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
that wered gathered as part of the impeachment inquiry into president trump s actions. nothing more and nothing less. the three investigating committees ran a fair, professional and thorough investigation. wero followed the house rules f depositionss and public hearin, including the rule against agency counsel being present for depositions, and members and staff from both parties had equal time to ask questions and there were no substantive questions that weresu prevented from being asked and answered. this investigation moved swiftly and intensively, as all good investigations should. to the extent that other witnesses would be able to provide morebe context and deta about this scheme, their failure to testify is due solely to the fact that president trump obstructed thetr inquiry and refused refused to make them available.
unanimous support for the aid from every relevant agency in the trump administration. nevertheless, during the call, president trump complained that u.s. support for ukraine was not reciprocal, that somehow ukrains needed to give more to the united states. what did he mean? it became clear, because immediately after b president zelensky broughtaf up u.s. military support and purchased javelin anti-tank weapons president trump responded, i would like to you do us a favor, though, because our country has been throughus a lot and ukrain knows a lot about it. now the favor that he referenced there included two demands that had nothing the to do with official u.s. policy or foreign policy. first,cy president trump said i to find out what happened withfi this whole situation with ukraine. they said crowdstrike. as you saw yesterday, excuse mex i guess you have one of your
this unfair process reflects the degree to which democrats are obsessed with impeaching the president. the democrats went searching for a set of facts on which to impeach the president, the emoluments clause, the president s business and financial records, the mueller report, allegations of obstruction, before landing on the ukraine phone call. the impeachment inquiry is clearly an orchestrated effort to upend our political system. according to politico, the speaker was scripted every step of the impeachment inquiry. democrats have reportedly convened focus groups to test which g allegations, whether ite quid pro quo or bribery or extortion, were most compelling to the american public. speakerri pelosi said democrats must strike while the iron is hot on impeaching the president. the entire duration of the impeachment inquiry from the time speaker pelosi announced
articles of impeachment against the president. the same day, representative talib said we re going to go in there, we re going to impeach the president. in may 2019, representative green said on ms nbc if we don t impeach this president, he will be reelected. even speaker pelosi, who has said that impeachment is a somber and prayerful exercise, has called president trump an imposter and said it is dangerous to allow voters to judgell his performance in 2020. the obsession with impeaching the presidentio is reflected in-house democrats have used the power of their majority in the past 11 months. in the oversight committee the democrats s first announced witness was michael cohen, a disgraced felon who pleaded guilty to lying to congress. when he came before us at the oversight committee, he then