Whatwe that means, its to use e power of the office to obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring orfi injuring the national interest, or acts in ways that are grossly inconsistent with and undermine the separation of powers that is the foundation of our democratic system. Now, this question of whether the president engaged in abuse of power came up before when this congress considered the impeachment of president nixon. And president nixon famously said, if the president does it, it is notde illegal. And this body rejected that because thats not so. That goes directly contrary to what the founders said. But President Trump has said the same thing in responding to the prior investigation by the Department Of Justice and defending his conduct. Heres what he said. I have an article 2 where i have the right to do whatever i want as president. That he has the right to do whatever he wants as president. That is as wrong as when president nixon said a similar thing. That is not what
a campaign platform to extend the invitation to the foreign power, now he has the levers of government in his control to not only request it and invite it, but toly pressure that country do it. and that s exactly what he did. and w you ll hear more about th in the presentation from the house intelligence committee: and what s most c striking as w come back to this issue that the framers were concerned about, is there a continuing risk of wrongdoing, the fact that president trump did this after he was caught shows the risk. shows the risk of what will happen if this body doesn t act. he really does believe he can act as though he were above the law. he really does believe as evidenced by this conduct, that he can puts his personal and political interests over the nation s interest, over the nation s national security interest, overe the nation s integrity of its elections.
personal interests above the nation s interests in order to help his own re-election efforts. before i highlight the evidence and the findings of this report, i want to take just a moment to introduce myself and discuss today s testimony. i joinedda the house intelligen committee as senior adviser and director of investigations at the beginning of this year. previously i served for ten years as a prosecutor in the southernr district of new york. when i n joined the department justice under the george w. bush administration. the team that ish led on the intelligence communityd includ other former federal prosecutors, a retired fbi agent, and investigators with significant national security ent enter tees. the report that i am presenting today is basedam entirely on th evidence that we collected in coordination withle the oversig and foreign affairs committees