the argument, (202)748-8922 is a line. twinkie in birmingham, alabama. >> caller: good morning. i'm calling because our country is really blind. a 13-year-old child could tell us that they are guilty. donald trump, mike pence and all of the republicans are guilty. america, this is not a witchhunt. people don't don't spend but the lines on -- lights on the lunches to call this a witch hunt. the democrats are doing what god has appointed them to do. unlike the lady just commented about them threatening people, america, this is not the first time donald trump and his cronies have threatened anybody. for them to even suggest threatening from the beginning, 2016, he should've been locked up. you don't come into the office and have another country to help you get in your position. the republicans should've done something about that then. >> host: will go to are not guilty line, debbie in utah. >> caller: how're you? >> host: fine, thank you. >> caller: as i sit here and listen to these people saying he is guilty and a 13-year-old child stands up and does this, i urge people to listen to what comes out of peoples mouth and research it for themselves. you know, i sadr watch these congressmen, and then the media spins with them, and it's just absolutely upsetting to me. you know, cover their eyes, cover their ears, that's what these people are doing. they are being -- [inaudible] from all these cannot you. i'm not saying you. i like c-span. because you give a person each side of the story. i urge you these people to commit to look at what was said by trump and what was said by our democratic congress ran congress. because they lied, jerrold nadler and adam schiff never showed up in the most critical place. there was not one fact witness to this. i urge people not to watch the news, to actually watch c-span and see the things that are coming out, thanks for that. all of her cover jet c-span.org by the way a couple of text here. here. this is wichita, kansas. excuse me, andrea from kentucky say guilty. tina for massachusetts who this president has not been removed from office the senate will fail america. tyler from virginia, i am concerned about this trial. it will become in the future with the president committed the wrongdoings, is accused of are not, a partisan impeachment has been awarded since the framers and now a reality. derek from wisconsin, not guilty. this was a sham from the beginning and i'm excited to get behind this trump 2020. tom is in wichita on our guilty line. wichita, kansas, go ahead. >> caller: good morning. just a comment about the last caller. i live in a red state, and i'm having issues with some of my friends that back trump regardless. what i just heard from the last caller is the same thing is, you're not, in my opinion, you're not looking at the evidence. you are not defending the president with any evidence. so that i find disturbing. and the other thing i am struggling with is why i i procs this so much different than my friends who are trump supporter supporters. if a obama had done the same tg i would've said he's guilty, get him out. i supported obama. so i think my comment today, mr. jeffries summed it up to me. they make such a strong case, in my opinion, but today when he commented about ambassador yovanovitch, having the courage to stand up after the ridicule from the president of the united states, doing everything he did to destroy her and was somewhat successful in that, that's exactly what senators need to process. this is not about them. this is about our country. it's not about politics. >> host: hakeem jeffries one of the four is spoke in the first hour of the house managers argument with adam schiff summing it up reserving time as the winter break. they heard from jason crow, from hakeem jeffries, , adam schiff d also from val demings who here gives an overview of the articles of impeachment. >> president trump abuse the extraordinary powers he alone holds as president of united states to coerce an ally to interfere in our upcoming presidential election for the benefit of his own reelection. he then used those unique powers to wage an unprecedented campaign to obstruct congress and cover up his wrongdoing. as the president's scheme to corrupt our election progressed over several months, it became, as one witness described, more insidious. the president and his agents wielded the powers of the presidency and the full weight of the u.s. government to increase pressure on ukraine's new president to coerce him to announce two sham investigations that would smear his potential election opponent and raise his political standing. by early september of last year, the president's pressure campaign appeared on the verge of succeeding, until that is, the president got caught. and this scheme was exposed. in response, president trump ordered a massive cover up, unprecedented in american history. he tried to conceal the fact from congress using every tool and legal windowdressing he could to block evidence and muzzle witnesses. he tried to prevent the public from learning how he placed himself above country. and yet, even as president trump has orchestrated this cover-up and obstructed congresses impeachment inquiry, he remains unapologetic, unrestrained and intent on continuing his sham to defraud our election. as i stand here today delivering the houses closing arguments, president trump's constitutional crimes commit crimes against the american people and the nation, remain in progress. as you make your final determination on the president's guilt it is, therefore, worth revisiting the totality of the president's misconduct. doing so lays bare the ongoing threat president trump holds us to our democratic system of government, both to upcoming election that some suggest should be the arbiter of the president's misconduct, and to the constitution itself, that we all swore to support and defend your. >> host: val demings and part of the closing arguments which got underway this morning at 11 o'clock eastern. this senate is in the break for lunch. have a total four hours, democrats using an hour and there's still more ahead. then gaveling back in about 12:30 p.m. so few minutes away here on c-span2. we'll continue to take your calls and comments, a couple of comments from our capitol hill producer craig kaplan observed the arguments today saying inside the impeachment trial date 12 where all senators running for president, and intent is seated at the senate floor desk of writing back to the campaign trail for two nights i will caucuses. after the break that was announced at noon he points out college and murkowski, senator collins voting for witnesses remained at the desk. seated next to each other at the start of brunch lunch break following the house managers closing argument first talking with senators cinema into thune and then just been so for several minutes. finally send both parties are eating lunch in several some rs outside the senate chamber as well as in the cloak rooms. we will continue to take your comments and calls. you can see the screen from the senate with the video provided by the u.s. senate so if we cut you off short, sorry about that but we don't have control of those cameras. i'm sure you may be aware by now. two illinois, dale, go ahead. >> caller: thanks for letting me talk. first of all i want to say i was pretty tired of the clinton era when went through that, but as i listen to all these guilty i can't help but wonder how the people are kind of so quick to say guilty. with all the weaponizing with scene of the government in the last 11 years, that's bad. i realize that nobody is going to get in trouble so nobody has been getting in trouble i can't imagine that trump is going to get in trouble. it's just kind of crazy at all this bad is going on in the government and we constantly get to see whether your democrats or republicans, nobody gets in trouble for what they do wrong. so the government gets to do whatever it wants to do, but the people have to continue to see the government get worse and worse and worse. also i have read the transcript and yes, you know, people talk how it's not the transcript because the transcript -- there was the transcript everybody that testified about the transcript said it was the transcript. i wish some of your listeners would talk about it was at the transcript is that's all it alt after reading that. that's all it got to go and build my own opinion after listening to all the congressman, lawyers go back and forth what they're saying. my last point, nobody is getting in trouble because nobody has gotten in trouble. nobody will get in trouble, and it will be weird the president of the united states would get in trouble if nobody else is getting in trouble. fox or cnn sesame gets in trouble i just laugh. >> host: california, tell us what you think. >> caller: thank you. i think that the republican senators reminding of the charles manson girls. they would do anything that charles manson did. nowadays the present-day charles manson in the white house telling the senators what to do. and i just hoping that the voters are looking and vote out the manson cult followers, because the subway our government is supposed to work. the four they said he didn't do things. now they said he did do it but we're not going to vote him out. that is just, oh, my god, cold followers in the congress is just scary. we should not have that. voters listen and vote your conscience. >> host: steward of florida next joshua undecided on the articles of impeachment. >> caller: yes, hello. i'm from south florida, history class. one of the things we learn is the constitution is written hundreds of years ago obviously. so things change over time and a lot of things are more up for interpretation. so regardless of whether or not you believe , don't want to be dash i guess we canter senator klobuchar. go ahead with your comments. sorry to interrupt. go ahead. >> caller: regardless of whether or not one believes that his actions were impeachable, we are just and wasting everybody's time because currently the majority of the senate is republican and there's no way that is going to be removed from office. so, i mean, regardless of whether you think he should be, which is an wasting everybody's time right now, and money and tax dollars. >> host: appreciate you weighing in. let's listen in to senator klobuchar tco we can hear. >> is not enough for them to vote for impeachment. it is enough for -- care about patriotism and some some who pr controversy it is enough to make them -- [inaudible] >> we're feeling good. i am, you know, i always rely people when i made that announcement in the middle of the snow, a lot of people to game think is going to make it through that announcement, much less be in the top five candidates, which is where i am. we have an incredibly strong team. i am punching about my weight. everyone knows that, when you look at the money spent last quarter but i have been frugal and that allowed me to keep going. we're headed to the hampshire where i have three of the four top house leaders in the state house have endorsed me as was every newspaper in new hampshire. >> do you think this is negatively affected -- [inaudible] >> i get a lot of the groundwork but last week i would've been the one that would've been a some crazy schedule in every small town i will but i couldn't do that. we will let the chips fall where they may. >> thank you. try what senator klobuchar talk about the iowa caucuses tonight. she, senator sanders and warren will be leaving this afternoon once the trial wraps up. it will be heading to i i woul. i would coverage from milo tonight 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span2. the caucus from west des moines, iowa, 7:30 p.m. eastern again that will be over on c-span. waiting for the senate to return. you can see momentarily so we will go there when you turn on the cameras. if we interrupt you, we excuse ourselves, please excuses i should say. we'll go to texas and this is randy. not guilty you say. >> caller: yeah, i say not guilty and i've watched the house representatives make their case the past several months and as they brought it to the senate, i felt that they just fail to bring a complete case as i listened to all of the facts. they lacked the facts to back up their case and as a person who wouldn't want to go to trial unless you brought the facts, witnesses and documents as they were saying, and they didn't even seem to try to do that when had the opportunity at the house managers. and the fact the president himself, his team was not allowed to represent himself during the house hearings, i felt was not right, , particulay in our country with the value systems that we have here. so with those piece of information, i thought that the senate just did not have enough information to push the case forward. i thought it was out of place given the constitution for them to be calling in witnesses and more documents with the 28,000 pages of documents they have had and all of the witness testimony that was brought forward and all of the -- it just reminded me when i was in coverage working in programs where you had to bring the documents. you had to bring your case forward. and in order to get it heard properly. so i felt they just didn't bring enough. they fell short by a lot. so that's why i am voting not guilty. >> host: another view from texas, arlington, texas. diane, unsure about the impeachment articles. center to feinstein coming in. go ahead. >> caller: i was just calling to say should everyone at this point be undecided? it we sit and look at a court cases our editor sitting on a jury are not supposed to make a decision until the final words and until the judge or anybody tells you what you're supposed to decide the case on. it's just amazing to me i guess i called in undecided to point out that when your people calling in to program a lot of them are so emotional about this that you can't judge a case on your emotions to get to be on the facts. i've been a jury duty before. i've watched cases before, and a lot of times it all is dependent on the attorney representing the case. if i was to vote on it right now i'm going to wait until the end but if i was one of the presentation of the case was, the democrat's side of this is so emotional and so wrapped up into the history of hatred and then you've got the other side of death of the president who is being calm, collected and stating the facts. if you're a juror and sitting in the jury box, you go on emotion or to go on facts? >> host: just to let you know the timeline as a solid majority leader entering the senate chamber so they should be resuming here very, very shortly. we'll go there live when it happens. just to go over the timeline come so far what our has been use of the final four hours of closing arguments equally divided between both sides. we expect the trial to continue to midafternoon, 3:00 or so maybe a a little after given te lunch break. after that the senate will be in a period of what they call morning business allowing senators on the floor to speak up to ten minutes at a time on the impeachment trial. the votes set for wednesday afternoon at 4:00 eastern when the two articles of impeachment. we are waiting for the senate camera to go back on. senator leahy -- as he is often done taking pictures himself of the goings on. fred is in edmond oklahoma who says guilty. go ahead. >> caller: my name is fred from oklahoma, and i do believe that the democrats are doing exactly what they did with the kavanaugh hearings. no proof and no evidence. they made that poor woman look like an idiot. she had her own friends turning on her. this seems to be the same exact case, no proof, no evidence. now instead of them doing their job, there's a good possibility i don't know if he's not guilty, i don't, but i would have to say on the evidence that he is being shanghaied because the democrats, , they did not do thr job. every time adam schiff speaks it seems like it's another lie. i mean, he should be pinocchio. everything is not proven. why is no one challenging him next i mean, the whistleblower or the make-believe, if you watch the facebook and all that stuff, they've got him, chairs of whatever his name is with him and his family pictures of him and his daughter. it is a whistleblower, then that seems pretty biased to me. >> host: arkansas, we hear from william this is not guilty. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i think i hit the nail on had earlier talking about how the house, yeah, the house defense was mostly using rhetoric of hatred and with a reference to charles manson and then the nazis in germany and the emphasis on colonel vindman leaving his authoritarian country. i just think it's things like that. and then there's been several guilty callers calling and they're just using the same rhetoric. the last point i just wanted to say was i that is really ironic how adam schiff use the excerpt from the federalist papers that emphasize on false accusations and standing tall through them. because that really more resonated with me to trump than it did to the suppose it, the threats and the people who stood up and did their jobs, apparently. >> host: okay, i'll let you go. william from arkansas. we go to sarasota, florida. you are next, from eric. >> caller: good afternoon. how were you? >> host: fine thanks. [inaudible] thanks for taking my call. i just want to say i think definitely guilty. i don't understand, trump has always been a king of misinformation. we don't need any more evidence. you have recorded evidence of him committing a crime. i do understand and the misuse of billions taxpayer dollars for his political advantage. my understanding of the republican party is not even there. i do not understand it. i don't understand most of the people that support him. he has been for years like i i said earlier i king of misinformation. >> host: we will let you go and listen to eye with senator joni ernst. >> if he steps in that water. >> he could, he could do that, i just really want him to protect a strong message that everything that he and his administration partnered with a republican senate, all of those wonderful things that we've been able to deal. he's got a lot of really great things going on with them, and i think we should take that time and focus on that and let's focus on the things that can bring us together. what does he want to see coming up next? we cut him from action we need working on. i think we really need something that polls republicans back together can do we need to be working for another for a numbe issues in a bipartisan manner. [inaudible] -- context. the point is that the bar has been lowered so sadly by democrats that if you have, regardless of who it is, you have one person, one party, a a congress of a different party that they could impeach for whatever think they want. [inaudible] it was a hypothetical so it wasn't directed to -- just hypothetical. i think we have to be judicious of what were doing as a congress especially comes to something as important -- [inaudible] such as the removal of a president and i think the bar has been lowered. >> host: joni ernst head into the senate and we saw about him as the majority leader mitch mcconnell entering. the majority leader was silent when asked if you have unanimity on his side in support of acquittal for the president when asked about the wednesday trial verdict. closing arguments at. senate containing momentarily. continue with your comments and calls. stockton, california, not guilty line. >> caller: hello. i'm from stockton, california. hello, god bless you. i'm not going to make a lot of explanations. i am for voting no, no guilty. the reasons are obvious, and seems -- since 2005, -- i think this country was going to be divided in huge division, but nobody knew which kind of division. some saw earthquakes or whatever, but this will be bigger. it's going to be the end of that. we are going to have a very, very nice time for this country, because this country is a blessed country. so thank you for listening to me. >> host: thank you. senator cramer talking to reporters. microphones are not taking that absolute go to somerville massachusetts. waiting for the senate to return but go ahead. >> caller: i think it's really interesting that the question you're asking people to call in for is guilty versus not guilty. i think evidence is pretty overwhelming that trump is guilty. the real question does it even matter, isn't impeachable. i think that's kind of the argument that both sides are trying to make. it's very interesting to see republican senators even say yes, trump is guilty. yes, this could be impeachable, but the real crime would be to pull a president out during an election year that will divide the country. i think the country is already pretty divided, and so it very sad to see people say it's something that definitely violates the constitution, but this is the thing we shouldn't do. we should nepal the president out. >> host: you are views reflect the "new york times" piece the set a growing number of republicans have acknowledged president trump's fulco with ukraine wasn't perfect but they argue it doesn't merit is approval. let me ask you, assuming president trump is quit of the charges, of the articles of impeachment on the wednesday vote this will make the third senate trial of a president and our history and we have not been able with -- will never have removed a president i senate vote. do you think that shows the system is working or is broken? >> caller: you know, i think the system has been broken for a while now. you can argue against partisan impeachment. you can argue against trying to make this focused on attacking one person versus another, but the truth of the matter, usada justice roberts sitting like a freaking potted plant doing ousley nothing to the question, is he even relevant to the situation. i think by having all of the issues being brought to a head like this competition does the system isn't working. >> host: appreciate you calling in, especially your suggestion on our question, how we formulate that. some good ideas on your part. san antonio, texas, we hear from martino on the guilty line. keep in mind the senate will gavel back in momentarily. we may cut you off. go ahead. >> caller: okay. i was just calling because i'm very frustrated. i have been watching the whole thing from the very beginning. i'm very -- everything that has been presented, and i believe it impeachable and he should be -- i mean, i wish he was impeached but he should be removed or . i know they will not do it because the republicans are not going to do it. i'm a former republican until trump came along. i'm 69. i've been republican all my life and i cannot believe that people, even people in texas still cannot see all the evidence that is come out and there could be more or the should've been more if they had allowed the witnesses. but, unfortunately, they are not willing to hear the truth and i'm so disappointed. i will never vote for another republican and to all those people that are saying he's not guilty and, you know, that it's not, it's just not going to happen ever. well, our system is broken and that's all i've got to say. >> host: we saw senator alexander of tennessee whose decision friday to not vote in favor of witnesses really changed the calculus of the vote, was a critical decision by senator alexander did that vote garnered two republican senators in support of witnesses. wait for the senate to come back in. we hear from scott in north carolina. go ahead. >> caller: hello. hey, yeah, i was going to call in and i think that i have really the whole problem and the whole situation is, is i think most of america has basically fallen away from what our country was founded on. i mean, we were founded upon christianity and christian values, and so many people have fallen away from that which god makes it clear. he says in the last day that's what's going to take place. he said for people to take the truth the flip it over into a lie and you see that so much today when -- >> host: i'm going to put you on hold for a second. hang on. we will listen into senator blunt talk to reporters. >> after ten games they were six and four. the same team that won the last nine games they played straight. i will admit even with that halfway through the fourth quarter i was saying to my wife and my 15 year old son, big fans, i wish we could've won this game. it sure looks like -- >> host: back to were her called in north carolina. sorry to interrupt. go back to what you were talking about all mac yes, sir. what i was saying was, and i put i decided because i think there probably was some wrongdoing on transport, but as what was impeachable or not, that's up to the senate to decide that. but the bottom line what i was getting at is, is our country is divided so bad right now. you've got the democrats and republicans, and i'm going to go back to the scripture. god says that a house divide will not stand. so you automatically setting up for failure when you vote republican court or you vote democratic card. you are dividing your country, we will let you go there. >> come to order. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. majority of your mcconnell and democratic leader schumer, senators. thank you very much on half of all of us here for your continued attention. today we're going to complete our argument and finish our closing argument. we will complete that in a very efficient. of time. you understand the arguments that we've been making and at the end of the day the key completion, the only conclusion based on the evidence and based on the articles of impeachment themselves and the constitution is that you must vote to acquit the president. at the end of the day, this is an effort to overturn the results of one election and to try to interfere in the coming election. that begins today and i will. we believe that the only proper result if we're applying the golden rule of impeachment, if we're applying the rules impeachment that was eloquently stated by member of the democratic party the last time we were here, the only appropriate result here is to acquit the president and to leave it to the voters to choose their president. with that i will turn over to judge ken starr and we will move through a series of short presentations. thank you. >> mr. chief justice, members of the senate, majority leader mcconnell, majority leader schumer, house impeachment managers and their very able staff. as world war i, the war to end all wars, was drawing to a close, an american soldier sat down at a piano and composed a song. it was designed to be part of the musical review for his army camp out on long island, suffolk county. the song was god bless america. the composer of course was irving berlin. who came here at the age of five, son of immigrants who came to this country for freedom. as composers want to do, berlin work very carefully with the lyrics. the song needed to be pure. it needed to be above politics, above partisanship. he intended it to be a song or all america. but he intended it to be more than just a song. it was to be a prayer for the country. ask your very distinguished chaplain, admiral barry black, has done in his prayers on these long days that you spent as judges in the high court of impeachment, we have been reminded of what our country is all about, and that it stands for one nation, under god. nation is about freedom. and we hear the voice of martin luther king, jr. and his dream filled speech about freedom echoing the great passages inscribed on america's temple of justice, the lincoln memorial which stood behind dr. king as he spoke on that historic day. dr. king is gone, failed by an assassins bullet, that his words remain with us. during his magnificent life, drt freedom, freedom standing alone, he spoke frequently about freedom and justice. and in his speeches he summed it up regularly, , the words of unitarian abolitionists from the prior century, theodore parker who referred to the moral arc of the universe, the long moral arc of the universe points towards justice. freedom and justice. freedom whose contours have been shaped over the centuries in the english-speaking world by what justice benjamin cardozo called the authentic forms of justice through which the community expresses itself in law. authentic, authenticity, and that the foundation of those authentic forms of justice is fundamental fairness. it's playing by the rules. it's why we don't allow deflated footballs or stealing signs from the field. rules are rules. they are to be followed. and so i submit that a key question to be asked as you begin your deliberations, where the rules here faithfully followed? if not, if that is your judgment, then with all due respect a prosecutor should not be rewarded, just as federal prosecutors are not rewarded. you didn't follow the rules, you should have. as a young lawyer i was blessed to work with one of the great trial lawyers of his time, and i asked him, did -- what's your secret? he had just defended successfully a former united states senator who was charged with a serious offense, perjury before a federal grand jury. his response was simple and forthright. his words could have come from prairie lawyer abe lincoln. i let the judge and the jury know that they can believe and trust of the word that comes out of my mouth. i will not be proven wrong. and so here's a question as you begin your deliberations. have the facts as presented to you, as a court, as the high court of impeachment, proven trustworthy? has there been full and fair disclosure in the course of these proceedings? fundamental fairness. i recall these words from the podium last week, a point would be made by one of the president's lawyers, and then this would follow the house managers didn't tell you that. why not? and again, the house managers didn't tell you that. why not? at the justice department on the fifth floor of the robert f. kennedy building is this simple inscription. the united states wins its point when justice has done its citizens in the courts. not did we win. not did we convict. rather, the moral question was justice done? of course as has been said frequently, the house of representatives does under our constitution enjoy the sole power of impeachment. no one has disputed that fact. they have got the power, but that doesn't mean that everything goes. it does mean that the house cannot be called to account, and the high court of impeachment for its actions in exercising that power. a question to be asked, are we to count violations of the rules and procedures that we to follow screwed grossly and prior impeachment proceedings? and the judiciary committee, the venerable judiciary committee of the house of representatives, compare and contrast the thoroughness of that committee in the age of nixon, it's thoroughness in the age of clinton with all of its divisiveness within the committee in this proceeding. .. >> the presentations by the majority council and minority counsel. we have some questions republicans have some questions. we are ready to try this case in the high court of impeachment. what was sound in the silences this. the house judiciary minority members who were defeating us time and again can have their day. just one day. to call their witnesses. yes that is expressly called for in the rules. we will break those rules. it's not liberty and justice for all. political scientists of yesteryear observe the power of the president is ultimately the power to persuade. oh yes the commander in chief but ultimately it's the power to persuade i suggest to you that so to the house is so power to impeach likewise is the power to persuade over the house. a question to be asked. in the fast track impeachment process in the house of representatives the house majority persuade the american people. not just partisans but rather did the houses case went over the overwhelming majority of the consensus of the american people? the question fairly to be asked. i cannot vote to convict and remove the president of the united states when not a single member of the president's party, the party of lincoln was persuaded. at any time in the process. and in contrast when i was here last week i noted for the record in these proceedings that in the nixon impeachment the house voted to authorize the impeachment inquiry was 410 / four. that getting their news entirely from their favorite media platform and that platform of choice is fatally deterministic. at least the decision-makers under oath were bound by a secret duty of oath of affirmation to do impartial justice. those modern-day intermediaries and shapers of thought and expression of opinion are outside these walls where you serve. finally the point is before the court very energetically described by the house managers this is rise to the level of a high crime or misdemeanor quick so grave and so serious to bring about the profound disruption of the article to branch and to tell the american people ye yes, the way it would be read the vote in the last election is declared null and void. and we will not allow you, the american people to sit in judgment on this president and his record. and remember that is neither freedom nor justice. certainly not consistent with the most basic freedom of we the people. the freedom to vote. i yield to my colleague mr. schapiro. >>. >> mr. chief justice members of the senate, good afternoon. i will be relatively brief today and not repeat the arguments that we have made throughou throughout, but i want to highlight a few things. they are number of reasons why the articles of impeachment are deficient and fail. my point over the past week is describing those reasons. and i would like to review just a few core facts which are all drawn from the record on which the president was impeached in the house of the house managers brought to this body in support of the president's removal. first, the president did not condition security assistance or meaning on anything during the july 25 call. in fact both ambassador yovanovitch and morrison confirmed the javelin missiles and security assistance were completely unrelated. the concerns that lieutenant colonel vindman expressed on the call were by his own admission completely unrelated. based on deep policy concerns and as we said before, remember the president sets the foreign policy the unelected staff implements the foreign policy. others on the call including lieutenant colonel vindman boss morrison lieutenant general kellogg had no such concerns and stated they heard nothing improper, unlawful or otherwise troubling on the july 25 call. second, president zelensky and his top advisers agree there is nothing wrong with the july 25 call and they felt no pressure from president trump. president zelensky said the call was good, normal and no one pushed me. the top advisor yermak ever felt that there was a connection between us military aid in the request for investigations and was adamant we did not have the feeling that this was connected to any specific issue. so other top ukrainian officials have said the same publicly and in leading up to the july 25 call to ambassador taylor and ambassador voelker and others. and third president zelensky at the highest levels of the ukrainian government did not learn of the positive august 28, 2019 more than one month after the july 25 call between president trump and president zelensky. i had no idea the military aid was held up when i did find out i raised it with pence in warsaw referring to the vice president. it took three days after the political article on september t in 2019. mr. yermak likewise said president zelensky's advisers learned only from the august 28h political article and just last week while we were in this trial former chairman of the defense counsel t14 said the us was withholding aid to ukraine by reading the article august 28th. he also said there was panic within the zelensky administration when they found out about the hold indicating the highest levels of the administration were unaware of the pause until the article was published. and if that's not enoug enough, ambassador voelker, ambassador taylor, deputy assistant secretary of state and mr. morrison also testified the ukrainians did not know about the security hold until ah and we show you the text message from mr. yermak to ambassador voelker just hours after the political article was published. you also remember the high level bilateral meetings at which the ukrainians did not bring up the pause and the security assistance. because they did not know about it. when they did find out august 28, they raise the issue at the very next meeting in warsaw on september 1st. this is an important point. as ambassador voelker testified if the ukrainians did not know about the pause then there was no leverage applied. that's why the house managers have kept claiming and continue to claim that the high level ukrainians somehow knew about the pause before late august that is an accurate. we pointed out on who they rely did not know the e-mail that she sought relating to security assistance and what it was about. catherine who work for ambassador voelker could not remember the specifics when they learned of the pause or when it became public. house managers mentioned lieutenant colonel vindman on his aid inquiry in the mid august timeframe. that lieutenant colonel vindman agreed they learned about the hold possibly around the first stories emerged in the open source. former deputy foreign minister claims she knew about it in july is inconsistent with statements by her boss who said he learned of the pause from the august 28 politico article was the first as well as all the other top level ukrainian officials i have mentioned, the testimony of the top diplomats responsible in the many intervening meetings in which the pause is not mentioned. fourth. house managers testified that president trump never said there is a linkage between security assistance and investigations. when ambassador sondland asked the president september 9, he said i want nothing. i want nothing. no quid pro quo. before he asked ambassador sondland presumed and told ambassador taylor and mr. morrison there was a connection between the security assistance and the investigation - - the hold. that's before he asked the president directly. and then to ask if there is any connection between the security assistance and investigation the president answered no way. i would never do that. who told you that? under secretary of state mr. hale and they testified they were not aware of any connection whatsoever with the security assistance and investigation. the house managers repeatedly point to a staff acting chief of staff mick mulvaney during an october press conference. when it became clear the media was misinterpreting his comments or that he had misspoke misspoken, mr. mulvaney promptly on the very day of the press conference issued a written statement making clear that there was no quid pro quo. here is a statement. let me be clear. there was absolutely no quid pro quo between ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election. the president never told me to withhold any money until the ukrainians did anything related to the server the only reason we are holding the money is the concern of lack of support from other nations and concerns over corruption. in no way did he confirm the link of the pause security assistance and the investigation as garbled or misinterpreted statement that is probably clarified as the same day as the original statement is not the reliable evidence that would lead to the removal of the president of the united states from office. in any event mr. mulvaney also stated during the press conference itself that the money held up had nothing to do with biden. why does this matter? senator romney got to the heart of this issue on thursday when he asked if there is any evidence that president trump directed anyone to tell the ukrainians that security assistance was being held up on the condition of an investigation of the bidens. that was the question. there is no such evidence. the security assistance was released from the president's concerns of burden sharing and corruption were addressed. by a number of people including some in this chamber today without ukraine ever announcing or undertaking any investigation. you have heard repeatedly that no in the administration knew why the security assistance was pause. that's not true. to house managers own witnesses testified to the reasons of the pause as mr. morrison testified at a july meeting attended by officials throughout the executive branch agencies, the reason provided for the pause by a representative from omb was that the president was concerned about corruption in ukraine and wanted to make sure ukraine was doing enough to manage that corruption. further, according to the deputy associate director of omb that we have received a request for additional information on what other countries were contributing to ukraine. we told you about the work that was done to monitor and collect information in ukraine and burden sharing during the pause and we told you how when president zelensky asked vice president pence in poland about the pause, the vice president asked, according to jennifer williams what the status of his reform efforts were that we could then convey that to the president and also wanted to hear if there was more european countries could do to support ukraine. mr. morrison was there and testified similarly vice president delivered a message about anticorruption and burden sharing. we told you about december 11 call with trump and portman and pence and testified the entire process culminating in september 11 call gave the president the confidence he needed to approve the release all without any investigation. the focus so far on the house managers allegation there was a quid pro quo for security assistance. let meet her briefly to the claim of the presidential meeting was conditioned on investigations. remember, by the end of the july 25 call president trump had personally invited president zelensky to meet three times. twice by phone and once in a letter without any preconditions. we heard the white house working behind the scenes to schedule the meeting and how difficult it could be. the two presidents plan to meet in warsaw just as president zelensky requested on the july 25 call. president trump had to cancel at the last minute due to hurricane dorian then they met three weeks later in new york without ukraine announcing any investigation. finally, one thing the house managers witnesses agreed upon that president trump has strengthen the relationship between us and ukraine and has been a better friend to ukraine and president obama. most notably ambassador taylor, ambassador voelker and ambassador yovanovitch all testified president trumps reversal of the refusal to send aid was meaningful and significant policy development and improvement for which president trump deserves credit. just last week ambassador voelker who knows more about us ukraine relationships man nearly if not everyone , published a piece in foreign policy magazine i would read an excerpt. >> beginning mid 2017 and continuing until the impeachment investigation began in 2019 us policy to ukraine was strong and consistent, enjoyed support across the administration, by support one - - bipartisan support in congress and support with us allies and ukraine itself. the trump administration also closely with allies in europe and canada to maintain a united front in favor of ukraine's democracy, reform, sovereignty and territorial integrity. uk policy is one of the few areas where us and european policy are in lockstep. the administration looks one - - lifted the ban on defensive arms delivering javelin missiles and coast guard cutters and anti- sniffer systems. despite the recent furor over the pause of us securities assistance this summer the circumstances of the impeachment hearings the us defensive support for ukraine has been and remains robust. and more, it is therefore a tragedy for the united states and ukraine that us partisan politics, which have culminated in the ongoing impeachment process have left ukraine and the new reform minded president zelensky exposed an isolated. the only one that benefits is vladimir putin. those are the words of ambassador voelker. he was one of the house managers key witnesses. he was a very first witness to testify in the house proceedings october 3rd. i think it's fitting he may be the last witness we hear from. in his words ambassador voelker admonishes the us partisan politics which have culminated in this impeachment process. and some the house managers case is not overwhelming and it is not undisputed. the house managers bear a very heavy burden of proof. they did not meet. is not because they didn't get the additional witnesses or documents that they failed to pursue. it's because their own witnesses offered substantial evidence undermining their case. as you have heard from professor dershowitz and mr. hill than the first article does not support or allege in impeachable offense regardless of any additional witnesses or documents. members of the senate it has been an incredible honor and privilege to speak to you in this chamber. i hope what i have shown has been helpful to your understanding of the facts and i respectfully ask you to vote to acquit the president of the wrongful charges against him. i yield. >>. >> mr. chief justice, members of the senate. we have heard repeatedly the president is not above the law. not like the focus in my last remarks of the equally important principle the house of representatives also is not above the law in the way they conduct the impeachment proceedings and bring a matter here before the senate. because in very significant and important respect they did not follow the law. they began the impeachment inquiry without a vote in the house and therefore without lawful authority delegated to any committee in the impeachment inquiry against the president of the united states. that was unprecedented in our history. speaker of the house does not have authority by holding a press conference to delegate the sole power of impeachment from the house to a committee. the result was 23 unauthorized subpoenas were issued at the beginning of the impeachment inquiry. after that the house violated every principle of due process and fundamental fairness in the way the hearings were conducted. we have been through that i will not go through the details agai again. but it is significant because denying the president the ability to cross-examine witnesses and fundamentally skew the proceedings leaving the president without the ability to have a fair proceeding and it reflected the fact those proceedings were not designed as a search for truth. we have procedural protections as a mechanism for getting to the facts and that was not president in the house of representatives. and lastly manager schiff as a witness or at least his staff was in discussions with the whistleblower then guided the inquiry of the house so it matters because the lack of a vote meant there was no democratic accountability and no lawful authorization for the beginning of the process. him and their procedural defects that this chamber cannot rely on for any conclusion other than to reject the articles of impeachment and acquit the president. and it matters because the president in response of these violations of the presidents rights for failure to follow the law procedure as rights of the executive branch to be asserted and that is the president's response that we will not comply with them. and the president asserted other rights of the executive branch. when there were subpoenas for the senior advisers to calm testify along with every president since nixon asserting the principle of immunity against senior advisers they could not be called to testify and the president asserted the call for executive branch officials without the presence of agency counsel all established principles asserted before and what do the house managers say in response collects the second article that pete impeachment to say this was unprecedented response a refusal to cooperate. it is unprecedented that 23 subpoenas were issued in the presidential inquiry without valid authorization from the house. the president's response was totally unprecedented attempt by the house to do that which it had no authority to do. they asserted today and on other occasions the presidents legal argument it is indiscriminate just a blanket defiance i think that is shown that was not true there are specific rationales provided by the executive branch and the letters explaining those details but there was no attempt by the house to attempt the accommodations process even though the white house offered to engage in the accommodations process. no attempt by the house to use other mechanisms to resolve the differences with the executive branch. street impeachment. that refers today and other occasions the president's counsel that i and my colleagues have made bad faith and equal - - and arguments that are just window dressing in an ordinary court of law one does not accuse a closing - - opposing pound - - opposing counsel. if you make that accusation has to be backed up with analysis. but there has not been analysis just accusations. when the president asserts the immunity of his senior advisers at the principle that has been asserted by every president since nixon and let me read you what attorney general janet reno during the clinton administration said about this exact immunity. she said, the immediate advisers are immune from being upheld to testify before congress and what they enjoy from testimonial compulsion by a congressional committee is absolute and may not be overboard by competing congressional interest". and she went on to say compelling one of the presidents immediate advisers to testify when a matter of decision-making would raise serious constitutional problems no matter what the assertion". with attorney general reno asserting that principle in bad faith president obama asserted the same principle for his senior political advisor. was that bad faith cracks of course not. these are principles defending separation of powers that presidents have asserted for decades. president trump was defending the institutional interest of the office of the presidency and asserting the leader that is vital for the continued operation for the separation of powers. house managers have also said with the subpoenas to be resisted they had no time to do anything else they had to go straight to impeachment. they could not accommodate or go through the contempt process. but the idea that there is no time for dealing with that is antithetical to the proper functioning of separation of powers. it goes against part of the way the separation of powers is supposed to work that interbranch fiction is meant to slow things down and be somewhat difficult into force the branches to work together to accommodate the interest of each branch not just jump to the conclusion while we have no time for that we have to assert absolute authority on one side of the equation. this is something justice brandeis pointed out in the famous defense myers versus the united states that citizen has been cited many times by the court, quote the doctrine of the separation of powers in the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency. not to make government move quickly, but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power the purpose was not to avoid friction that the inevitable fractional - - friction from the governmental powers among the department to save the people from autocracy. that is a vitally important principle the friction between the branches even if it means taking longer and not jumping straight through is part of the constitutional design and is required to force the branches to determine incrementally where that interest lies in not to jump straight to the ultimate nuclear weapon. we have also heard from the house managers that everything the president did here asserting the principles of immunity must be rejected because only the guilty would assert the privilege. that is definitely not a principle of american jurisprudence. with the fundamental system of laws as we pointed out from other decisions the supreme court has made clear the very idea of punishing someone for asserting rights or privileges or suggesting asserting those rights or privileges is contrary to basic principles of due process. and even a more enlightening tenor when it is in the context of the dispute between the branches related to the boundaries of their relative powers. so what the house is asserting in this case any prerogative of the president any attempt to maintain the principles of separation of powers that has been asserted by past presidents can be treated by the house as evidence of guilt. in here that entire second article of impeachment is structured on the assumption that the house can treat the assertion of principles grounded in separation of power as an impeachable offense. boiled down to its essence that defending the separation of powers the president does it in a way they don't like could be treated as the impeachable offense. that is incredibly dangerous assertion. because if it were accepted that would fundamentally alter the balance between the different branches of our government and suggest as professor dershowitz explained that here that if congress meets the demand on the executive and they resist based on separation powers and principles that we decided to proceed by impeachment we have the sole power this is what they assert the sole power of impeachment that means we are the sole judge of our actions. no need for accommodation we will determine any assistance you provide. that was fundamentally transforming our government by giving the house the same sort of power of the parliamentary system to use impeachment up against the prime minister. not the way the framers or the three branch system of government the powerful executive from the legislature. that's why the professor explained the second article of impeachment here would be abuse of power by congress to make the executive dependent on congress and antithetical to what the framers envisioned. so why is it there are all these defects in the case for impeachment cracks why are they asserting principles like only the guilty would assert privileges? that's not part of our system. i have asserted that the executive resist the house has a sole power to determine the boundaries of its own power in relation to the executive also not something in our system of jurisprudence. why the lack of due process in the proceedings below? because this was a purely partisan impeachment from the start. and that is something that the framers foresaw and i will point to one passage from federalist 65. a number of different passages from that have been cited over the course of the past week. but i don't think this one has just after hamilton points out and warns impeachment in the house could be persecution of the intemperate design of majority. and to make it harsh and not likely to verify but not to be forgotten the demon a faction over all bodies of men asserting language but it is prescient nonetheless we might be uncomfortable with the terms but it is accurate. and that is what has happened in this impeachment. a purely partisan political process. it was opposed bipartisan in the house not designed to persuade anyone or to provide process and abide by past precedent but only to finish by christmas on a political timetable. and it's not something this chamber should condone. that in itself provides a sufficient insubstantial reason for rejecting the articles of impeachment. it has been an honor to be with you over the past week and a half or two weeks. thank you for your attention and i yield to mr. jay sekulow. >> mr. chief justice, majority leader mcconnell, democratic leader schumer, senators, thank you for your patience over these two weeks. i want to focus on one last point if you believe we have established overwhelmingly both articles of impeachment failed to list impeachable offenses and therefore both articles one and two must fail. this entire campaign of impeachment that started from the very first day the president was inaugurated was partisan and it should never happen again. for three years this push for impeachment came straight from the president's opponents and when they finally arranged the crescendo with this body the united states senate into a horrible position. want to start by taking a look back on the screen of a graphic of a washington post headline january 20, 2017 the campaign to impeach president trump has begun this was posted 19 minutes after he was sworn in. i also want to play a video were members as early as january 15 before the president was sworn into office calling for his impeachment. >>. >> we'll be voting to impeach. >> donald trump is already done enough to legitimately raise the question of impeachment. >> i will fight every day until he is impeached. >> i rise to call for the impeachment of the president of the united states of america. >> is not so much to win the senate that if he committed impeachable offenses. >> if we get to that point then that is grounds. why do we think president from specifically? >> in july 2017 all i did yesterday was make sure they did not expire. >> and my personal view. >> one of the members of the house of representatives said were bringing these articles of impeachment so he doesn't get elected again here we are ten months before the election doing exactly what they predicted. the whistleblowers lawyer sent out a tweet january 30th, january 30th, 2017. the coup has started. the first of many steps. rebellion, impeachment will follow ultimately. here we are. this body, this nation and what this president has heard and what they have forced upon this great body is unprecedented and unacceptable. this is exactly and precisely what the founders feared. this was the first totally partisan presidential impeachment in our nations history. and it should be our last what the house democrats have done to this nation and the constitution of the office of the president and the president himself into this body is outrageous and have cheap in the power of impeachment unfortunately the country is not better for that to dispense with the partisan articles of impeachment for the sake of the nation and the sake of the constitution. as we have demonstrably proved the articles fall on their face a product of a reckless impeachment inquiry that violated all notions of due process and fundamental fairness and incredibly with these articles were finally brought to this chamber without a single republican vote, the managers then claim that now they meet - - they need more process now they need more witnesses. all the witnesses they compiled and all the testimony that you heard was not enough. your job was to do their job that they frankly failed to do. we have already said many times the charges themselves do not allege a crime or misdemeanor let alone high crime or misdemeanor. there is nothing in the charges that could permit the removal of a duly elected president in the year of an election with the subversion of the american people. should be the party you are affiliated with you are being asked to do this. win tonight citizens of iowa are going to be caucusing for the first caucus for the presidential election season for the democratic party. tonight. one thing that's clear, the president has had a concern about our country carrying their fair share of burdens of financial aid. i think we have clearly set forth the issue of corruption in ukraine the president and administration policy of foreign aid in the condition which it is given has been cleared. mr. mr. purpura made that out in great detail. the bottom line the president's opponents don't like the president they object to the fact the president chose not to rely each and every time on the advice of his subordinates. even though he, not the unelected bureaucrats were elected to office. the president under our constitutional structure is the one who presides our nation's foreign policy. here is a perfect example. house manager broke this up recently lt. colonel vindman admitted on his chant on - - transcript testimony he did not know if there was a crime or anything of that nature but, quote had deep policy concerns. so there you have it. the real issue is policy disputes. elections have consequences. we know that if you do not like the policy of a particular administration or candidate you are free to vote for another candidate. the answer is elections and not impeachment. and to be clear, in our country the president elected by the american people in the words of the supreme court in the field of international relations and foreign policy for our government. no elected bureaucrats or unhappy members of the house of representatives and however you define high crimes and misdemeanors there is no definition that includes a policy decision as an acceptable ground of removal for the president of the united states. not. the first article of impeachment is constitutionally invalid and should be immediately rejected by the senate. now as to the second article of impeachment in no way did he obstruct congress he acted with extraordinary transparency by releasing the transcript of the july 25th call and the earlier call it is the july 25th call purportedly at the heart of the article of the impeachment articles. he did so soon after the inquiry was announced and that privileges apply that could have been asserted in order to facilitate the house inquiry and cut through all of it, all of the hearsay, all of the histrionics to get the transcript out. i want to take a moment because deputy white house counsel filled and addressed the idea of privilege. i have heard over and over again and you have phrases like cover-up, assertion of privilege is a cover-up. and this is what the supreme court of the united states has said about privileges. to do what the law allows him to do is a due process of the violation and for an agent of the state to pursue a course of action whose objective is to penalize the reliance on constitutional rights is patently unconstitutional and how much more so when you are talking about the president of the united states. how about this? in the assertion of constitutional privileges, the allegation is ben if you assert the privilege then you are guilty. why would you do that? i've experienced one - - explained at great length i don't want to go over that again the executive privilege and what that means for the functioning of our government but i will say this the supreme court is recognized in other privileges the privileges serve to protect the innocent to otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances and another supreme court case clinton versus united states now has the privilege of great value protecting the innocent and then says the state will - - the safeguard of tyrannical prosecutions i will not do it again all those years ago. how all this began there is no point to go over that because that evidences and disputing in the fisa court put that into fairplay. we talked about the fact the house violated his own fundamental rules i will not go over that again mr. philbin made that out in great detail. but it is important to note that when seeking the advice of the president's closest adviser advisers, despite the well-known bipartisan guidance from the department of justice regarding immunity, the house managers act as if it does not exist. they saw testimony on matters from the executive branch confidential internal decision-making process on formulation and national security and that is when protections are at the highest level. let's not forget the house barred the attendance of executive branch counsel from the proceedings when branch members were being examined. notwithstanding the substantial abuse responding to each and every subpoena to identify a specific deficiency you cannot just remove constitutional violations to say that you did not comply. you heard that one recipient of a subpoena in fact we have talked a number of times as we wrap up it's worth saying again one did seek a declaratory judgment after what he received that a judge will make a decision the house withdrew the subpoena and removed it before the court could rule was at the because they didn't like the way the ruling would go are they didn't mean to have that witness in the first place? whatever the reason there is one undisputed fact as the case was in court a muted out by removing the subpoena. the assertion valid constitutional privileges cannot be the impeachable offense and that is what article two is based on obstruction of congres congress. for the sake of the constitution of the office of the president this body must stand against this miraculous - - reckless and dangerous proposition it doesn't just affect this president but every man or woman who occupies that high of office. so as we said what the first article of impeachment we believe the second is invalid and should also be rejected. in passing the first to determine policy, essentially form policy and to pass the second article of impeachment the house controlled the constitutional privileges and immunities of the executive branch. all of this while simultaneously disrespecting the framers system of checks and balances to designate the judicial branch is the arbiter of branch disputes by approving both articles the house violated our constitutional order with the power of impeachment to obstruct the ability to fully execute the duties of his office. these articles fail on their face they do not meet the constitutional standard for impeachable offenses. no amount of testimony could change the fact. we have already discussed the specifics. alexander hamilton has been quoted a lot and there is a reason. what has occurred over the past two weeks of the past three months is exactly what alexander hamilton and other founders of our great country feared per i believe hamilton was prophetic federalist 65 when he warned to agitate the passions of the whole community to divide it into parties more or less friendly to the accused. he warned impeachment would align itself with pre-existing factions with impartiality's and influence and interest on one side or the other and continued the convention it appears the senate is most fit of this important trust those who can best discern the intrinsic difficulty of these beliefs condemning that opinion would be most inclined those arguments that are supposed to produce it in the same federalist 65 hamilton regarded the members of the senate not only as the inquisitors of the nation but the representatives of the nation as a whole and said these words where else could the tribunal be sufficiently independent. what other body is likely to feel confident enough to preserve uninfluenced the necessary impartiality between the individual accused and the representatives of the people of his accusers. >> they took an oath and they questioned the oath you are sitting here they said the senate is on trial. based on all the presentations we have made through the trial brief and the arguments put forward today we believe both articles should be immediately rejected. our nation's representatives holding office they must unite to protect the constitution a separation of powers and there was a time not that long ago even within this administration where bipartisan agreements could be reached to serve the american people. take a listen. >> today we had a beautiful bipartisan with democrats and republicans working together to keep it out of our country to use these devices to accomplish that goal. is not perfect we need to do a lot more but today was a very good step and i want to praise all the democrats and republicans and the president for working together on this bill. >> we can see if we work together in a bipartisan way this is a place we can all agree we have to do more and work together. so i applaud. >> we are probably joined today by so many members of congress who worked very very hard on this bill it was an effort of everybody. it was a bipartisan success you don't hear too much of that. but i believe over the coming period of time it's good for the country. thank you everybody incredible bipartisan support. >> it passed 87 / 12. >> i will be here to celebrate the signing of the next step of this critical prosperity and development initiative. it was nicely with the partisan bill signed into law that recognizes this is a critical strategy. thank you. >> this is what the american people expect. i simply ask this body to stand firm today to protect the integrity of the united states senate, stand firm today to protect the office of the president. today to stand firm protect the constitution. stand firm today to protect the role of the american people and their nation and i ask this partisan impeachment , come to an end. to restore our constitutional balance for that is in my view and in our view what justice demands and the constitution requires. with that mr. chief justice i yield my time to the white house counsel. >> thank you mr. chief justice. thinking members of the senate. i will leave you with just a few brief points. first, i want to express on behalf of our entire team our gratitude to you mr. chief justice for presiding over this trial, our gratitude to leader mcconnell and two democratic leader schumer, and all of you will both sides of the aisle for your time and attention. i also want to express my gratitude to our team with a large number of people for i will not name them all that i want to thank them for their efforts and their hard work in the defense of the constitution and in defense of the president and in defense of the americas - - american people right to vote. thank you to the members of that team, the republican members of the house of representatives who have also been engaged in that effort throughout this entire period of time . . . . i would make just a couple of additional points. number one, as we have said repeatedly we have never been in a situation like this in our history but we have a impeachment that is purely partisan and political, it's opposed by bipartisan members of the house and it does not even allege a violation of law. it is passed an election year and we are sitting here on the day that election season begins in iowa. it is wrong. there is only one answer to that and the answer is to direct those articles of impeachment. to have confidence in the american people and to have confidence in the result of the upcoming election and to have confidence and respect for the last election and not throw it out. and to leave the choice of the president to the american people and to lead to them also the account ability for the members of the house of representatives who did that. that is what the constitution requires. point number two. i think that should be done on a bipartisan basis and that is what i ask you to do. point number two, i believe they make people are tired of the endless investigations and false investigations that have been coming out of the house from the beginning as my colleague jay sekulow pointed out. it is a waste of tax dollars and a waste of the american people's time and i would argue, more importantly, most importantly, the opportunity cost of that and the opportunity cost of that. what you could be doing and what the house could be doing working with the president to achieve those things on behalf of the american people is far more important then the endless investigations and analyst false attacks and the besmirching of the names of good people and this is something that we should reject together and we should move forward in a bipartisan fashion and in the way this president has done successfully. he has achieved successful results in the economy and across so many other areas, working with you on both sides of the aisle and he wants to continue to do that. that is what i believe the american people want, those of you elected, who came to washington, to focus your time on and to unifying us as opposed to the bitter division caused by these types of proceedings. at the end of the day we put our faith in the senate and we put our faith in the senate because we know he will put your faith in the american people and you will leave this choice to them where it belongs. we believe that they should choose the president. we believe that this president, day after day has put their interest first and has achieved a successful result and has fulfilled the promises he made to them and he is eager to go before the american people in this upcoming election. at the end of the day that is the only result, it is the result, i believe, guided by your wise words from the past that we can, together, and the era of impeachment and that we can together put faith in the american people and put faith in their wisdom and put faith in their judgment and that is where our founders but the power and that is where it belongs. i urge you on behalf of those americans, of every american, on behalf of all your constituents to reject these articles of impeachment trade it is the right thing for our country, president has done nothing wrong and these types of impeachment must end. you will vindicate the right to vote, you will vindicate the constitution, you will vindicate the rule of law by rejecting these articles. i ask you to do that on a bipartisan basis this week and end the era of impeachment once and for all but i thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to us and for your attention and for considering our case on behalf of the president. i come here today to ask you reject these articles of impeachment. reject these articles of impeachment. i thank you for granting us at the permission appear here in the senate on behalf of this president. i ask you, on his behalf, on behalf of the american people, to reject these articles of impeachment. thank you. >> mr. chief justice and senators, it is a problem that here at the end of the trial the president's lawyers still dispute the meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors. some say it requires an ordinary crime or that if the president misbehaves when he thanks it's good for the country, it is okay. neither is correct. we need to clear this up by looking at what the founders said. when the founders created the presidency they gave the president great power. they had just been the reward to get rid of a king, who had too much power, and needed a check on the great power given to the president. it was late in the constitutional convention that they turned to the impeachment clause. madison argued in favor of impeachment inside it was indispensable. mason asked quote, show any man be above justice above all so that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice? randolph defended the propriety of impeachment "-right-double-quote, the executive will have great opportunity of abusing his power. the original draft of the constitution provided for impeachment only for treason or bribery. mason asked quote, why is the provision restrained to treason and bribery only? treason is defined in the constitution will not reach many great and dangerous offenses and he added hastings is not guilt and of treason and attempts to subvert the constitution might now be treasonous. hastings impeachment in britain at this time was well known and was not limited to a crime. they considered adding the words maladministration to capture abuse of presidential power but madison objected and he said so that vega term would be equivalent to tenure during the senate. maladministration was withdrawn and replaced with a more certain term, high crimes and misdemeanors. the founders knew the law. blackstone's commentary which made madison said was a book in every man's hand described high crimes and misdemeanors as offenses against king and government. hamilton called high crimes and misdemeanors quote, those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men or in other words, from the abuse of violation of some public trust. during the ratification randolph in virginia cited the president's receipt of presence or emoluments from a foreign powers as an example in mason's example was the president who would quote, pardon crimes which were advised by himself or before indictment or conviction quote, to stop inquiry and preventive detention or detection. it is clear they knew what they wrote. the presidents lawyers tried to create a model to confuse you, don't let them. high crimes and misdemeanors mean abuse of power against the constitutional order, conduct corrupt, whether or not a crime. some say impeachment when there's an election coming but without term limits when they wrote the constitution it was always an election coming. if impeachment in election years was not to be our founders would have said so. here we are congress passed a law to fund ukraine to fight the russians who invaded their country and president trump illegally held that funding up to coerce ukraine to announce an investigation to hurt his strongest election opponent. he abused his power corruptly to benefit himself personally and then he tried to cover it up. that is impeachable. the facts are clear and so is the constitution. the only question is what you, the senate, will do. our founders created a government with tension between the three branches would prevent authoritarianism. no one of the branches would be allowed to grapple with the power. impeachment was to make sure the president who had the greatest opportunity to grab power would be held in check. it's a blunt instrument but it is what our founders gave us. some of the founders thought the mere existence of the impeachment clause would prevent misconduct by presidents but sadly, they were wrong. twice in the last half-century a president corruptly used his power to try to cheat in and election. first nixon with watergate and it now, another president corruptly abuses his power to cheat in an election. founders worried about what we call political parties. they built a system where each branch of government would jealously guard their power, not one where guarding the faction was more important than guarding the government. proposing a president of your own party isn't easy. it wasn't easy when republican caldwell butler voted to impeach nixon and the judiciary committee. it wasn't easy for senator barry goldwater to tell nixon to resign. your oath is not to do the easy thing. it is to do impartial justice. it requires conviction and removal of president trump. >> mr. chief justice, counsel for the president, senators. [inaudible] since i was a little girl, i've gone to church and been inspired of the words of scripture, whatever you did for one of these, least of my brothers, you did for me. we are called to always look out for the most vulnerable. sometimes fighting for the most vulnerable means holding the most powerful accountable and that is what we are here to do today. the american people will have to live with a decisions made in this chamber. in fact, senators, i believe the decision in this case will affect the strength of democracy around the world. democracy is a gift that each generation gives to the next one. if we say that this president can put his own interests above all else, even when lives are at stake, then we give our nations children a weaker democracy then we inherited from those that came before us. the next generation deserves better. they are counting on us. i am a catholic and my faith teaches me that we all need forgiveness. i have given this president the benefit of the doubt from the beginning. despite my strong opposition to so many of his policies, i know the success of our nation depends on the success of our leader. but, he has let us down. senators, we know what the president did and why he did it. this fact is seriously not in doubt. senators on both sides of the aisles have said as much. the question for you now is doesn't warrant removal from office? we say, yes. we cannot simply hope that this president will realize that he has done wrong or inappropriate and hope that he does better. we have done that so many other times. we know he is not apologized and has not offered to change but we all know that he will do it again. what president trump did this time pierces the heart of who we are as a country. we must stop him from further harming our democracy, we must stop him from further betraying his oath, we must stop him from tearing up our constitution. the founders knew that in order for our republic to survive we would need to be able to remove some of our leaders from office when they put their interests above the country's interests. senators, we have proven that. this president committed what is called the abcs of impeachable behavior abusing his power; betraying the nation; and corrupting our election. he deserves to be removed for taking the very actions that the framers feared would undermine our country. the framers designed impeachment for this very case. senators, when i was growing up in south texas, picking cotton i confess i did not spend any time thinking about the framers. like me little girls and boys across america aren't asking at home what the framers meant by high crimes and misdemeanors. someday, they will ask why we did not do anything to stop this president who put his own interest above what was good for all of us. they will ask and they will want to understand. senators, we inherited a democracy and out we must protect it and pass it on to the next generation. we simply can't give our children a democracy of the -- in this country no one is above the law, not me, not any of you, not even this president. this president must be removed. with that, i yield to my colleague, mr. crow. >> mr. chief justice, members of the senate, two weeks ago we started this trial promising to show you that the president withheld $391 million of a foreign military aid to course and ally and work to help it when the 2020 election. by many of your own and miss trends we succeeded and showing you that. the facts still matter. we also promise you that eventually all of the facts would come out and that continues to be true. what we did not just show you that the president abused his power in obstructed congress but we painted a broader picture of president trump. a picture of a man who thanks the constitution does not serve as a check on his power but rather it gives to him in an unlimited way. a man who believes in his personal ambitions are synonymous with the good of the country. a man who, in his own words, thanks that if you are a star they will let you do anything. in short, it's a picture of a man who will always put his own personal interests above the interests of the country but has that he is sworn to protect. what is in an oath anyway? are they relics of a path passed? do we recite them out of custom? to me and oath represents a firm commitment to a life of service, a commitment that satisfy your personal interests, your comforts and your ambition to serve the greater good. it's a sacrifice. i explained to you last week i believe america is great not because of the ambition of any one man, not sibley because we say it is true but because over our almost 250 year history, millions of americans have taken that oath and they meant it. many of them followed through on that oath by giving everything to keep it. but there is more to it than simply keeping your word because an oath is also a bond between people who have made a comment promise. perhaps the strongest example is a promise between the commander-in-chief and our men and women in uniform. those men and women took the oath with the understanding that the commander-in-chief, our president, would always put the interests of the country in their interests above his own. understanding that his orders will be in the best interest of the country and that their sacrifice can fulfill those orders will always serve the common good. but what we have clearly shown the last few weeks and what president trump has shown us over the last for years is that this promise flows only one way. it as my angelo said when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. many of us in this room are parents and we try to teach our kids the important lessons of life. one of those lessons is that you won't always be the strongest and you won't always be the fastest. you won't always win. there are a lot of things outside our control but my wife and i have tried to teach our kids that what we can always control are our choices. it is in the spirit that hanging in my son's room is a quote from harry potter, the quote is from professor dumbledore who said it is our choices that show who we truly are. far more than our abilities. this trial will soon be over but there will be many choices for all of us in the days ahead. the most pressing, of which, is how each of us will decide to fulfill our oath. more than our words our choices will show the world who we really are. what type of leaders we will be what type of nation we will be. let me finish what i began with an expiration of why i am here standing before you. i've been carrying our kids constitutions these last few weeks and this morning i wrote, to explain why i am here. our founders recognized the failings of all people so they designed a system to ensure the ideas and principles contained in this document would be greater than any one person. it is the idea that no one is above the law but our system only works if people stand up and fight for it. fighting for something important always comes with a cost. someday you may be called upon to defend the pencils and ideas embodied in our constitution and may the memory and spirit of those who sacrificed for them in the past guide you and give you strength as you fight for them in the future. thank you for your time. >> mr. chief justice, senators and counsel for the president. this is the deciding moment in our history and a challenging time for our nation. 1000 things have gone to my mind since this body voted to not call witnesses in this trial. the vote was unprecedented in the president former national security advisor indicated that he was willing to testify under oath before the senate yet this body did not want to hear what he had to say. the president's lawyers have asked you to not believe your lying eyes and ears to reinterpret the constitution and to believe that if the president thanks his reelection is in our national interests then he can do what ever he wants, anything to make it happen. that is exactly what he was attempting to do anything when he illegally held much-needed military aid while pressuring ukraine's president to announce bogus investigations into his most feared political rival. this trial is about abuse of power, obstruction, breaking the law and our system of check and balances. since we are talking about the president of the united states, this trial is also most certainly about character. i am reminded today, senators, of my own father who worked more than one job. he did not have a famous last name and his name appeared on no buildings but my father was rich in something no money and apparently no powerful position can by. you see, my father was a man who was decent, honest, a man of integrity. he was a man of good moral character. the president's lawyers never spoke about presidents character doing -- during this trial. i find that quite telling. i joined the police department because i wanted to make a difference. i believe i did. as a police chief i was always concerned about the message we were sending inside the agency, especially to young recruits, especially to newly hired, dedicated police officers. we had to be careful about just how we were defining what was acceptable and unacceptable behavior inside the department and out in the community. yes, people make mistakes. yes, individuals make mistakes but we had to be clear about the culture inside the organization and we had to send a strong message that the police department was not a place where corruption could reside and where corruption was normalized and where corruption was covered up. today, unfortunately, i believe, we are holding young police recruits to a higher standard than we are the leader of the world. if this body fails to hold this president accountable you must ask yourselves what kind of republic will we ultimately have with a president who thanks that he can really, truly do whatever he wants. you will send a terrible message to the nation that one can get away with abuse of power, obstruction, cheating and spreading false narratives if you simply know the right people. today, senators, i reject that because we are a nation of laws. abraham lincoln, the 16th president of the united states said this, america will never be destroyed from outside if we falter and lose our freedom it will be because we chose to destroy ourselves. i urge you, senators, to vote to convict and remove this president. thank you so much for your time. mr. chief justice, distinguished members of the senate, presidents council, i mentioned on the floor last week that alexander hamilton has played a starring role during this impeachment trial but ben franklin has only made a cameo appearance. that cameo appearance was an important one. when he made the observation in the aftermath of that convention in 1787 that the framers of the constitution had created a republic if you can keep it. why would doctor franklin express ambiguity about the future of america during such a triumphant moment? perhaps it was because the system of government that was created at that convention, checks and balances, separate and coequal branches of government, independent judiciary, the free and fair press, the preeminence of the rule of law, all those values, all those ideas, all those institutions have never before been put together in one form of government. perhaps it was uncertain as to whether america could sustain it. part of the billions of our great country is that year after year, decade after decade, century after century we have held this democracy thing together. but now all of those ideas and all those values and all those institutions are under assault. not from without but from within. we have created a republic if you can keep it. house managers have proven our case against president trump with a mountain of evidence. president trump tried to cheat. he got caught and then he worked hard to cover it up. president trump corruptly abused his power and president trump obstructed a congressionally and constitutionally required impeachment inquiry with blanket defiance print president trump solicited foreign interference and in an american election and shredded the very fabric of our democracy. house managers have proven our case against president trump with a mountain of evidence. if the senate chooses to acquit under these circumstances that america is in the wilderness. if the senate chooses to normalize lawlessness and if the senate chooses to normalize corruption, if the senate chooses to normalize presidential abuse of power, then america is in the wilderness. if the senate chooses to acquit president trump, without issuing a single subpoena, without interviewing a single witness, without reviewing a single new document then america is truly in the wilderness. but all is not lost, even at this late hour the senate can still do the right thing. america is watching in the world is watching and the eyes of history are watching. the senate can still do the right thing. scripture says in second corinthians the fifth chapter in the seventh verse encourages us to walk by faith, not by sight. faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen and we have come this far by faith. so, i say to all of you my fellow americans, walk by faith good democrats and republicans progressive and conservatives, the left and the rights, all point in between, walk by faith. there are patriots all throughout this chamber, patriots who can be found all throughout the land, in urban america, rural america, suburban america, small farm america, walk by faith. through the ups and downs, highs and lows, peaks and valleys, trials and tribulations of the turbulent moment, walk by faith. faith in the constitution, faith in our democracy, faith in the rule of law, faith in government of the people, by the people and for the people. faith in almighty god. walk by faith. the senate can still do the right thing and if we come together as americans then together we can eradicate the cancer that threatens our democracy and continues hour-long, necessary and majestic march to the more perfect union. mr. chief justice, i want to begin by thanking you for the distinguished way you have presided over these proceedings. senators, we are not enemies but friends and we must not be enemies. if lincoln could speak these words during the civil war, surely we can't live them out and overcome our divisions and our animosities. it is midnight in washington and the lights are finally going out in the capital after a long day of the impeachment of trenton trial of donald j trump the senate heard arguments only hours earlier on whether to call witnesses and required the initiation to these documents it has withheld. counsel for the president still maintains the presidents innocence while opposing any additional evidence that would prove otherwise and it is midnight in washington. and this night and all the lights have been extinguished somewhere in the bowels of the justice department donald trump's justice department, a light remains on. someone has waited until the country is asleep to hit send to inform the court in a filing due that day that the justice department, department that would represent justice, is repeating to produce documents directly bearing on the president's decision to withhold military aid from ukraine. the trump administration has them and it is not turning them over and it does not want the senate to know until it is too late. send. that is what happened last friday night when you left home for the weekend and a replay of the duplicity we saw during the trial the president's lawyers argued here at the house must go to court and argued in court that house must come here they were at it again telling the court in a midnight filing that it would not turn over relevant documents even as they argued here that they were not covering up the presidents misdeeds. midnight in washington. all too tragic a metaphor for where the country finds itself at the conclusion of only the third impeachment in history and the first impeachment trial without witnesses or documents, before trial or non- trial in impeachment history. how did we get here? in the beginning of this proceeding you did not know whether we could prove our case and many senators like many americans did not have the opportunity to watch much, let alone all the open hearings and house during our investigation. none of us could anticipate what defenses the president might offer. now, you've seen what we have promised, overwhelming evidence of the presidents guilt, donald john trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars to an ally at war and a coveted white house meeting with their president to coerce or extort that nations to cheat in our election. when he was found out he engaged in the most comprehensive effort to cover up his misconduct in the history of presidential impeachment citing subpoenas for documents and witnesses and using his own obstruction as a sword and shield, arguing here that house did not cite hard enough to overcome their non- indication to privilege in court and in court that the house was not beat her to enforce their subpoenas but that impeachment is a proper remedy. having failed to persuade the senate or the public that there was no quid pro quo and having offered no evidence to contradict the record the presidents team opted in a kind of desperation for a different kind of defense. first, prevent the senate and the public from hearing from witnesses with the most damning accounts of the presidents misconduct and second, fall back on a theory of presidential power so broad and unaccountable that it would allow any occupant of 1600 pennsylvania avenue to be as corrupt as he chooses while the congress is powerless to do anything about it. that defense collapsed of its own deadweight. presidents may abuse their power with impunity, they argue. abuse of power is not a constitutional crime, they claimed. only statutory crime is a constitutional crime, even though there were no statutory crimes when the constitution was adopted. the president had to look far and wide to find a defense lawyer to make such an argument. unsupported by history, the founders or common sense. the republican expert witness in the house would not make it. serious constitutional scholars would not make it. even alan dershowitz would not make it. at least he wouldn't in 1998. this has become the president defense and yet this defense proved indefensible. if abuse of power is not impeachable even though it is clear the founders considered it the highest of all high crimes and misdemeanors but if it were not impeachable then a whole range of utterly unacceptable conduct in to the president would now be beyond reach. trump could offer alaska to the russians in exchange for support in the next election or decided to move to florida personally and let jared kushner run the country, delegating to him the decision whether to go to war. because those things were not necessarily criminal this argument would allow that he could not be impeached for such abuses of power. of course, this would be absurd. more than absurd, it would be dangerous. so, mr. dershowitz tried to embellish his legal creation and distinguish among those abuses of power which would be impeachable from those which wouldn't, abuses of power that would help the president get reelected were permissible and therefore unimpeachable and only those for pecuniary gains were beyond the pale. under this theory, as long as the president believes his reelection was in the public interest, he could do anything and no quid pro quo was to corrupt. no damage to her national security, two great, this was such an extreme view that even the president's other lawyers had to run away from it. what are we left with? the house has proven the presidents guilt. he tried to coerce an ally into helping him cheat by smearing his opponent. he betrayed our national security in order to do it. wendy withheld military aid to our ally and violated the law to do so, he covered it up and covers it up still. he is continuing obstruction is a throat to her oversight and vestry powers of the house and senate and if left unaddressed will permanently and dangerously alter the balance of power. these undeniable facts require the president to retreat to his final defense. he is guilty s and but can't we just let the voters decide and he is guilty as sin but why not let the voters clean up this mess? here to answer that question we must look at the history of this presidency and to the character of this president or lack of character and ask can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in that very election? can we be confident americans and not foreign powers will get to decide and that the president was shunned any further foreign interference in our democratic affairs? the short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can't. you can't trust this president to do the right thing, not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. you just can't. he will not change and you know it. in 2016 he invited foreign interference into our election. russia, if you are listening, hack hillary's e-mails he said and they did. immediately. when the russians started dumping them before the election he made use of them in every conceivable way, touting the guilty lucre at campaign stops more than 100 times. when he was investigated he did everything he could to obstruct justice going so far as to fire the fbi director and try to fire the special counsel and as the white house counsel to lie on his behalf. during the same campaign while telling the country he had no business dealings with russia he was continuing to actively pursue the most lucrative deal of his life, a trump tower in the heart of moscow. six close associates of the present would be indicted or go to jail in connection with the president's campaign, russia and the effort to cover it up. on the day after that tragic chapter when it came to an end with bob mueller's testimony, donald trump was back on the phone, this time with another foreign power, ukraine. once again, he sought foreign help with his election only this time he had the full powers of the presidency at his disposal and this time he's could use coercion and this time he could withhold aid from the nation whose soldiers were dying every week. this time he believed he could do whatever he wanted under article two and this time when he was caught he could make sure the justice department would never investigate the matter and they didn't. donald trump had no more jeff sessions. he had just the man he wanted in bill barr, a man whose view of the imperial presidency, presidency in which the department of justice is little more than extension of the white house counsel is to do the presidents bidding. so, congress had to do the investigation itself and just as before he instructed that investigation in every way. he has not changed. he will not change. he has made that clear himself without self-awareness or hesitation. a man without character or ethical compass will never find his way. even as the most recent and most egregious misconduct was discovered he was unapologetic, unrepentant and more dangerous undeterred. he continued pressing ukraine to smear his rivals even as the investigation was underway. he invited new countries to get involved in the act calling on china to do the same. his personal emissary, rudy giuliani, dispatched himself to ukraine trying to get further foreign interference in our election. the plot goes on, the scheming persists and the danger will never received. he hasn't done it before. he will do it again and what are the odds if he will continue trying to cheat? i will tell you. one 100%. not five, not ten or even 50 but one 100%. if you have found him guilty and you do not remove him from office he will continue trying to cheat in the election until he succeeds. then what shall you say? what shall you say if russia again interferes in our election and donald trump does nothing? what shall you say if ukraine capitulates and announces investigations into the presidents rivals? what shall you say in the future when candidates compete for the allegiance of foreign powers and their elections? when they drafted their platforms so to encourage foreign intervention in their campaign, foreign nations as a most super of super packs of them all if not legal, somehow permissible because it donald trump has made it so and we refused to do anything about it but wring our hands. they will hack your opponents e-mails, they will mount a social media campaign to support you, they will announce investigations of your opponent to help you and all for the asking. leave donald trump in office after you have found him guilty in this is the future you will invite. we have known since the day we brought these charges to conviction requiring two thirds of the senate may be prohibitively high and yet, the alternative is a runaway presidency and a nation whose elections are open to the highest bidder. and so, you might ask, how, given the gravity of the presidents misconduct, given the abundance of evidence of his guilt, given the acknowledgment by senators in both parties all that guilt, how have we arrived here with so little common ground? why was the nixon impeachment bipartisan? why was the clinton impeachment much less so? why is the gulf between the parties even greater today? it is not for the reason the presidents lawyers would have you believe. although they have claimed many times in many ways that the process in the house was flawed because we did not allow the president to control it it was, in reality, little different than the process and prior impeachments. the circumstances, of course, were different. the watergate investigation began in the senate and progressed before he got moving in the house. they are, of course, much of the investigative work had been done by the special prosecutor. and clinton there was likewise an independent counsel that conducted a multiyear investigation that started with a real estate deal in arkansas and ended with a blue dress. nixon and clinton, of course, played no role in those investigations before they moved to the house judiciary committ committee. but to the degree you can compare the process when i got to the judiciary committee and either prior and recent impeachments it was largely the same as we had here, the president had the right to call witnesses and to ask questions and chose not to. the house majorities in nixon and clinton did not see their subpoena power to their minorities and neither did we hear although we've now given the minority the right to request subpoenas and compel a vote and they did. the due process the house beside it here provided here was essentially the same and, in some ways, even greater. nevertheless, the presidents council hopes that through sheer repetition they can convert non- truth into truth, do not let them. every single court to hear mr. philbin's arguments has rejected them and the subpoenas are invalid, rejected by the mcgann courts but they have absolute immunity rejected by the mcgann courts. privilege may conceal crime or fraud, rejected by the court in nixon. but if the process here was substantially the same the facts of the presidents misconduct were very different from one impeachment to the next. the republican party of nixon's time broke into the d&c and the president covered it up. nixon abused the power of his office to gain an unfair advantage over his opponents but in watergate he never sought to coerce a foreign power to aid his reelection, nor did he sacrifice our national security in such a palpable and destructive way as withholding aid from an ally at war and he certainly should not engage in wholesale obstruction of congress or justice that we have seen this president commits. the facts of the president clinton's misconduct pale in comparison to nixon and do not hold a candle to donald trump. lying about an affair is morally wrong and went under oath it is a crime but it had nothing to do with his duties in office. the process is the same and the facts of the president misconduct being far, more distracted than either past president what then accounts for the result in bipartisan support for his removal what has chang changed? the short answer is we have changed. the members of congress have changed. for reasons as varied as the stars the members of this body and hours in the house are now far more accepting of the most serious misconduct of a president as long as it is a president of one's own party and that is a trend most dangerous for our country. fifty years ago no lawyer representing the president would have ever made the outlandish argument that if the president believes his corruption will serve to get him reelected, whether it is by coercing an ally to help him teach or in any other form then he may not be impeached. this is somehow a permissible use of his power that here we are and the argument has been made and some appear ready to accept it and that is dangerous where there is no limiting principle to that position. i must have come as a shock, a pleasant shock to this president that our norms and institutions would prove to be so weak. the independence of the justice department and it's formally proud office of legal counsel now a mere legal tool at the presidents disposal to investigate enemies or churn out helpful opinions not worth the paper they are written on. the fbi painted by a president as corrupt and disloyal in the intelligence community not to be trusted against the good council of vladimir putin and the press portrayed as enemies of the people in the daily attacks on the guardrails of our democracy so relentlessly assailed have made us nominal blind to the consequences. does not of that matter anymore? if he is the president of our party. i hope and pray that we never have a president like donald trump in the democratic party, one that would betray the national interest in the countries security to help with his reelection and i would hope to god that if we did we would impeach him and democrats would lead the way. but i suppose if you never know just how difficult that is until you are confronted with it but you, my friends, are confronted with it. you are confronted with that difficulty now and you must not shrink from it. history will not be kind to donald trump. i think we all know that. not because it will be written by never trump but whenever we have departed from the values of our nation we have come to regret it and that regret is written all over the pages of our history. if you find that house has proven its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel for all of history but if you find the courage to stand up to him and to speak the awful truth to his rank falsehood your place will be among the david's who took on goliath. if only you will say enough. we revere the wisdom of our founders and insights they have into self-governance. we scour their words for hidden meaning and try to place ourselves in their shoes. we have one advantage that the founders did not. for all their genius they could not see but opaque lead into the future. we, on the other hand, had the advantage of time of seeing how their great experiment in self-governance has progressed. when we look at the sweep of history there are times when our nation and the rest of the world have moved with a seemingly irresistible force in the direction of freedom. more freedom to speak to assemble and practice our faith and tolerate the faith of others and to love who we would and choose love over hate, more free societies, walls tumbling down in nations reborn. like a pendulum approaching the end of its arc the outward movement begins to arrest and the golden globe of freedom reaches its zenith and starts to retreat. the pendulum swings back past the center and recedes into a dark unknown. how much farther will travel and its direction and how many more freedoms will be established before it turns back? that we cannot say but what we do here in this moment will effect its course and its correction every single vote, even a single vote by a single member can change the course of history. it is said that a single man or woman of courage make a majority. is there one among you who will say enough? america believes in a thing called the truth and does not believe we are entitled to our own alternate facts and she recoils at those who spread pernicious falsehoods to hurt truth matters and there is nothing more corrosive than a democracy then the idea that there is no truth. america also believes there is a difference between right and wrong and right matters here. but there is more. truth matters. right matters but so does decency. decency matters. when the president smears a patriotic public servant like marie yovanovitch in pursuit of a corrupt aim wheat recoil. when the president mocks the disabled, war hero who was a prisoner of war or a goldstar father, we are appalled. decency matters here. when the president tries to coerce an ally to help him cheat in our elections and covers it up we must say enough. enough. he has betrayed our national security and he will do so again and he is comprised of our elections and will do so again. you will not change him but you cannot constrain him. he is who he is but truth matters little to him. what is right matters less and decency matters not at all. i do not ask you to convict him because truth or right or decency matters and nothing to him but because we have proven our case and it matters to you. truth matters to you. right matters to you. you are decent, he is not who you are. federalist 55 james madison wrote that there were certain qualities in human nature, qualities i believe like honesty, right and decency which should justify our confidence in self-government and he believes we possessed sufficient virtue that the chains of despotism were not necessary to restrain ourselves from destroying and devouring one another. it may be midnight in washington but the sun will rise again. i put my faith in the optimism of the founders. you should too. they gave us the tools to do the job, a remedy as powerful as the evil it was meant to constrain and impeachment. they meant it to be rarely but they put it in the constitution for a reason, for a man who would sell out his country for a political field for an a for a man who threatens the integrity of our elections and for a man who would invite foreign interference into our affairs and for a man who would undermine our national security and that of our allies, or a man like donald j trump. they gave you a remedy and they meant for you to use it. they gave you an oath and they meant for you to observe it we have proven donald trump guilty. do impartial justice and convict him. i yield back. >> the majority leader is recognized. >> mr. chief justice, i ask

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