anti-corruption platform, but he was an untried politician with a relationship to a controversial ukrainian oligarch. when vice president pence met with president zelensky in i m -sorry, when vice presiden pence met with president zelensky ine war saw on septemr 1, he stressed to him the need for reform and reiterated the president s concern about burden sharing, especially young european allies. in late august and early accept afterly his party took control the ukrainian parliament, they passed reforms to fight corruption. these included removing par rimtrim limitary immunity. imagine if members of our congress had immunity. president trump then lifted the assistance and wet p president zelensky two weeks later. the aid was paused for 55 days. very simply, the evidence does
it, on september 24th until today, has been 76 days. as professor turley testified last wednesday, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding with the thinnest evidentiary record and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president. the artificial and arbitrary political deadline by which democrats are determined to finish impeachment by christmas leads to a rushed process and missed opportunities tooc obtai relevant information. democratsva avoided the accommodations process required byro federal courts in disputes between congress and the executive. democrats declined to attempt to negotiate with the administration for the production of documents and witnesses.an democrats did not exhaust all their options to entice witnesses or agencies to to cooperate, such as allowing
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.
the case of impeachment. the substantive case for impeaching president trump as a result ofim an artificial, arbitrary and political schedule, relies heavily on ambiguous facts. presumptions and speculation. presidenton turley warned that impeachmentsey have been based proof, not presumptions. the democrats do not have the proof. now, my democrat counterparts on the intelligence committee are talented attorneys. i m sure they will tell you a riveting story about a shadow or irregular foreign policy apparatus and a smear campaign designed to ex tort ukraine for the president s political benefit. they ll tell you about president trump and how he put his own political interests ahead of national security by mentioning former vice president joe biden
not support the conclude that president trump abused his power foris his own personal politica benefit. there is simply no clear evidence thatpl president trump acted with malicious intent in withholding a meeting or securityin assistance. indeed, there are, and the republican report articulates them, legitimate explanations for these actions that are not nefarious as the democrats allege. the evidence shows that president trump faithfully executed the duties of his office by delivering on what he promised the american voters he would do. democrats may disagree with the president s policy decisions or the manner in which he governs, but those disagreements are not enoughnt to justify the irrevocable action of removing him from office. the democrats hyperbole are no good reason, 11 months out from an election, to prevent the american people from deciding on