lieutenant colonel alexander vindman, and dr. fiona hill, the president s aggressive and unprecedented resistance to congressional subpoenas for witnesses and documents is blatantly and dangerously unconstitutional. if accepted and normalized now, it will undermine perhaps for all time the congressional impeachment power its, which is the people s last instrument of constitutional self-defense against a sitting president who behaves like a king and tramples the rule of law. by obstructing an impeachment inquiry with impunity, the president will have the power to actively destroy the people s final check on his own corrupt misconduct and abuse of power. the framers insisted that we have impeachment in the constitution precisely to protect ourselves from a president becoming a tyrant and a despot, and we cannot, and we will not allow the impeachment power its to be destroyed.
impeachment power itself to be destroyed. these articles charge that president trump is engaged in system attic abuse of his powers, obstructed congress and realized the worst fares of the framers by sub bored nating our national security and dragging foreign powers into american politics to corrupt our elections all for the greater cause of his own personal gain and ambition. article and section four of the constitution provides the president shall be impeached for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors. this is the essential check that the people s representatives maintain over the executive branch. as our constitutional expert witnesses testified, the framers sought to capture a broad range of presidential misconduct and wrongdoing through this process, but the commanding and comprehensive impulse for including impeachment power in the constitution was to prevent the president s abuse of power
arthel. arthel: mark meredith, thank you very much, eric. we don t need permission to go to use our constitutional rules. if president trump is allowed to refuse to comply with requests for information it would gut the house impeachment power and undermine our bedrock principle of separation of powers. eric: democratic pennsylvania congressman from philadelphia madeline dean, some democrats in districts the president carried a total of 31, they are now weighing their impeachment vote this coming week and whether that could cost them their seats, what could we expect this coming week and next month in senate trial, joining congressman madeline dean and she voted for impeachment articles, congressman, welcome. good to see you, you know what the president and supporters say, the hearings are one-sided, sham, a hoax, they say the fix was in, the democrats want to
dislike us so much they re willing to weize the government. now it s the impeachment power of congress going after 63 million people and the guy we put in the wous. my question is where s your crimes? there s no allegation of bribery, there s no allegation of extortion. why aren t they in this impeachment document? because they don t exist. what is the point of the anchorman not anchor lady strategy? i think that republicans clearly understand that the facts, the truth is not on their side and so the only thing they can do is repeat the same things over and over again and each time they repeat them they have to do it louder and more emphatically because for them they only care about those ten seconds sound bites they re going to play on fox news to make it look like they weren t outrageous about something. are they worried they won t hear them? why are they screaming? i mean, they scream. because in their paradigm
the presidency for one s own private benefit, to help oneself get re-elected, that was the core danger that led to the inclusion of the impeachment power in the constitution. right. there was a big argument, you know, that they re framing. do we need an impeachment power. after all the president will stand for re-election. but the main answer was yeah but he might steal that election, especially dealing with foreign powers. that s why this is so important and it would be distracting to go off into legal capillaries and arteries like bribery and extortion although that would have been a possibility. but it is given a vulnerability to stick with your analogy, it s pumped blood through the arteries and capillaries of the republican push back which is you can t even articulate a crime. and remember i don t have to remind you but this is not going to be a jury. this isn t a trial. right. this is about persuasion with the american people.