Transcripts For CSPAN2 U.S. Senate U.S. Senate 20200205

that it was all just here. and of course 230 years ago i tell them none of it was here. none of it was here. it was in the ideas of the founders, the people who we call the founders who did two incredible things in their lifetime, in their generation that had never been done before in human history. they wrote a constitution that would be ratified by the people who live under it, it never happened before. they would have never imagined that we would have lasted 230 years, at least until the age of donald trump. they led an armed insur eption against a colonial power, we call that the revolutionary war. that succeeded, too. they do something terrible in their generation that will last for the rest of our days, madam president, and that is they perpetuated human slavery. the building we're standing in today was built by enslaved human beings because of the decisions that they made. but i tell the kids that come and visit me, there is a reason why they're notten -- there are not enslaved human beings in this country anymore, and that's because of people like frederick douglass, born a slave in the united states of america, escaped his slavery in maryland, risked his life and limb to get to massachusetts, and he found the abolition abolitionist move. the abolitionist movement, madam president, have been arguing for generations that the constitution was a pro-slavery document. and frederick douglass, who was completely self-taught, completely self-taught, said to them you have this exactly wrong, exactly backwards. 180 degrees from the truth. the constitution is an antislavery document, frederick douglass said, not a pro-slavery document, but we're not living up to the words of the constitution. it's the same thing dr. king said the night before he was killed in memphis when he went down there for the striking garbage workers, and he said i am here to make america keep the promise you wrote down on the page. and in my mind, frederick douglass and dr. king are founders just as much as the people who wrote the constitution of the united states. how could they not be? how could they not be? the women that fought to give my kids, my three daughters the right to vote, who fought for 50 years to get the right to vote, mostly women in this country. their founders disliked the people who wrote the constitution as well. and over the years that i have been here, madam president, as i have seen this institution crumble into rubble, this institution become incapable of addressing the most existential questions of our time, that the next generation cannot address, they can't fix their own school. they can't fix our immigration system. they can't fix climate change, although they are getting less and less patient with us on that issue. but what i have come to conclude is that the responsibility of all of us, not just senators, but all of us as citizens in a democratic republic 230 years after the founding of this republic is the responsibility of a founder, that it's that elevated assent of what a citizen is required to do in a republic to sustain that republic. and i think that's the right way to think about it. it gives you a sense of what's really at stake beyond the headlines on the cable television at night and certainly in the social media feeds that divide us minute to minute in our political life today. and the senate has clearly failed that standard. we have clearly failed that standard. the idea that we would turn our back, close our eyes to evidence pounding on the outside of the doors of this capitol is pitiful it is disgraceful. and it will be a stain on this body for all time. more than 50% of the people in this place have said that what the president did was wrong. it clearly was wrong. it clearly was unconstitutional. it clearly was impeachable. a president would run for office, saying to the american people, i'm going to try to extort a foreign power for my own electoral interests to interfere in our election. it is exactly the kind of conduct that the impeachment clause was written for. it is a textbook case of what the impeachment clause exists. but even if you don't agree with me that he should have been convicted or that he should be convicted, i don't know how anybody in this body goes home and faces their constituents and say we wouldn't even look at the evidence. and so i say to the american people our democracy is very much at risk. i'm not one of those people who believes that donald trump is the source of all our problems. i think he's made matters much worse, to be sure. but he is a symptom of our problem. he is a symptom of our failure to tend to the democracy, to our responsibility as founders. and if we don't begin to take that responsibility as seriously as our parents and grandparents did, people who face much longes than we ever did. nobody is asking us, thank god, to end human slavery. nobody's asking us to fight for 50 years for the self-evident proposition that women should have the right to vote. we're not marching in selma, being beaten for the self-evident prospect that all people are created equally. nobody's asking us to climb the cliffs of dover to fight for freedom in a war that had never touched our shores. we are being asked to save the democracy. and we're going to fail that test today in the united states senate. and my prayer for our country, madam president, is that the american people won't fail that test, and i'm optimistic that we won't. we have never failed it before. and i don't think we'll fail it in our time. madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin is recognized. ms. baldwin: in 2012, the good people of wisconsin elected me to work for them in the united states senate. like every one of my fellow senators, i took an oath of office. in 2018, i was reelected, and i took that same oath. we have all taken that oath. it's not to support and defend the president, this president or any other. our oath is to support and defend the constitution of the united states. that is our job every day that we come to work, and it certainly is our job here today. just over two weeks ago, we all stood together right here and we took another oath given us to -- by chief justice roberts to do impartial judgment in this impeachment trial. i have taken this responsibility very seriously. i listened to both sides make their case. i have reviewed the evidence presented, and i have carefully considered the facts. from the beginning, i have supported a full, fair, and honest impeachment trial. a majority of this senate has failed to allow it. i supported the release of critical evidence that was concealed by the white house. the other side of the aisle let president trump hide it from us, and they voted to keep it a secret from the american people. i voted for testimony of relevant witnesses with direct firsthand evidence about the president's conduct. senate republicans blocked witness testimony because they didn't want to be bothered with the truth. every senate impeachment trial in our nation's history has included witnesses, and this senate trial should have been no different. unfortunately, it was. a majority of the senate has taken the unprecedented step of refusing to hear all the evidence. declining all the facts, denying the full truth about this president's corrupt abuse of power. president trump has obstructed congress, and this senate will let him. last month, president trump's former national security advisor john bolton provided an unpublished manuscript to the white house. the recent media reports about what ambassador bolton could have testified to had he not been blocked as a witness go to the heart of this impeachment trial -- abuse of power and obstruction of congress. as reported, in early may, 2019, there was an oval office meeting that included president trump, mick mulvaney, pat cipollone, rudy giuliani, and john bolton. according to mr. bolton, the president directed him to help with his pressure campaign to solicit assistance from ukraine to pursue investigations that would not only benefit president trump politically but would act to exonerate russia from their interference in our 2016 elections. iz several weeks later the u.s. department of defense certified the release of military aid to ukraine, concluding that they had taken substantial actions to decrease corruption. this was part of the security assistance we approved in congress with bipartisan support to help ukraine fight russian aggression. however, president trump blocked it and covered it up from congress. on july 25, 2019, as president trump was withholding the support for ukraine, he had a telephone call with ukranian president zelensky. based on a white house call summary memo that was released two months later, we all know the president put his own political interests ahead of our national security and the integrity of our elections. based on the clear and convincing evidence presented in this trial, we know president trump used american taxpayer dollars and security assistance for ukraine to get them to interfere in our elections to help them politically. we know the president solicited assistance from ukraine to pursue investigation of phony conspiracy theories about our 2016 u.s. election that are part of a russian disinformation campaign. we know the president solicited assistance from ukraine to discredit the conclusion by american law enforcement, the u.s. intelligence community, and confirmed by a bipartisan senate report that russia interfered with our 2016 elections. and we know president trump solicited foreign interference in the upcoming election by pressuring ukraine to publicly announce investigations to help him politically. i would ask my friends to consider the fact that the ukranian president was pressured and prepared to go on an american cable television network to announce these political investigations. to those who are making the argument to acquit the president because to convict him would create further division in our country, i ask you to acknowledge the fact that president trump's corrupt scheme has given russia another opening to attack our democracy, interfere in our elections, and further divide our already divided country. we know this to be true, but the senate is choosing to ignore the truth. as reported just weeks after the zelensky call, president trump told ambassador bolton in august that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to ukraine until they helped with the political investigations. had ambassador bolton testified to these facts in this trial, it would directly contradict what the president told senator johnson in a phone call on august 31, 2019, where according to senator johnson, the president said, i would never do that. who told you that? john bolton not only has direct evidence that implicates president trump in a corrupt abuse of power, he has direct evidence that president trump lied to one of our colleagues in an attempt to cover it up. it may not matter to this senate, but i can tell you it matters to the people of the state of wisconsin that this president did not tell their senator the truth. based on the facts presented to us, i refuse to join this president's cover-up and i refuse to conclude that the president's abuse of power doesn't matter, that it's okay and that we should just get over it. i want to recognize the courageous public servants who did what this senate has failed to do, to put our country first. in the house impeachment inquiry, brave government servants came forward and told the truth. they put their jobs on the line and instead of inspiring us to do our duty, to do our job, they faced character assassination from this president, the white house, and some of my colleagues here in the senate. it is a disgrace to this institution that they were treated as anything less than the patriots that they are. as army lieutenant colonel alexander vindman said, this is america. here, right matters. my judgment is inspired by these words, and i am guided to my commitment to put country before party and our constitution first. my vote on the president's abuse of power and obstruction of congress is a vote to uphold my oath of office and to support and defend the constitution. my vote is a vote to uphold the rule of law and our uniquely american principle that no one, not even the president, is above the law. i only have one of 100 votes in the u.s. senate, and i'm afraid that the majority is putting this president above the law by not convicting him of these impeachable offenses. but let's be clear, this is not an exoneration of president trump. it is a failure to show moral courage and hold this president accountable. now every american will have a power to make their own judgment. every american gets to decide what is in our public interest. we the people get to choose what is in our national interest. i trust the american people. i know they will be guided by our common good and the truth. the people we work for know what the truth is and they know in america it matters. i yield back. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut is recognized. mr. murphy: thank you, madam president. madam president, it's important to remind ourselves at moments like this how unnatural and uncommon democracy really is. just think about all the important forums in your life. think about your workplace, your family, your favorite sports team. none of them makes decisions by democratic vote. the c.e.o. decides how much money you're going to make, not a vote of your fellow employees. you love your kids, but they don't get an equal say in household matters as mom and dad do. the plays that the chiefs called on their game-winning drive, they weren't decided by a team vote. no, most everything in our life that matters other than the government under which we live is not run by democratic vote. and of course a tiny percentage of humans, well under probably .1% have lived in a democratic society over the last 1,000 years of human history. democracy is unnatural. it's rare. it's delicate. it's fragile. and untended to, neglected or taken for granted, it will disappear like ashes scattering into the cold night. this body, the united states senate, was conceived by our founders to be the ultimately malt guardians of this britle experiment -- brittle experiment in governance. we the 100 of us were given the responsibility to keep it safe from those that may deign to harm it and when the senate lives up to this charge it is an awesome inspirational sight to behold. i was born three weeks after alexander butterfield revealed the existence of a taping system in the white house that likely held evidence of president nixon's crimes. i was born one week after the senate watergate committee in a bipartisan vote ordered nixon to turn over several key tapes. my parents were republicans. my mom still is a republican. and over the years they've voted for a lot of democrats and republicans. they raised me in the shadow of watergate to understand that what mattered in politics wasn't really someone's party. it was whether you are honest and decent, if you are pursuing office for the right reasons. in the year i was born, this senate watched a president betray the nation, and this senate, both democrats and republicans, stood together to protect the country from this betrayal. this is exactly what our founders envisioned when they gave the congress the massive responsibility of the impeachment power. they said use it sparingly, use it not to settle political scores, but use it when a president has strayed from the bonds of decency and propriety. the founders wanted congress to save the country from bad men who would try to use the awesome power of the executive branch to enrich themselves or to win office illicitly. and i grew up under the belief that when those bad men presented themselves, this place had the ability to put aside party and work to protect our fragile democracy from attack. and this attack on our republic that we are debating today left unchecked is potentially lethal. the one sacred covenant that an american president makes with the government is to use the massive power of the executive branch for the good of the country, not for personal, financial, or political benefit. the difference between a democracy and a tin pot dirktship is that -- dictatorship is that here we don't allow presidents to use official levers of power to destroy political opponents, but that's exactly what president trump did. and we all know it. even the republicans who are going to vote to acquit him today admit that. and if you think that our endorsement through acquittal won't have an impact, then just look at rudy giuliani's trip to ukraine in december in the middle of the impeachment process. he went back looking for more dirt, and the president was bringing him up to get the details before giuliani's plane hit the gate. the corruption hasn't stopped. it's ongoing. and if this is the new normal, the new means by which a president can consolidate power and try to disoi political opponents -- to destroy political opponents, then we are no longer living in america. what happened here over the last two weeks is as much a corruption as trump's scheme was. this trial was simply an extension of trump's crimes. no documents, no witnesses. the first ever impeachment trial in the senate without either. john bolton practically begging to come here and tell his firsthand account of the president's corruption denied, just to make sure that voters can't hear his story in time for them to be able to pressure their senators prior to an impeachment vote. this is a show trial, a gift-wrapped present for a grateful party leader. we became complicit in the very attacks on democracy that this body is supposed to guard against. we have failed to protect the republic. and what's so interesting to me is that it's not like republicans didn't see this moment coming. in fact, many of my colleagues across the aisle literally predicted, prior to the president's election, here's what republican senators said about donald trump. one said he is shallow, he is ill prepared to be commander in chief. i think he's crazy. i think he's unfit for office. another said the man is a pathological liar. he didn't know the difference -- he doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. yet another republican senator said what we're dealing with is a con artist. he is a con artist. now you can shrug this off as election year rhetoric, but no democrat has ever said these kind of things about a candidate from our party, and prior to trump no republican had said such things about candidates from their party either. the truth is republicans before trump became the head of their party knew exactly how dangerous he was and how dangerous he would be if he won. they knew he was the archetype of that bad the founders intended the senate to protect democracy from. but today that responsibility seems to no longer retain a position of primacy in this body. today the rule of law doesn't seem to come first. today our commitment to upholding decency and truth and honor is not the priority. today in the modern senate, all that seems to matter is party. what is different about this impeachment is not it that democrats have chosen to make it partisan, it is that republicans have chosen to excuse their party president's conduct in a way that they would not have done and did not do 45 years ago. that's what makes this moment exceptional. congressman schiff rightly challenged democrats in his closing argument to think about what we would do if a president of our party ever committed the same kind of offense that donald trump has. i think it was a very wise query and one that we as democrats should not be so quick on the trigger to answer self-righteously. would we have the courage to stand up to our base, to our political supporters, to vote to remove a democratic president who had chosen to trade away the safety of the nation for political help? it would not be easy. no, the easy thing to do would be to just do what's happening today, to box our ears, close our eyes, and just hope the corruption goes away. and so i thought a lot about this question over these past two days. i've come to the conclusion that at least for me, i would hold the democrat to the same standard. i would vote to remove. but i admit to some level of doubt. and i think that i need to be honest about that. because the pressures today to put party first are real on both sides of the aisle. and they are much more acute today than they were during water gate. it's with that reality as context that i prepare to vote today. i believe that the president's crimes are worthy of removal. i will vote to convict on both articles of impeachment. but i know that something is rotten in the state of denmark. ours is an institution built to put country above party. and today we are doing often the opposite. i believe within the cult of personality that has become the trump presidency, the disease is more acute and more perilous total nation's health on the republican side of the ledger. but i admit that this affliction has spread to all corners of this chamber. ful we are to survive as a -- if we are to survive as a democracy, a fragile, delicate, constantly in need of tending democracy, then this senate needs to figure out a way after today to reorder our incentive system and recalibrate our faiths so that the health of one party never ever again comes before the health of our nation. i yield back. mr. romney: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. romney: thank you, mr. president. the constitution is at the foundation of our republic success and we each strive not to lose sight of our promise to defend it. the constitution established the vehicle of impeachment that is occupied both houses of our congress these many days. we have labored to faithfully execute our responsibilities to it. we have arrived at different judgments, but i hope we respect each other's good faith. the allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious. as a senator juror, i swore an oath before god to exercise impartial justice. i am profoundly religious. my faith is at the heart of who i am. i take an oath before god as enormously consequential. i knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the president, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision i have ever faced. i was not wrong. the house managers presented evidence supporting their case and the white house counsel disputed that case. in addition, the president's team presented three defenses. first, that there could be no impeachment without a statutory crime. second, that the bidens' conduct justified the president's actions. and third, that the judgment of the president's actions should be left to the voters. let me first address those three defenses. the historic meaning of the words high crimes and misdemeanors, the writings of the founders and my own reasoned judgment convinced me that a president can indeed commit acts against the public trust that are so egregious that while they are not statutory crimes, they would demand removal from office. to maintain that the lack of a codified and comprehensive list of all the outrageous acts that a president might conceivably commit renders congress powerless to remove such a president defies reason. the president's counsel also notes that vice president biden appeared to have a conflict of interest when he undertook an effort to remove the ukranian prosecutor general. if he knew of the exorbitant compensation his son was receiving from a company actually under investigation, the vice president should have recused himself. while ignoring a conflict of interest is not a crime, it is surely very wrong. with regards to hunter biden, taking excessive advantage of his father's name is unsavory but also not a crime. given that in neither the case of the father nor the son was any evidence presented by the president's counsel that a crime had been committed, the president's insistence that they be investigated by the ukranians is hard to explain other than as a political pursuit. there's no we in my mind that were their names not biden, the president would never have done what he did. the defense argues that the senate should leave the impeachment decision to the voters. while the logic is appealing to our democratic instincts, it is inconsistent with the constitution's requirement that the senate, not the voters, try the president. hamilton explained that the founders' decision to invest senators with this obligation rather than leave it to the voters was intended to minimize to the extent possible the partisan sentiments of the public at large. so the verdict is ours to render under our constitution. the people will judge us for how well and faithfully we've -- we fulfill our duty. the grave question the constitution tasks senators to answer is whether the president committed an act so extreme and egregious that it rises to the level of a high crime and misdemeanor. yes, he did. the president asked a foreign government to investigate his political rival. the president withheld vital military funds from that government. the president delayed funds for an american ally at war with russian invaders. the president's purpose was personal and political. accordingly, the president is guilty of an appal appalling abf public trust. what he did was not perfect. no, it was a flagrant assault under electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values. corrupting an election to keep one's self in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that i can imagine. in the last several weeks i've received numerous calls and text, many demanded in their words that i stand with the team. i can assure you that that thought has been very much on my mind. you see, i support a great deal of what the president has done. i voted with him 80% of the time. but my promise before god to apply impartial justice require that i put my personal feelings and political biases aside. were i to ignore the evidence that has been presented and disregard what i believe my oath and the constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, i fear, expose my character to histories -- history's rebuke and the censor of my own conscience. i'm aware there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision and in some quarters i will be vehemently denounced. i'm sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters. does anyone seriously believe that i would consent to these consequences other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before god demanded of me. i sought to hear testimony from john bolton not only because i believed he could add context to the charges but also because i hoped that what he might say could raise reasonable doubt and thus remove from me the awful obligation to vote for impeachment. like each member of this deliberative body, i love our country. i believe that our constitution was inspired by providence. i'm convinced that freedom itself is dependent on the strength and vitality of our national character. as it is with each senator, my vote is an act of conviction. we've come to different conclusions, fellow senators, but i trust we have all followed the dictates of our conscience. i acknowledge that my verdict will not remove the president from office. the results of this senate court will in fact be appealed to a higher court, the judgment of the american people. voters will make the final decision just as the president's lawyers have implored. my vote will likely be in the minority in the senate. but irrespective of these things, with my vote i will tell my children, their children, that i did my duty to the best of my ability believing that my country expected it of me. i will only be one name among many, no more, no less to future generations of americans who look at the record of this trial. they will note merely that i was among the senators who determined that what the president did was wrong, grievously wrong. we are all footnotes at best in the annals of history but in the most powerful nation on earth, the nation conceived in liberty and justice, that distinction is enough for any citizen. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. mr. scott: thank you, mr. president. over the past few weeks, we have heard a lot of arguments, act -- accusations and anecdotes. very skilled speakers on both sides have presented their case for and against poa. i listened intently hour after hour, day after day, to the house managers and the president's lawyers. and the word that kept coming to me, that i kept writing down in my notes was fairness, because you see here in america, you are innocent until proven guilty. as the president's defense team noted, at 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're there to be followed. you can create all the rhetorical imagery in the world, but without the facts proving guilt, it doesn't mean a thing. they can say the president cannot be trusted, but without proving why he can't be trusted, their words are just empty political attacks. you can speak of david versus goliath, but if you were the one trying to subvert the presumption of innocence, if you were the one trying to will facts into existence, you are not david. you have become goliath. our job here in the senate is to ensure a fair trial based on the evidence gathered by the house. i have been accused, as have many of my colleagues, of not wanting that fair trial. the exact opposite is true. we have ensured a fair trial in the senate after house democrats abused historical precedents in their zeal to impeach a president they simply do not like. during prior impeachment proceedings in the last 50 years, lasting around 75 days or so in the house, the opposing party has allowed witnesses and the ability to cross-examine. this time, house republicans were locked out of the first 71 of 78 days. let me say that differently. the ability to cross-examine the witnesses that are coming before the house against the president, the house republicans were not allowed, the president's team was not allowed to cross-examine those witnesses. the ability to contradict and/or to cross-examine or have the conversation about the evidence at the foundation of the trial, white house counsel, republicans, not allowed. think about the concept of due process. the house republicans, president's team, not allowed. 71 of 78 days in the house. this is not a fair process. does that sound fair to you? democrats began talking about impeachment within months of president trump's election and have made it clear that their number one goal, perhaps their only goal, has been to remove him from office. does that sound fair to you? they have said we're going to impeach and used an expletive. they have said we have to impeach him. otherwise, he is going to win the election. now, that might be the transparency we have been looking for in this process. the real root or the foundation of why we found ourselves here for 60 hours of testimony. it might be because, as they have said themselves, if we don't impeach him, he might just win. what an amazing thought, that the american people and not members of congress would decide the presidency of the united states. what a novel concept that the house managers and congress would not remove his name from the ballot in 2020, but we would allow the american people to decide the fate of this president and of the presidency. they don't get it. they don't understand that the american people should be and are the final arbiters of what happens. they want to make not only the president vulnerable, but they want to make republican senators vulnerable so that they can control the majority of the united states senate, because the facts are not winning for them. the facts are winning for us, because when you look at the facts, they are not their facts and our facts. they are just the facts. but what i've learned from watching the house managers' very convincing, very convincing they were for the first day, and after that, what we realized was some facts, mixed with a little fiction, led to 100% deception. you cannot mix facts and fiction without having the premise of deceiving the american public, and that's what we saw here in our chambers. and why is that the case? well, it's simple. when you look at the facts of this presidency, you come to a few conclusions that are, in fact, indisputable. one of those conclusions is our economy is booming, and it's not simply booming from the top. it's when you start looking into the cross, what -- the bottom 20% are seeing increases that the top are not seeing. so this economy is working for the most vulnerable americans, and that's challenging to our friends on the other side. when you think about the opportunities and the legislation supported by this president is bringing $67 billion of private sector dollars into the most vulnerable communities, that is challenging to the other side, but those two are facts. when you think about the essence of criminal justice reform and making communities safer and having a fairer justice system for those who are incarcerated, that is challenging to the other side, but it is indeed a fact driven home by the republican party and president donald john trump. and these facts do have consequences, just like elections, and our friends on the other side unfortunately decided that they could not beat them at the polls, give congress an opportunity to, in fact, impeach the president. my friends on the left simply don't want a fair process. this process has lacked fairness. instead, they paint their efforts as fighting on behalf of democracy when, in fact, they are just working on behalf of democrats. that's not fair. it's not what the american people deserve. house managers said over and over again the senate had to protect our nation's free and fair elections, but they are seeking to overturn a fairly won election with absurd charges. the house managers said over and over again that the senate has to allow new witnesses so as to make the senate trial fair, but they didn't bother with the notion of fairness when they were in charge in the house. their notion of fairness is to give the prosecution do-overs and extra latitude, but not the defendants. actions speak louder than words, and democrat actions have said all we need to hear. let's vote no on these motions today and give back to working -- and get back to working for the american people. the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. delaware, sorry. mr. coons: mr. president, the last time this body, the last time the senate debated the fate of a presidency in the context of impeachment, the legendary senator from west virginia, robert byrd, rose and said, i think my country sinks beneath the yoke, it weeps, it bleeds and each new day a gash is added to her wounds. our country today, as then, is in pain. we are deeply divided. and most days it seems to me that we here are the once wielding the shiv, not the sow. the founders gave the senate the sole power to try impeachment because as alexander hamilton wrote, where else in the senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified or sufficiently is independent? i wish i could say with confidence that we here have lived up to the faith our founders entrusted in us. unfortunately, i fear in this impeachment trial the senate has failed an historic test of our ability to put country over party. foreign interference in our democracy has posed a grave threat to our nation since its very founding. james madison wrote that impeachment was an in indisexpensable trust. the threat remains grave and real to this day. it is uni. indisputable that russia attacked our 2016 election, interfered in it broadly. president trump's own f.b.i. director and director of national intelligence have warned us that they are intent in interfering in our election this coming fall. so to my republican colleagues, i have frankly found it difficult to understand why you would continue to so fervently support a president who has repeated lid and publicly invited foreign interference in our elections. during his 2016 campaign, donald trump looked straight into the cameras at a press conference and say, quote, russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find secretary clinton's 30,000 e-mails. we now know withceptor that russian military -- we now know with certainty that russian military officers first tried to break into the servers for the first time that very day. throughout his campaign, president trump praised the publication of e-mails that russian hackers had stolen and he mercilessly attacked robert mueller throughout his investigation into the 2016 election and allegations of russian interference. now we know following this trial that the day after special counsel mueller testified about his investigation to this congress, president trump on a phone call with the president of ukraine asked for a favor. he asked president zelensky to announce an investigation of his chief political rival, former vice president joe biden. and he asked for an investigation into a russian conspiracy theory about that d.n.c. server. in the weeks and the months since, he has repeated that ukraine should investigate his political opponents and that china should as well. during the trial here, after the house managers and president's counsel made their presentations, senators had the opportunity to ask questions. i asked a question of the president's lawyers about a sentence in their own trial brief, one that stated, quote, congress has forbidden foreigners' involvement in american elections. i simply asked whether the president's own attorneys believe their client, president trump, agrees with that statement. and they refused to confirm that he does. and how could they? when he has repeatedly invited and solicited foreign interference in our elections. so to my colleagues, do you doubt that president trump did what he's accused of? do you doubt he would do it again? do you think for even one moment he would refuse the help of foreign agencies to smear any one of us if he thought it was in his best political interests? and i have to ask, what becomes of our democracy when elections become a no-holds-barred blood sport, from our foreign adversaries become our allies and when americans of the opposing party become our enemies? throughout this trial, i have listened to the arguments of the house managers prosecuting the case against president trump and of the arguments of counsel defending the president. i engaged with colleagues on both sides of the aisle and listened to their positions. the president's counsel have warned us of danger in partisan impeachments. they have a cautioned that abuse of power, the first article, is a difficult standard to define. they've expressed deep concern about an impeachment conducted on the brink of our next presidential election. i understand those concerns and even share some of them. the house managers, in turn, warned us that our president has demonstrated a perilous willingness to seek foreign interference in our elections and presented significant evidence that the president withheld foreign aid from a vulnerable ally, not to serve our national interest but a tack a political opponent. and they demonstrated the president hags categorically obstructed congressional investigations to cover cup his misconduct. these are serious dangers, too. we then are faced with a choice between serious and significant dangers, and after listening closely to the evidence, weighing the arguments, and reflecting on my constitutional responsibility and my oath to do impartial justice, i have decided today i will vote guilty on both articles. i recognize that many of my colleagues have made up their minds. no matter what decision you've reached, i think it is a sad day for our country. i myself have never been on a crusade to impeach donald trump, as has been alleged against all democrats. i've sought ways to work across the aisle with his administration, but in the years that have followed his election, i've increasingly become convinced our president is not just unconventional, not just testing the boundaries of our norms and traditions, he is at times unmoored. flute this tile i have heard from delawareans that the senate refused to hear from witnesses or subpoena documents needed to uncover all the facts about the president's misconduct. i've heard from delawareans who fear our president believes he is above the law and that he acts as if he is the law. i've also heard from delawareans who just want us to find a way to work together. it is my sincere regret that in all the time we've spent together we could not find common ground at all. from the opening resolution that set the procedures for trial adopted on a party-line basis, the majority leader refused all attempts to make this a more open, more fair process. every democrat was willing to have chief justice roberts rule on motions to subpoena relevant witnesses and documents. every member of the opposing party refused. we could not even forge a consensus to call a single witness who has said he has firsthand evidence, is willing to testified, and was even preparing to appear before us. mr. president, when an impeachment trial becomes meaningless, we can damaged and weakened as a body and our constitution suffers in ways not easily repaired. we have a president who hasn't turned over a single scrap of paper in an impeachment investigation. unlike presidents nixon and clinton before him, who directed their senior advisors and cabinet officials to cooperate, president trump stonewalled every step of this congress' impeachment inquiry, and then personal a tacked those who cooperated. the people who testified to the house of representatives in spite of the president's orders are dedicated public servants and deserve our thanks, not condemnation. where do we go from here? well, after president clinton's impeachment trial, he said, and i quote, this can be and must be a time of reconciliation and renewal for our country, and he apologized for the harm he'd done to our nation. when president nixon announced his resignation, he said the first essential is to begin healing the wounds of this nation. i wish president trump would use this moment to bring our country together, to assure us he would work to make the 2020 election a fair contest, that he would tell russia and china to stay out of our elections, that he would tell the american people, whomever his opponent might be, the fight will be between candidates, not families, and that if he loses, he will leave peacefully, in a dig nighified manner, and that if he wins, he will work tirelessly to be the president for all people. but at this point, some might suggest it would be hopelessly naive to expect of president trump that he would apologize for strive to heal our country or do the important work of safeguarding our next election. and so that falls to us, to my colleagues, who've concluded impeachment is too heavy a hammer to wield, if you believe the american people should decide the fate of this president in the next election, what will you do to protect our democracy? what will you do to ensure the american people learn the truth of what happened so that they can cast informed votes? will you cosponsor bills to secure our elections? will you insist they receive votes on this floor? will you express support for the intelligence community that is working to keep our country safe? will you ensure whistle-blowers who expose corruption are protected, not vilified? will you press this administration to cooperate with investigations, to allow meaningful accommodations so that congress can have its power of oversight? why can we not do this together? each day of this trial, we said the pledge of allegiance to our common nation. for my republican friends who have concluded the voters should decide president trump's fate, we need to do more together to make that possible. and many of my democratic friends, i know, are poised to do their very best to defeat president trump at the ballot box. so here is my plea -- that we would find ways to work together to defend our democracy and safeguard our next election. we have spent more time together here in the last few weeks than in the last few years. imagine if we dedicated that same time to passing the dozens of bipartisan bills that have come over from the house that are waiting action. imagine what we could accomplish for our states and our country if we actually tackled the challenges of affordable health care and ending the opioid crisis, of making our schools and communities safer and bridging our profound disagreements. what fills me with dread, to my colleagues, is each day we come to this floor and talk past each other, not to each other, and fail to help our constituents. let me close by paraphrasing our chaplain. chaplain black, whose daily prayers brought my great strength in recent weeks. may we work together to bring peace and unity. may we permit godliness to make us bold as lions. may we see a clear vision of our lord's desires for our nation and remember we borrow our heartbeats from our creator each day. thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent my statement be printed in the trial record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. gardner: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. gardner: thank you, mr. president. over the last several months, several weeks, the american people have watched washington convulse in partisan accusations, investigations, and endless acrimony. that division reached its high watermark as the united states senate carried out the third presidential impeachment trial in our nation's history. we saw over the last two weeks an impeachment process that included the testimony of 17 witnesses, more than 100 hours of testimony, and tens of thousands of pages of evidence, records, and documents, which i successfully fought to make part of the record. i fought hard to extend the duration of testimony to ensure that each side could be heard over six days instead of just four. but what we did not see over the last two weeks was a conclusive reason to remove the president of the united states. an act which would nullify the 2016 election and rob half the country of their preferred candidate for the 2020 election. house managers repeatedly stated that they had established overwhelming evidence and airtight case to remove the president. they also claimed they needed additional investigation and testimony. a case can't be both overwhelming and airtight and incomplete at the same time. that contradiction is not mere semantics. in their partisan race to impeach, the house failed to do the fundamental work required to prove its case, to meet the heavy burden. for the senate to ignore this deficiency and conduct its own investigation would weaponize the impeachment power. a house member could demand that demand the senate complete the house's work. the founders were concerned about this very point. alexander hamilton wrote regarding impeachments. and i quote, there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties than by real demonstrations of innocence or guilt. more recently congressman jerry nadler one of the house managers in the trial said there must never be a narrowly voted impeachment and one that is largely opposed by the other. such impeachment would lack legitimacy. last march speaker pelosi said impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there is something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, i don't think we should go down that path because it divides the country. the framers knew that partisan impeachments could lead to impeachments over policy disagreements. legal scholar like charles black have written that policy differences are not grounds for impeachment. but policy differences about corruption and proper use of tax dollars are at the heart of impeachment. nevertheless, that disagreement led the house to deploy this most serious of constitutional remedies. the reason the framers were concerned about policy impeachments was their concern for the american people. rosming a president disenfranchises the american for a senate of 100 people to do that requires a genuine, bipartisan, national consensus here, especially only nine months before an election, i cannot pretend the people will accept this body removing a president who received nearly 63 million votes without meeting that high burden. the house managers' other argument to remove the president, obstruction of congress, is an affront to the constitution. the frairmts created a system of government in a way the legislative, executive, and judiciary are evenly balanced. all three are separate but equal, empowered to check each other. the obstruction charge assumes the house is superior to the executive branch in their zeal, the house managers would disempower the judiciary and demand that the house's would be accepted by the senate and the other branches without exception. they claim no constitutional -- against the legislature seeking impeachment. they claim that a single justice, a single justice exercising the senate's sole power to try impeachments can strip the executive of its constitutional protections with a simple decree. in federalist 78, hamilton wrote, liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments. if the house managers prevail, the house would have destroyed our constitutional balance, declaring itself the arbiter of constitutional rights an conscripting the chief justice to do it. to be clear, the executive branch is not immune from legislative oversight or impeachment and trial but thant come at the expense -- but that cannot come without expense of constitutional rights. maburyv.] madison, without this separation nothing stops the house from seeking privileged information under the guys of an impeachment inquiry, but the house managers say no matter how flimsy the house's case, if the executive tries to protect that information constitutionally, that itself is an impeachable offense. that dangerous precedent would weaken the stability of government, constantly threatening the president with removal and setting the stage for a constitutional crisis without recourse to the courts. with this precedent set, the separation of powers would simply cease to exist. over the 244 year history of our country, no president has been removed from office. the first presidential impeachment occurred in 1868. the next was more than 100 years later. now 50% of presidents have been impeached in the last 25 years alone. a tool so rarely used in the past is now being used more frequently. it's a dangerous development and the senate stands as the safeguard as passions grow even more heated. these defective articles and the defective process leading to them allow the house to muddy things and claim we're setting a destructive precedent for the future. of course, bad cases make bad law. the house's decision to short circuit the investigation, moving faster than any other impeachment and a wholly partisan one at that, certainly make for bad case. so, again, let me be clear about what this precedent does not do. at the outset, this case does not say that the president can do anything he wants he believes it to be in his electoral interest. i also reject the claim that impeachment requires criminal conduct. house committees cannot assume the impeachment power to compel evidence without express authority from the full body. second, the house should work in good faith with the executive through the accommodation process. if that process reaches an impasse, the house should seek the assistance of the judicial branch before turning to impeachment. finally, when articles of impeachment come to the senate along partisan lines with nearly half of the people appear unmoved and maintain support for the president and when the country is just months away from an election, in these circumstances the american people would likely not accept removing the president and the senate can wisely decline to usurp the people's power to elect their own president. it has been said in this trial, the american people cannot make that decision for themselves. i couldn't disagree more. i believe in the american people. i believe in the power of our people to evaluate the president to make their decision in november and to move forward in our enduring effort to form a more perfect union. i do not believe a senate nullification of two elections over defective impeachment articles is in the nation's best interest. so let's move forward with the people's business and bring this nation back together. let's rise up together, not fight each other, not all of us voted for president trump, not all of us voted for the last president or the one before him. yet, we should work to make our nation successful regardless of partisan passions. passion positively placed will provide our nation with the prosperity it has as you been blessed with. partisan poison will prove devastating to our nation's long-term prosperity. we must not allow our fractures to destroy our national fabric or partisanship to destroy our friendships. if we come together, we will succeed together for surely we are bound together in this the great united states of america. mr. president, i ask this be included in the trial record and i yield the floor. mr. leahy: mr. president, today we face a crucial test, whether the senate will rise to serve as a check on executive abuseses that our founders expected it to be. but today, and throughout this trial, i'm sad to say we're failing this test. after we've been confronted with overwhelming evidence of a brazen abuse of executive power and equally brazen attempt to keep that scheme hidden from congress and the american people, the senate is poised to look the other way, to pretend the senate has no responsibility, to reveal the president's misconduct, and god forbid, hold him to account. instead we are being told the senate has no constitutional role to play. we're told only the american people should judge the president's misconduct in the next election. this, despite the fact the president president's scheme was aimed at cheating in that very next election. and now the senate is cementing a cover-up of the president's misconduct to keep his extent hidden from the american people. i've been here 45 years and i think how far the senate has fallen. in some ways president nixon's misconduct, a direct break-in into the national committee headquarters seems quaint compared to today. as charged in article 1, president trump secretly directed a sweeping illegal scheme to withhold $400 million in military aid from an ally at war in order to extort that ally into announcing investigations into his political opponent in a way that would boost president trump's election. president trump attempted to hide every single record from the american people. as we looked in article 2, president trump has the distinction of being the only president -- the only president in our nation's history to direct all executive branch officials not to cooperate with a congressional investigation. so i want to be clear. i don't relish the prospect of an impeachment trial. i have stark disagreements with this president on issues of policy, on the law, on morality and honesty, but it's for the american people to judge a president on those matters. today is not about policy differences, it's about the integrity of our elections and the constitution -- the constitution cannot protect itself. we're supposed to protect it. the central arguments presented by the president's defense team were studying not unlike king louis xiiii who declared i am the state. the president argues he can abuse his power so long as he believes his reelection is in the national interest. he even argues he can request foreign governments to dig up dirt from political opponents with impunity. all of us should reject the president's argument, but an acquittal will do just the opposite. if you believe these outlandish arguments are irrelevant after today, remember this, the president's counsel claims that the -- it is largely and mistakenly based on the argument of other counsel, benjamin curtis defending president johnson, that was 150 years ago. an acquittal today despite the overwhelming evidence of guilt and following a sham of a trial may fundamentally distort our system's checks and balances for another 150 years. what a sham trial it was, the fact that this body would not call a uniquely critical witness, john bolton, and another one, is outrageous. is it because detailing this corrupt scheme no matter how damning would not alter the majority leader's preordained acquittal? it's often said that history is watching. and i expect that's true. at this moment we're not merely witnesses to history, we're in it. let me tell you the dark chapter we ascribing. george washington warned us foreign influence is a foe of the republican government. as a candidate president trump famously requested a -- a foreign foe, russia, to hack his political opponent's e-mail and hours later russia did. and literally the day after that, it finally came to a close, the president asked the ukrainian president for a quote, favor. he has since publicly repeated his request for ukraine to interfere in our election, he made the same request to china. if we acquit president trump today, what will he do tomorrow? two things i'm confident of. president trump's willingness to abuse his office, his eagerness to exploit foreign interference in our elections will only grow and congress' capacity to do anything about it will be crippled. while the president's lawyers stood on the senate floor and admonished the house managers for failing to litigate each subpoena in court to exhaustion, he had other lawyers in court making the mutually exclusive argument that the judges settle the dispute between the two branches. such duplicity would put the two-faced god to shame. today we inflict grave damage on our power of the purse. i see the chairman of the appropriations committee on the floor. i'm the vice chairman of appropriations. members of this committee are the guardians of this body's power of the purse granted exclusively by the founders of the congress to counter all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches. if we fail to hold president trump accountable for illegally freezing military aid to extract a personal favor, what would stop any future president from holding any part of the $4.7 trillion budget hostage for their personal whims? and the answer is snowing. we will have -- the answer is nothing. we will have relinquished the check the founders entrusted us to ensure the president could never behave like a king. decades ago i questioned whether impeachment would be accepted if not bipartisan, but the argument the other side has revealed itself to be painfully flawed. in 1974 republicans convinced president nixon to resign. in 1999 democrats condemned president clinton's private misconduct and supported a censure. in contrast with one important exception, president trump's supporters have thus far shown no limits in the tolerance of overwhelming misconduct. before i close, i want to thank the brave individuals who shared their testimony with the house and american people. each witness stepped forward despite knowing the disgraceful attacks they would endure, and we owe them our appreciation. they actually give us hope for tomorrow. but today, today's a dark day. and what bothers me most is this, we're currently on a dangerous road. no one knows where that road is going to take us. the notion the president learned his lesson is farcical. his lead counsel opened and closed the trial by claiming the president did nothing wrong. the president described his actions as perfect. on 75 separate occasions, including yesterday, he's claimed he's done nothing wrong. lord help us if the senate agrees because the only lesson the president has learned from this trial is how easily he can get away with egregious, illegal misconduct. the senate does not recognize the gravity of president trump's violation of the public trust as defined as an impeachable offense, we've only seen a preview of what's to come, disregard of our constitutional power of the purse, open, flagrant corruption. that's the tragic result of the senate failing at its constitutional duty. with no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable, no punishment to which he could be subjected without involving the crisis of a national revolution. i quote hamilton. as hamilton warned, that would not be a president. that would be a king. i'm proud to live in a country that elects presidents, not kings. i for one will not merely get over it. president trump directed the most impeachable, corrupt scheme by any president in this country's history. to protect our republic, to safeguard our system of checks and balances, my oath which i take seriously compels me to hold the president of the united states accountable. i will vote to convict and remove president donald j. trump from office. mr. president, before yielding the floor, i ask my full statement and my january 31 statement regarding the vote on witnesses be included in the trial record. the presiding officer: without objection. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. shelby: mr. president, over the past two weeks my colleagues and i have patiently listened to arguments from both the house managers and the president's counsel right here in the senate regarding a grave allegation from the house that the president has committed an act worthy of impeachment. as a senator, mr. president, i believe that the first and perhaps most important consideration is whether abuse of power and obstruction of congress are impeachable offenses as asserted by our house managers. impeachment is a necessary and essential component of our constitution. it serves as an important check on civil officers who commit crimes against the united states. however, our founding fathers were wise to ensure that the impeachment and the conviction of a sitting president would not be of partisan intent. since president trump took office, many have sought to de legitimize his presidency with partisan attacks. we've heard this right here in the senate and we've experienced it. this extreme effort to unseat the president i believe is unjustified and intolerable. now that the senate has heard and studied the arguments from both sides, i believe the lack of merit in the house managers' case is evident. the outcome of the impeachment trial is a foregone conclusion. acquittal is a judgment the senate should and i believe will render, and soon. for my part, i have weighed the house managers' case and found it wanting in fundamental aspects i will try to explain. i believe, mr. president, that their case does not allege an impeachable offense. even if the facts are as they have stated, the managers have failed, i believe, as a matter of constitutional law to meet the exceedingly high bar for removal of the president as established by our founding fathers, the framers of the constitution. in their wisdom, the framers rejected vague grounds for impeachment, offensive like we've heard here, maladministration, for fear that it would, in the words of madison, result in a presidential p tenure during the pleasure of the senate. abuse of power, one of the charges put forward here by the house managers, is a concept as vague and susceptible to abuse, i believe, as maladministration. if you take just a minute or two to look at the definitions of abuse and mal, they draw distinct similarities, mal a prefiction of latin origin, means bad, evil, wrong. abuse, also of latin origin, means to wrongly use, or to use for a bad effect. there's a kinship between mal and abuse. as the framers rejected in their wisdom maladministration, i believe that they too would reject the noncriminal abuse of power. instead the framers, as the presiding officer knows, the framers provided for impeachment only in a limited, in a few limited cases. treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors. only those offensive justify taking the dire move, dire step of removing a duly elected president from office and permanently taking his name off the ballot. this institution, the u.s. senate, i believe, should not lower the constitutional bar and authorize their theory of impeachment for abuse of power. it's simply not an impeachable offense, in my judgment. there are cry -- their criteria centers not on the president's actions but their loose perception of his motivations. if the senate endorses this approach we will dramatically transform the impeachment power as we have known it over the years. we will forever turn this grave constitutional power into a tool for adjudicating policy disputes and political disagreements among all of us. the framers in their wisdom cautioned us against this dangerous path, and i believe the senate will heed their warning. the other article, the house managers obstruction of congress claim, is similarly flawed. congress' investigative and oversight tools are used in our system of checks and balances but those powers are not absolute. the president too, as head of a coequal branch of government, enjoys certain privileges and immunities from congressional fact finding. that is his constitutional right and has been the right of former presidents from both parties. the president's mere assertion of privilege of immunities is not impeachable. it's not an impeachable offense. endorsing otherwise would be unprecedented and would ignore the past practices of administrations of both parties. adopting otherwise would drastically undermine the separation of powers enshrined in our constitution. this was not what our framers intended. mr. president, nowhere in the constitution, as you know, or in the federal statute is abuse of power or obstruction of congress listed as a crime. nowhere. what constitutes an impeachable offense is not left to the discretion of the congress. we cannot expand, i believe, on the scope of actions that could be deemed impeachable beyond that which the framers intended. what we really have here, i believe, is nothing more than the abuse of the power of impeachment itself by the democratic house. doesn't our country deserve better? the president certainly deserves better. and today i'm proud to stand and repudiate those very weak impeachment efforts, and i will accordingly vote to acquit the president on both sides, both articles. mr. president, my hope is that in the future congress will reject this episode and instead choose to be guided by the constitution and the words of our framers. mr. president, basically i believe it's a time to move on. we know that the american economy is booming. the united states is projecting strength in promoting peace abroad. and the president is unbowed and i believe the american people see all this. at the end of the day, mr. president, the ultimate judgment rests in their hands. in my judgment, that is just as it should be. with that, i yield the floor. mr. durbin: mr. president. the presiding officer: the assistant democratic leader. mr. durbin: mr. president, benjamin franklin knew the strength of our constitution but he also knew its vulnerability. his words often repeated on this floor, a republic if you can keep it, were a stark warning. franklin believed every generation could face the channeling of protecting and defending our nation's liberty affirming document. we know this personally. before we can legally serve as senators, we must publicly swear an oath to support and defend the constitution of the united states. a trial of impeachment, more than any other senate assignment, tests the oath each one of us takes before the people of this nation. the president's legal team warns us of the danger of impeachment and conviction. they tell us to think carefully about what the removal of a duly elected president could mean for our democracy. but if we should have our eyes wide open to the danger of conviction, we also cannot ignore the danger of acquittal. the facts of this impeachment are well known and many republicans can see that they are likely true. they believe, as i do, that president trump pressured the ukranian president by withholding vital military aid and a prized white house visit in return for the announcement of an investigation of the bidens and the russian concocted crowdstrike fantasy. some of these same republicans acknowledge that what the president did was inappropriate. at least one has used the word impeachable. but many say they're still going to vote to acquit him regardless. so let's open our eyes to the morning after a judgment of acquittal. facing a well-established election siege by russia and other enemies of the united states, we the senate will have absolved a president who continues to brazenly invite foreign interference in our elections. expect more of the same. a majority of this body will have voted for the president's argument that inviting interference by a foreign government is not impeachable if it serves the president's personal political interest. we will also have found for the first time in the history of this nation that an impeachment proceeding in the senate can be conducted without any direct witnesses or evidence presented on either side of the case and that a president facing impeachment can ignore subpoenas to produce documents or witnesses to congress. alexander hamilton described the senate as the very best venue for an impeachment trial because it is independent and dignified, in his words. when the senate voted 59-49 for witness and evidence, they -- in addition an acquittal will leave the extreme view stated by the president's defense counsel alan dershowitz unchallenged, first that an impeachable power is not an offense and his most dangerous theory that unless the president is committed -- has committed an actual crime, his conduct cannot be corrupt or impeachable as long as he believes it was necessary for his reelection. by this logic, professor dershowitz would have excused richard nixon's ordering of i.r.s. audits of his political enemies. mr. dershowitz has created an escape clause to impeachment which is breathtaking and unfounded in our legal history. we have received a letter signed by 300 law scholars flatly rejecting the defense offered by the president's defense team. i ask it be entered into the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. durbin: yet a verdict of acquittal blesses the torturous reasoning. an acquittal would give president trump's personal attorney, rudy giuliani a pat on the back to continue his global escapades, harass be american ambassadors and lounging at european cigar bars with post-soviet amigoes. an acquittal will say this president is above the law and cannot be held accountable for conduct abusing his office. this president believes that's true. on july 23, two days before his phone call with president zelensky, president trump spoke to a group of young supporters and he said, and i quote, i have an article 2 where i have the right to do whatever i want as president. this is the dangerous principle that president trump and his daughters -- lawyers are asking us with acquittal to accept. under the oath i have sworn, i cannot. what does it say of this congress and our nation that in three years we have become so anest advertised to outrage that for a majority in this senate there is nothing, nothing this president can do or say that rises to the level of blush worthy, let alone impeachable? nearly six years ago i traveled to ukraine with a bipartisan group of senate colleagues led by john mccain. it was one of john's whirlwind visits where we crammed five day s into four hours. ukrainians had just ousted a corrupt russian-backed leader who hollowed out their nation's military. they had done so by taking to the streets, risking their lives for democracy. more than 100 ordinary citizens in kiev had been killed by security forces of the old government because they were protesting for democracy. seeing ukraine in a delicate transition, vladimir putin ordered an invasion. putin and his thinly disguised russian thugs were on the verge of seizing the east. i asked the prime minister what ukraine needed to defend itself. he said everything. we don't have anything that floats, flies, or runs. many may not appreciate how devastating russia's war on ukraine has been to that struggling young democracy. their costly battle with russia was for a principle that is basic to america's national security as well. in a country with one eighth of our population, more ukrainian groups have died defending ukraine from russia than american troops have perished in afghanistan. during the months president trump illegally withheld military aid, as many as two dozen ukrainian soldiers were killed in battle. by with holding security aid in ukraine for president trump's political benefit, he endangered the security of a fragile democracy. can there be a deeper betrayal of a president than to endanger our national security and the security of an ally for his own personal political game. -- gain. and for those who describe the president's conduct as merely inappropriate, i disagree. disparaging john mccain's service to our country is disgusting and inappropriate. what this president has done to ukraine crosses that line. it is impeachable. i'll close by remembering two public servants who, like us, were called by history to judge a president. tom railsback passed away and two days shy of his 88th birthday. in 1974 tom was a republican congressman from moline, illinois. he regarded president nixon as a political friend. he believed that richard nixon achieved much for america, including the opening of the door to china. after studying the watergate evidence closely, he came to believe that richard nixon violated the constitution. when president nixon refused to turn over records and recordings requested by congress, tom took to the house floor to say if congress doesn't get the material we think we need and then votes to exonerate, we'll be regarded as a paper tiger. when he voted to end -- to his dying day tom railsback was faithful to his vote. bob cohen was a member of the house judiciary committee. he studied the evidence with tom railsback and worked with him. bill cohen received death threats and he thought his votes to impeach president nixon would be the end of his political career. he went on to a distinguished term in the house, three terms in the senate and served as secretary of defense. listen to what bill cohen said recently of president trump's actions. quote, this is presidential conduct that you want to be ashamed of. he's corrupting institutions, politicizing the military and acts like he is the law. and then cohen added, if the president's conduct is acceptable, we really don't have a republic as we've known it anymore. may i respectfully say to my senate colleagues, ben franklin warned us of this day. i will vote guilty on both articles of impeachment against president donald john trump. on article 1, abuse of power, and article two, obstruction of congress. at this moment, i hope my last words can be a personal appeal to my senate colleagues. last night many of us attended a state of the union address which was as emotionally charged as any i have attended. as divided as our nation may be, and as divided as this senate may be, we have weathered greater storms. it was abraham lincoln in the darkness of our worst storm who called us to strive on to finish the work we are in to work to bind the nation's wounds. after this vote and after this day, those of us who were entrusted with this high office must each do our part to work to bind the wounds of divided nation. i hope we can leave this chamber with that common resolve. i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. mr. graham: i'd like to introduce my full statement after my remarks. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. graham: thank you very much. let me girn with a note of -- begin with a note of optimism. you will get to pick the next president, not a bunch of politicians driven by sour grapes. i didn't vote for president trump, but i accepted the fact that he won. that's been hard for a lot of people. [no audio [[. >> i. mr. graham: i supported the mueller investigation. will you stand with us to make sure mueller can complete his investigation? and i did. two years, $32 million, f.b.i. agents, subpoenas, you name it, the verdict is in. what did we find? nothing. i thought that would be it. but it's never enough when it comes to trump. sorry. it's never enough when it comes to president trump. this sham process is the low point in the senate for me. if you think you've done the country a good service by legitimatizing this impeachment process, what you have done is unleashed the partisan forces of hell. this is sour grapes. they impeached the president of the united states in 78 days. you could not get a parking ticket if you contested it in 78 days. they gave out souvenir pens when it was over. if you can't see through that, your hatred of donald trump has blinded you to the obvious. this is not about protecting the country. this is about destroying the president. there are no rules when it comes to donald trump. everybody in america can confront the witnesses against him against -- them except donald trump. everybody in america can call witnesses on their behalf except president trump. everybody in america can introduce evidence except for president trump. he's not above the law, but you put him below the law, and the process of impeaching this president, you've made it almost impossible for future presidents to do their job. in 78 days, you took due process as we've come to know it in america and threw it in the garbage can. this is the first impeachment in the history of the country driven by politicians. the nixon impeachment had outside counsel, watergate prosecutors. and the clinton impeachment had ken starr. the mueller investigation went on for two years. i trusted bob mueller. and when he rendered his verdict, it bloac your heart and you -- broke your heart and you can't let it go. the only way this is going to end permanently is for the president to get reelected, and he will. so as to abuse of congress, is it wholesale assault on the presidency, is it abandoning every sense of fairness that every american has come to expect in their own lives. it's driven by blind partisanship and hatred of the man himself, and they wanted to do it in 78 days. why? because they wanted to impeach him before the election. i am not making this up. he said that. the reason the president was never allowed to go to court and challenge the subpoenas issued is because it would take time. president nixon and president clinton were allowed to go to article 3 court. that was denied this president because it would get in the way of impeaching him before the election. you send this crap over here and you're okay with it, my democratic colleagues. you're okay with the idea that the president was denied his day in court and you were going to rule on executive privilege as a political body. you were willing to deal out the article 3 courts because you hate trump that much. you have weakened the institution of the presidency. be careful what you wish for because it will come back your way. abuse of congress should be entitled abuse of power by the congress. if you think that adam schiff is trying to get to the truth, i have a bridge i want to sell you. they hate president trump's guts, they rammed it through the house in a way that you couldn't get a parking ticket and they had a goal of impeaching him before the election. the senate will achieve its goal of acquitting him in february and the american people are going to get to decide in november who they want to be their president. so acquittal will happen in about two hours, exoneration comes when president trump gets reelected because the people of the united states are fed up with this crap. but the damage you have done will be long lasting. abuse of power, you're impeaching the president of the united states for suspending foreign aid for a short period of time that they eventually received a head of schedule to leverage an investigation that never happened. you're going to remove the president of the united states for suspending foreign aid to leverage an investigation of a political opponent that never occurred. the ukrainians didn't know the suspension until september. they didn't feel any pressure. if you're okay with joe biden and hunter biden doing what they do, it says more about you than it does anything else. the point of the abuse of power article is that you made it almost impossible now for any president to pick up the phone if all of us can assume the worst and impeach somebody based on a subjective standard. he was talking about the corruption in ukraine with the past president. and the bidens' conduct in the ukraine undercut our ability to effectively deal with corruption by allowing his son to receive $3 million through the most corrupt gas company in the ukraine. can you imagine how the ukranian parliament must have felt to be lectured by joe biden by ending sweetheart deals? what you have done is impeached the president of the united states and willing to remove him because he suspended foreign aid for 40 days to leverage an investigation that never occurred and to my good friend, dick durbin, donald trump has done more to help the ukranian people than barack obama did in his entire eight years. if you're looking for somebody to help the ukranian people fight the russians, how about giving them some weapons. this is a sham. this is a farce. this is disgusting. this is an injustice to president trump as a person. it's a threat to the office. it will end soon. it's going to be an overwhelming rejection of both articles. we're going to pick up the pieces and try to go forward, but i can say this without any hesitation. i worry about the future of the presidency after what's happened here. ladies and gentlemen, will you come to regret this whole process. and to those who have these pe pens, i hope you will understand history will judge those pens as a souvenir of shame. i yield. mr. schumer: mr. president some. the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. schumer: the articles of impeachment before us charge president donald john trump with offenses against the constitution and the american people. the first article of impeachment charges that president trump abused the office of the presidency by soliciting the interference of a foreign power, ukraine, to benefit himself in the 2020 election. the president asked a foreign leader to do us a favor, us meaning him, and investigate his political opponents in order to elicit these political investigations, president trump withheld a white house meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance from an ally at war with russia. there's extensive documentation in the record proving this quid pro quo and the corrupt motive behind it. the facts are not seriously in dispute. in fact, several republican senators admitted they believe the president committed this offense with varying degrees of apropose yum -- inappropriate, wrong, shameful. almost all republicans will argue, however, that this reprehensible conduct does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. the founders could not have been clearer. william davey, a delegate to the constitutional convention deemed impeachment, quote, an essential security less the president, quote, spare no effort or means whatever to get himself elected. james madison offered a specific list of impeachable offenses during the debate in independence hall. a president might lose his capacity or embezzle public funds. a despicable soul might succumb to bribes while in office. madison then arrived at what he believed was the worst conduct a president could engage in. the president could betray his trust to foreign powers which would be fatal to the republic. madison's words. when i studied the constitution and the "federalist papers" in high school admittedly i was skeptical of george washington's warning that, quote, foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. unquote. it seems so far-fetched. who would dare? but the foresight and wisdom of the founders endures. madison was right. washington was right. there is no greater subversion of our democracy than for powers outside of our borders to determine elections within them. if americans believe that they don't determine their senator, their governor, their president but rather some foreign potentate does, that's the beginning of the end of democracy. for a foreign country to attempt such a thing on its own is contemptible for an american president to deliberately solicit such a thing, to blackmail a foreign country, and -- into helping him win an election is unforgivable. now, does this rise to the level of impeachable offense? of course it does. of course it does. the term high crimes derives from english law. crimes were committed between subjects of the monarchy. high crimes were committed against the crown itself. the framers did not design a monarchy. they designed a democracy, a nation where the people were king. high crimes are those committed against the entire people of the united states. the president sought to cheat the people out of a free and fair election. how could such an offense not be deemed a high crime? a crime against the people? as one constitutional scholar in the house judiciary committee -- judiciary hearings testified, if this is not impeachable, nothing is. i agree. i judge that president trump is guilty of the first article of impeachment. the second article of impeachment is equally straightforward. once the president realized he got caught, he tried to cover it up. the president asserted blanket immunity. he categorically defied congressional subpoenas, ordered his aides not to testify and withheld the production of relevant documents. even president nixon, author of the most infamous presidential cover-up in history, permitted his aides to testify in congress in the watergate investigation. the idea that the trump administration was properly invoking the various rights and privileges of the presidency is nonsense. at each stage of the house inquiry, the administration conjured up a different bad faith justification for evading accountability. there is no circumstance under which the administration would have complied. when i asked the president's counsel twice to name one document or one witness the president provided to congress, they could not answer. it cannot be that the president by dint of legal shamelessness can escape scrutiny entirely. once again, the facts are not in dispute. but some have sought to portray the second article of impeachment as somehow less important than the first. it is not. the second article of impeachment is necessary if congress is to ever hold a president accountable again. democrat or republican. the consequences of sanctioning such categorical obstruction of congress would be far-reaching and they will be irreparable. i judge that president trump is guilty of the second article of impeachment. the senate should convict president trump, remove him from the presidency, and disqualify him from holding future office. the guilt of the president on these charges is so obvious that here again several republican senators admit that the house has proved its case. so instead of maintaining the president's innocence, the president's counsel ultimately told the senate that even if the president did what he was accused of, it's not impeachable. this has taken the form of an escalating series of dershowit dershowitzian arguments, including, quote, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense. quote, the president can't be impeached for noncriminal conduct but he also can't be indicted for criminal conduct. quote, if a president believes his own reelection is essential to the nation, then a quid pro quo is not corrupt. these are the excuses of a child caught in a lie. each explanation more outlandish and desperate than the last. it would be laughable if not for the fact that the cumulative effect of these arguments would render not just this president but all presidents immune from impeachment and, therefore, above the law. now, several members of this chamber said that even if the president is guilty and even if it's impeachable, the senate still shouldn't convict the president because there's an election coming up. as if the framers forgot about elections when they wrote the impeachment clause. if the founders believed that even when a president is guilty of an impeachable offense that the next election should decide his fate, they never would have included an impeachment clause in the constitution. that much is obvious. alone each of the defenses advanced by the president's counsel comes close to being preposterous. together they are as dangerous to the republic as this president, a fig leaf so large as to excuse any presidential misconduct, unable to defend the president, arguments were found to make him a king. like future -- let future generations know that only a fraction of the senate swallowed these fantasies. the rest of us condemn them to the ash heap of history and the derision of first-year law students everyier. we're only the third in history to sit in a court of impeachment. the task we were given was not easy. but the framers gave the senate this responsibility because they could not imagine any other body capable of it. they considered others but they entrusted us to us and the senate failed. the republican caucus trained its outraged not on the conduct ofs right to examine relevant evidence, to call witnesses, to review documents, and to properly try, try the impeachment of the president making this the first impeachment trial in history that heard from no witnesses. a simple majority of senators indeference to and most likely in fear of the president of their party perpetrated a great miscarriage of justice in the trial of president trump. as a result, the verdict of this kangaroo court will be meaningless. by refusing the facts, by refusing witnesses and documents, the republican majority has placed a giant asterisk, the asterisk of a sham trial next to the acquittal of president trump written in permanent ink. acquittal and an unfair trial with this giant asterisk, the asterisk of a sham trial is worth nothing at all to president trump or to anybody else. no doubt the president will boast he received total exoneration, but we know better. we know this wasn't a trial by any stretch of the definition. and the american people know it, too. we've heard a lot about the framers over the past several weeks, about the impeachment clause they forged, the separation of powers they wrought, the conduct they most feared in our chief magistrate. but there is something the founders considered even more fundamental to our republic. truth. the founders had seen and studied societies governed by the iron fist of tyrants and the divine right of kings but none by argument, rational thinking, facts, debate. hamilton said the american people would determine, quote, whether societies are really capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice or forever destined to depend on accident and force. and what an astonishing thing the founders did. they placed a bet with long odds. they believed that reflection and choice would make us capable of self-government, that we wouldn't agree on everything but at least we could agree on a common baseline of fact and of truth. they wrote a constitution with the remarkable idea that even the most powerful person in our country was not above the law and could be put on trial, a trial, a place where you seek truth. the faith our founders placed in us makes the failure of this senate even more damning. our nation was founded on the idea of truth but there was no truth here. the republican majority couldn't let truth into this trial. the republican majority refused to get the evidence because they were afraid of what it might show. our nation was founded on the idea of truth, but in order to countenance this president, you have to ignore the truth. republicans walked through the halls with their heads down. they didn't see the tweet. they can't respond to everything he says. they hope he learns his lesson this time. yes, maybe this time he learned his lesson. our nation was founded on truth. but in order to excuse this president, you have to willfully ignore the truth and indulge in the president's conspiracy theories. millions of people voted illegally, the deep state is out to get him, ukraine interfered in our elections. you must attempt to normalize his behavior. obama did it, too, they falsely claim. democrats are just as bad. our nation was founded on the idea of truth, but this president is such a menace, so contemptuous of every virtue, so dishonorable, so dishonest, that you must ignore -- indeed, sacrifice -- the truth to maintain his favor. the trial of this president, it's failure, reflects the central challenge of this presidency and maybe the central challenge of this time in our democracy. you cannot be on the side of this president and be on the side of truth. and if we are to survive as a nation, we must choose truth. because if the truth doesn't matter, if the news you don't like is fake, if cheating in an election is acceptable, if everyone is as wicked as the wickedest among you then the hope for the future is lost. the eyes of the nation are upon this senate, and what they see will strike doubt in the heart of even the most ardent patriot. the house managers established the president abused the great power of his office to try to cheat in an election, and the senate majority is poised to look the other way. so i direct my final message, not to the house managers, not even to my fellow senators, but to the american people. my message is simple -- don't lose hope. there is justice in this world, and truth and right. i believe that. i wouldn't be in this government if i didn't. somehow, in ways we can't predict, with god's mysterious hand guiding us, truth and right will prevail. there have been dark periods in our history, but we always overcome. the senate's opening prayer yesterday was amust, 5:24, let justice roll down like water, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. the long arc of the moral universe, my fellow americans, does bend towards justice. america does change for the better. but not on its own. it took millions of americans hundreds of i do noters to make this -- hundreds of years to make this country what it is today. americans of every color and creed who stood up and sat in, americans who defended this democracy, this beautiful democracy, in its darkest hours. on memorial day in 1884, oliver wendell holmes told his war-weary audience that, quote, whether one accepts from fortune or spade and will look downward and dig or from aspiration her ax and cord and will scale the ice, the one and only success which is yours to command is to bring to your work a mitety heart. i have confidence that americans of a different generation -- our generation -- will bring to our work a mitety -- a mitety heart to fight for what's right, to fight for the truth, and never, never lose faith. i yield the floor. mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: the united states senate was made for moments like this. the framers predicted that factional fever might dominate house majorities from time to time. they knew the country would need a firewall to keep partisan flames from scorching -- scorching -- our republic. so they created the senate. out of necessity, james madison wrote, of some stable institution in the government. of some stable institution in the government. today we will fulfill this founding purpose. we will reject this incoherent case that comes nowhere near -- nowhere near -- justifying the first presidential removal in history. this partisan impeachment will end today. but i fear the threat to our institutions may not, because this episode is one of a symptom of something much deeper. in the last three years, the opposition to this president has come to revolve around a truly dangerous concept. leaders in the opposite party increasingly argue that if our institutions don't produce the outcomes they like, our institutions themselves must be broken. one side has decided that defeat simply means the whole system is broken, that we literally tear up the rules and write new ones. normally -- normally when a party loses an election, it accepts defeat; it reflects and retools. but not this time. within months, secretary clinton was suggesting her defeat was invalid. she called our president illegitimate. former president falsely claimed that president trump didn't actually win. he lost the election, the former president said. and members of congress have used similar rhetoric. a disinformation campaign weakening confidence in our democracy. the very real issue of foreign election interference was abuse reasonable doubt to fuel conspiracy theories. for years prominent voices said there'd been a secret conspiracy between the president's campaign and a foreign government. but when the mueller investigation and the senate intelligence committee debunked that, the delegitimizing endeavor didn't stop. didn't stop. remember what chairman schiff said here on the floor. he suggested that if the american people reelect president trump in november, that election will be presumptively invalid as well. that's chairman schiff on this floor. he said if the american people reelect president trump this november, that election will be presumptively invalid as well. so they still don't -- still don't -- accept the american voter's last decision. and now they're preparing to reject the voters' next decision if they don't like the outcome. not only the last decision, but the next decision. heads we win, tails you cheated. and who can trust our democracy anyway, they say? this kind of talk creates more fear and division than our foreign adversaries could achieve in their wildest dreams. as dr. hill testified, our adversaries seek to divide us against each other, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the american people in our democracy. and as she noted, if americans become consumed by partisan rancor, we can easily do that work for them. the architects of this impeachment claim they were defending norms and traditions. in reality, it was an assault on both. first, the house attacked its own precedence on fairness and due process and by rushing to use the impeachment power as a political weapon of first resort. then their articles attacked the office of the presidency, then they attacked the senate and called us treacherous, then the far left tried to impugn the chief justice for remaining neutral during the trial, and now -- and now -- for the final act, the speaker of the house is trying to steal the senate's sole power to render a verdict. the speaker says she will just refuse to accept this acquittal. the speaker of the house says she refuse toss accept this -- she refuses to accept this acquittal, whatever that means. perhaps she will tear up the verdict like she tore up the state of the union address. so i would ask my distinguished colleagues across the aisle, is this really -- really where you want to go? the president isn't the president? and acquittal isn't an acquittal? attack institutions until they get their way? even my colleagues, who may not agree with this president, must see the insanity of this logic. it's like saying is you're so worried about a bull in a china shop that you want to bulldoze the china shop to chase it out. and here's the most troubling part -- the most troubling part. there is no sign this attack on our institutions will end here. in recent months, democratic presidential candidates and senate leaders have toyed with killing the filibuster so the senate could approve radical changes with less deliberation and less persuasion. several of our colleagues sent an extraordinary brief to the supreme court threatening political retribution if the justices didn't decide a case the way they wanted. we've seen proposals to turn the f.e.c., the regulator of elections and political speech, into a partisan body for the first time ever. all these things, mr. president -- all these things -- a toxic temptation to stop debating policy within our great american governing traditions and instead declare a war on the traditions themselves. a war on the traditions themselves. so, colleagues, whatever policy differences we may have, we should all agree this is precisely the kind of recklessness -- the kind of recklessness -- the senate was created to stop. the response to losing one election cannot be to attack the office of the presidency. the response to losing several elections cannot be to threaten the electoral college. the response to losing a court case cannot be to threaten the judiciary. the response to losing a vote cannot be to threaten the senate. we simply cannot let factional fever break our institutions. it must work the other way, as madison and hamilton intended. the institutions must break the fever. rather than the other way around. the framers built the senate to keep temporary rage from doing permanent damage to our republic. the framers built the senate to keep temporary rage from doing permanent damage to our republic. that, mr. president, is what we will do when we end this precedent-breaking impeachment. i hope we will look back on this vote and say this was the day the fever began to break. i hope we will not say this was just the beginning. i ask unanimous consent the senate stand in recess subject to the call of the chair. the presiding officer: without objection, the senate stands in recess subject to the call of the chair. recess:

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