the only authority is delegated to them byho the president. all the criticisms and resentments and personal and politicald disagreements that we ve heard from those officials are completely irrelevant. it is dangerous that so many officials in the executive branch believe that they have independent authority to override presidential policy, leak classified documents and actively work tocu undermine th lawful discharge of the president sch duties under artie two. if their judgment can replace that of the president, it means the people of the united states have simply been removed from the equation. someone said during the discussion today thatth the president has actually committed real crimes. there article does not charge sh crimes. why not? becausees there s no evidence t support them. if there was evidence, you know in are heartbeat they would hav included these vecharges, so it obvious they don t even believe their own rt rick.
holmes says the big stuff, you mean like the war, dealing with russia? no, the big stuff, what president trump cares about. i m not quoting very bay tim because i don t have it in fron of me. the substance is very clear. what does he care about? what can benefit him like the bidens. it s very clear from multiple witnessesom exactly what presidt trump wanted to get from president zelensky. he wanted a statement on television that ukraine was investigating and was going to investigate vice president joe biden, and he wanted a statement contradicting the 2016 understanding by our intelligence committee and by special counsel mueller there had been a sweeping and s systematicin campaign by russia and saying it was ukraine that interfered in our campaign. that s what he wanted. that wast the big stuff.
says i can do whatever i want, i m erpresident. that s not right. when het. said, i need a favor, though, he was talking about getting dirt on the bidens. he feared joe biden as his primary political rival. michaelpo cohen told us the president doesn t come out and say exactly what he wants. he speaks in code. that s the president s code. michaelnt cohen knows it and michael cohen is in prison now. individual one is not in prison because individual one could not be indicted because of the justice department s policies that say you can t indict a sitting president.nd but michael cohen who is in prison because he facilitated the payments to ms. daniels and the payments the ms. mcdougal. you talk about abuse of power. abuse of power is having a charitable foundation and taking advantage of the charities and using the money for your own purposes and having to pay a $2
you can t ignore the direct conversation he hadno with the president of the united states, where he asked him, mr. president, what do you want from ukraine. what did the. president say? interesting. mr. sondland left this out of his opening statement, 20-some-page opening statement. what did the president say? i want nothing, i want no pquid pro quo. i want him to do what he said, what he ran on. you can t ignore that. you want all this presumption, you want all this addendum. if you re going to take some of sondland, you ve got to take owl of him. i yield back. i yield to mr. stuby. i yield to mr. gates. i have 30 seconds. i have 30 seconds left before they cut the clock. the gentleman can proceed. i yield to mr. gates. ild thank the gentleman for yielding. i think the gentleman from
it s us, our country. if you ve got a case, make it. don t make it up because you don t have it. what we have is this continual just repeated attacks on the ukrainian president, mr. zelensky, repeated attacks. we re either claiming he is a liar or a puppet or, a politician and actor. so disregard it. wow, that s a lot of concern for the ukrainian people, taking on their very the president they ve just elected. when we understand and look at this, this is how it gets to the problem. when you get to a certain point and you can t make your case, when you can t factually add it up. when you have a law school professor tell you, if you think this, think this, the inference is okay. then we ve lowered the standard where anything can be brought in. thehi factual case that had bee made over the past almost three hours by the minority side has laid bare on the case of power.