that it was all just here. and of course 230 years ago i tell them none of it was here. none of it was here. it was in the ideas of the founders, the people who we call the founders who did two incredible things in their lifetime, in their generation that had never been done before in human history. they wrote a constitution that would be ratified by the people who live under it, it never happened before. they would have never imagined that we would have lasted 230 years, at least until the age of donald trump. they led an armed insur eption against a colonial power, we call that the revolutionary war. that succeeded, too. they do something terrible in their generation that will last for the rest of our days, madam president, and that is they perpetuated human slavery. the building we're standing in today was built by enslaved human beings because of the decisions that they made. but i tell the kids that come and visit me, there is a reason why they're notten -- there are not enslaved human beings in this country anymore, and that's because of people like frederick douglass, born a slave in the united states of america, escaped his slavery in maryland, risked his life and limb to get to massachusetts, and he found the abolition abolitionist move. the abolitionist movement, madam president, have been arguing for generations that the constitution was a pro-slavery document. and frederick douglass, who was completely self-taught, completely self-taught, said to them you have this exactly wrong, exactly backwards. 180 degrees from the truth. the constitution is an antislavery document, frederick douglass said, not a pro-slavery document, but we're not living up to the words of the constitution. it's the same thing dr. king said the night before he was killed in memphis when he went down there for the striking garbage workers, and he said i am here to make america keep the promise you wrote down on the page. and in my mind, frederick douglass and dr. king are founders just as much as the people who wrote the constitution of the united states. how could they not be? how could they not be? the women that fought to give my kids, my three daughters the right to vote, who fought for 50 years to get the right to vote, mostly women in this country. their founders disliked the people who wrote the constitution as well. and over the years that i have been here, madam president, as i have seen this institution crumble into rubble, this institution become incapable of addressing the most existential questions of our time, that the next generation cannot address, they can't fix their own school. they can't fix our immigration system. they can't fix climate change, although they are getting less and less patient with us on that issue. but what i have come to conclude is that the responsibility of all of us, not just senators, but all of us as citizens in a democratic republic 230 years after the founding of this republic is the responsibility of a founder, that it's that elevated assent of what a citizen is required to do in a republic to sustain that republic. and i think that's the right way to think about it. it gives you a sense of what's really at stake beyond the headlines on the cable television at night and certainly in the social media feeds that divide us minute to minute in our political life today. and the senate has clearly failed that standard. we have clearly failed that standard. the idea that we would turn our back, close our eyes to evidence pounding on the outside of the doors of this capitol is pitiful it is disgraceful. and it will be a stain on this body for all time. more than 50% of the people in this place have said that what the president did was wrong. it clearly was wrong. it clearly was unconstitutional. it clearly was impeachable. a president would run for office, saying to the american people, i'm going to try to extort a foreign power for my own electoral interests to interfere in our election. it is exactly the kind of conduct that the impeachment clause was written for. it is a textbook case of what the impeachment clause exists. but even if you don't agree with me that he should have been convicted or that he should be convicted, i don't know how anybody in this body goes home and faces their constituents and say we wouldn't even look at the evidence. and so i say to the american people our democracy is very much at risk. i'm not one of those people who believes that donald trump is the source of all our problems. i think he's made matters much worse, to be sure. but he is a symptom of our problem. he is a symptom of our failure to tend to the democracy, to our responsibility as founders. and if we don't begin to take that responsibility as seriously as our parents and grandparents did, people who face much longes than we ever did. nobody is asking us, thank god, to end human slavery. nobody's asking us to fight for 50 years for the self-evident proposition that women should have the right to vote. we're not marching in selma, being beaten for the self-evident prospect that all people are created equally. nobody's asking us to climb the cliffs of dover to fight for freedom in a war that had never touched our shores. we are being asked to save the democracy. and we're going to fail that test today in the united states senate. and my prayer for our country, madam president, is that the american people won't fail that test, and i'm optimistic that we won't. we have never failed it before. and i don't think we'll fail it in our time. madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin is recognized. ms. baldwin: in 2012, the good people of wisconsin elected me to work for them in the united states senate. like every one of my fellow senators, i took an oath of office. in 2018, i was reelected, and i took that same oath. we have all taken that oath. it's not to support and defend the president, this president or any other. our oath is to support and defend the constitution of the united states. that is our job every day that we come to work, and it certainly is our job here today. just over two weeks ago, we all stood together right here and we took another oath given us to -- by chief justice roberts to do impartial judgment in this impeachment trial. i have taken this responsibility very seriously. i listened to both sides make their case. i have reviewed the evidence presented, and i have carefully considered the facts. from the beginning, i have supported a full, fair, and honest impeachment trial. a majority of this senate has failed to allow it. i supported the release of critical evidence that was concealed by the white house. the other side of the aisle let president trump hide it from us, and they voted to keep it a secret from the american people. i voted for testimony of relevant witnesses with direct firsthand evidence about the president's conduct. senate republicans blocked witness testimony because they didn't want to be bothered with the truth. every senate impeachment trial in our nation's history has included witnesses, and this senate trial should have been no different. unfortunately, it was. a majority of the senate has taken the unprecedented step of refusing to hear all the evidence. declining all the facts, denying the full truth about this president's corrupt abuse of power. president trump has obstructed congress, and this senate will let him. last month, president trump's former national security advisor john bolton provided an unpublished manuscript to the white house. the recent media reports about what ambassador bolton could have testified to had he not been blocked as a witness go to the heart of this impeachment trial -- abuse of power and obstruction of congress. as reported, in early may, 2019, there was an oval office meeting that included president trump, mick mulvaney, pat cipollone, rudy giuliani, and john bolton. according to mr. bolton, the president directed him to help with his pressure campaign to solicit assistance from ukraine to pursue investigations that would not only benefit president trump politically but would act to exonerate russia from their interference in our 2016 elections. iz several weeks later the u.s. department of defense certified the release of military aid to ukraine, concluding that they had taken substantial actions to decrease corruption. this was part of the security assistance we approved in congress with bipartisan support to help ukraine fight russian aggression. however, president trump blocked it and covered it up from congress. on july 25, 2019, as president trump was withholding the support for ukraine, he had a telephone call with ukranian president zelensky. based on a white house call summary memo that was released two months later, we all know the president put his own political interests ahead of our national security and the integrity of our elections. based on the clear and convincing evidence presented in this trial, we know president trump used american taxpayer dollars and security assistance for ukraine to get them to interfere in our elections to help them politically. we know the president solicited assistance from ukraine to pursue investigation of phony conspiracy theories about our 2016 u.s. election that are part of a russian disinformation campaign. we know the president solicited assistance from ukraine to discredit the conclusion by american law enforcement, the u.s. intelligence community, and confirmed by a bipartisan senate report that russia interfered with our 2016 elections. and we know president trump solicited foreign interference in the upcoming election by pressuring ukraine to publicly announce investigations to help him politically. i would ask my friends to consider the fact that the ukranian president was pressured and prepared to go on an american cable television network to announce these political investigations. to those who are making the argument to acquit the president because to convict him would create further division in our country, i ask you to acknowledge the fact that president trump's corrupt scheme has given russia another opening to attack our democracy, interfere in our elections, and further divide our already divided country. we know this to be true, but the senate is choosing to ignore the truth. as reported just weeks after the zelensky call, president trump told ambassador bolton in august that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to ukraine until they helped with the political investigations. had ambassador bolton testified to these facts in this trial, it would directly contradict what the president told senator johnson in a phone call on august 31, 2019, where according to senator johnson, the president said, i would never do that. who told you that? john bolton not only has direct evidence that implicates president trump in a corrupt abuse of power, he has direct evidence that president trump lied to one of our colleagues in an attempt to cover it up. it may not matter to this senate, but i can tell you it matters to the people of the state of wisconsin that this president did not tell their senator the truth. based on the facts presented to us, i refuse to join this president's cover-up and i refuse to conclude that the president's abuse of power doesn't matter, that it's okay and that we should just get over it. i want to recognize the courageous public servants who did what this senate has failed to do, to put our country first. in the house impeachment inquiry, brave government servants came forward and told the truth. they put their jobs on the line and instead of inspiring us to do our duty, to do our job, they faced character assassination from this president, the white house, and some of my colleagues here in the senate. it is a disgrace to this institution that they were treated as anything less than the patriots that they are. as army lieutenant colonel alexander vindman said, this is america. here, right matters. my judgment is inspired by these words, and i am guided to my commitment to put country before party and our constitution first. my vote on the president's abuse of power and obstruction of congress is a vote to uphold my oath of office and to support and defend the constitution. my vote is a vote to uphold the rule of law and our uniquely american principle that no one, not even the president, is above the law. i only have one of 100 votes in the u.s. senate, and i'm afraid that the majority is putting this president above the law by not convicting him of these impeachable offenses. but let's be clear, this is not an exoneration of president trump. it is a failure to show moral courage and hold this president accountable. now every american will have a power to make their own judgment. every american gets to decide what is in our public interest. we the people get to choose what is in our national interest. i trust the american people. i know they will be guided by our common good and the truth. the people we work for know what the truth is and they know in america it matters. i yield back. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut is recognized. mr. murphy: thank you, madam president. madam president, it's important to remind ourselves at moments like this how unnatural and uncommon democracy really is. just think about all the important forums in your life. think about your workplace, your family, your favorite sports team. none of them makes decisions by democratic vote. the c.e.o. decides how much money you're going to make, not a vote of your fellow employees. you love your kids, but they don't get an equal say in household matters as mom and dad do. the plays that the chiefs called on their game-winning drive, they weren't decided by a team vote. no, most everything in our life that matters other than the government under which we live is not run by democratic vote. and of course a tiny percentage of humans, well under probably .1% have lived in a democratic society over the last 1,000 years of human history. democracy is unnatural. it's rare. it's delicate. it's fragile. and untended to, neglected or taken for granted, it will disappear like ashes scattering into the cold night. this body, the united states senate, was conceived by our founders to be the ultimately malt guardians of this britle experiment -- brittle experiment in governance. we the 100 of us were given the responsibility to keep it safe from those that may deign to harm it and when the senate lives up to this charge it is an awesome inspirational sight to behold. i was born three weeks after alexander butterfield revealed the existence of a taping system in the white house that likely held evidence of president nixon's crimes. i was born one week after the senate watergate committee in a bipartisan vote ordered nixon to turn over several key tapes. my parents were republicans. my mom still is a republican. and over the years they've voted for a lot of democrats and republicans. they raised me in the shadow of watergate to understand that what mattered in politics wasn't really someone's party. it was whether you are honest and decent, if you are pursuing office for the right reasons. in the year i was born, this senate watched a president betray the nation, and this senate, both democrats and republicans, stood together to protect the country from this betrayal. this is exactly what our founders envisioned when they gave the congress the massive responsibility of the impeachment power. they said use it sparingly, use it not to settle political scores, but use it when a president has strayed from the bonds of decency and propriety. the founders wanted congress to save the country from bad men who would try to use the awesome power of the executive branch to enrich themselves or to win office illicitly. and i grew up under the belief that when those bad men presented themselves, this place had the ability to put aside party and work to protect our fragile democracy from attack. and this attack on our republic that we are debating today left unchecked is potentially lethal. the one sacred covenant that an american president makes with the government is to use the massive power of the executive branch for the good of the country, not for personal, financial, or political benefit. the difference between a democracy and a tin pot dirktship is that -- dictatorship is that here we don't allow presidents to use official levers of power to destroy political opponents, but that's exactly what president trump did. and we all know it. even the republicans who are going to vote to acquit him today admit that. and if you think that our endorsement through acquittal won't have an impact, then just look at rudy giuliani's trip to ukraine in december in the middle of the impeachment process. he went back looking for more dirt, and the president was bringing him up to get the details before giuliani's plane hit the gate. the corruption hasn't stopped. it's ongoing. and if this is the new normal, the new means by which a president can consolidate power and try to disoi political opponents -- to destroy political opponents, then we are no longer living in america. what happened here over the last two weeks is as much a corruption as trump's scheme was. this trial was simply an extension of trump's crimes. no documents, no witnesses. the first ever impeachment trial in the senate without either. john bolton practically begging to come here and tell his firsthand account of the president's corruption denied, just to make sure that voters can't hear his story in time for them to be able to pressure their senators prior to an impeachment vote. this is a show trial, a gift-wrapped present for a grateful party leader. we became complicit in the very attacks on democracy that this body is supposed to guard against. we have failed to protect the republic. and what's so interesting to me is that it's not like republicans didn't see this moment coming. in fact, many of my colleagues across the aisle literally predicted, prior to the president's election, here's what republican senators said about donald trump. one said he is shallow, he is ill prepared to be commander in chief. i think he's crazy. i think he's unfit for office. another said the man is a pathological liar. he didn't know the difference -- he doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. yet another republican senator said what we're dealing with is a con artist. he is a con artist. now you can shrug this off as election year rhetoric, but no democrat has ever said these kind of things about a candidate from our party, and prior to trump no republican had said such things about candidates from their party either. the truth is republicans before trump became the head of their party knew exactly how dangerous he was and how dangerous he would be if he won. they knew he was the archetype of that bad the founders intended the senate to protect democracy from. but today that responsibility seems to no longer retain a position of primacy in this body. today the rule of law doesn't seem to come first. today our commitment to upholding decency and truth and honor is not the priority. today in the modern senate, all that seems to matter is party. what is different about this impeachment is not it that democrats have chosen to make it partisan, it is that republicans have chosen to excuse their party president's conduct in a way that they would not have done and did not do 45 years ago. that's what makes this moment exceptional. congressman schiff rightly challenged democrats in his closing argument to think about what we would do if a president of our party ever committed the same kind of offense that donald trump has. i think it was a very wise query and one that we as democrats should not be so quick on the trigger to an