election. and ever since, the democrats have been searching for a pretext. when the mueller investigation found no m evidence to support e monstrous lie that the president acted in collusion with russia, there democrats realized they we running out of time. andin suddenly, the ukrainian phone call replaced collusion, stormy daniels, tax returns, emoluments, and even tweets as the reason to nullify the election. just a year before the next one is to be held. impeachment is one of the most serious powers with which congress ispo entrusted. it requires an overwhelming case of high crimes supported by clear evidence that a vast majority of the nation deeming compelling. our constitution vests the executive authority, including the enforcement of our laws, with the president. and it gives him sole authority to conduct our foreign affairs. clearly, this includes requesting a foreign government to cooperate in resolving potentially corrupt and illegal
ask zelensky to look him in the eye andim tell him that once ukraine s new justice folks are in place, zelensky should be able p to move forward publicly and with confidence on those issues of importance to the president and the united states. hopefully that will break the log jam. d if the investigative committee has uncovered any evidence on what he meant when mr. zelensky would have to move forward on issues important to the question to receive military aid. he said those were the two investigations that president trumpth mentioned on the july 2h call which secretary pompeo who had received that email listened into. so the president was concerned about the two investigations, and that was the predicate for releasing military aid to our ally? at the time of that email, yes. thank you and i yield back.
ms. bass left off. they walked us through how the president used the white house visit to apply pressure on ukraine to do his personal bidding. i want to talk about how the president did the same thing with almost 400 million taxpayer dollars to pressure ukraine to bidding.rsonal so i d like to start with turning back to the july 25th call. it s a fact that in the president s own i words in the transcript submitted by him reveals that after ukraine asked for military aid, trump says i would like you to do us a favor, though. right. after president zelensky thanks president trump for the military assistance. then president trump asks for a favor. and of course a by this point president trump had already placed the hold on the security assistance. now my republican colleagues have suggested that the ukrainians did not even know about thera military aid being withheld. is that true?
and so with that we bring it back to the same points. no pressure, no conditionality, and all of the aid, meetings, calls, were received by ukrainians. i yield back. mr. lieu. let s just cut through all the republican arguments today and make things very simple. no one else in america could do what president trump did and get away with it. no american elected official can call out a foreign government official and ask for an investigation of a a political opponent. no one sitting on this judiciary committee can call up a foreign government official and ask for help in o a re-election campaig. if we did that and got caught, we would likely be indicted. now let s focus on the president s abuse of power in this case because it s actually worse than examples i just gave. and i know that i first swore an oath to the constitution when i
conclusions in how the fbi case was opened. facts are out and you ve got the attorney general doesn t accept them, the president doesn t accept them? and it would appear his hand-picked prosecutor looking at some of the same things doesn t accept them or agree with them either. i can t make any sense of it. first ofan all what is he doing talking about his work? he s supposed to be a professional. if you must investigate, go get facts and then show them g to t american people. but don t be part of a sliming of the i.g. and the department as a whole. do yourrt work. what the workidea is that he s doing. we ll have to be quiet again, wait for the work to be finished. what i worry about for mr. rydurham is when somebody needs to investigate him when he doesn t support the president s conspiracy ortheories. possible? think that s of course. given the way these people act. he is a pro by reputation. he will gather facts. but if he doesn t find the facts that these characters want, there