Elected, young president that we all were excited about, an anticorruption president. The president tried to coerce him into interfering in the 2020 elections. The things that i have heard today about the Vice President s child, the things ive heard about the Vice President s son when we have millions of people in this country who are suffering from addiction, i believe to protect the president at any cause is shameful. Article 2, in the nixon impeachment said this, the article principally addressed president nixons use of power including powers vested solely in the president to harm political opponents and gain improper personal political advantages. And explaining this article of impeachment the house judiciary then stated that president nixons conduct was undertaken for his personal political advantage and not in the furtherance of any Valid National policy objective. The president abused his power and to me and at least the members of this side of the deus that matters and with that, i yield the remaining time to mr. Richmond from louisiana. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to remind people watching that when you look at the credibility of the testimony and weighing the evidence you can look at other things so i want to enter into the record the unanimous consent the roger stone, the men in trumps orbit, implicated in crimes. Without objection. Cnn politics. Six Trump Associates have been convicted in muellerrelated investigation. And my wise grandmother who said birds of a feather fly together. Without objection. And also President Trump has made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 9 the gentlemans time has expired. Without objection and the gentlemans time has expired. For what purposes does miss jacksonlee seek recognition . Strike the last word. The gentle lady is recognized. I want to speak first to the underlying amendment that calls for the acknowledgement that the aid was released in the article, first article, i believe. I want to recount not only the july 25th call where previously i indicated the president s language that wed like for you to do us a favor, though, that this was not tied to the us representing the entity of a public representation which would be the United States of america established by Foreign Policy by the secretary of state and established Foreign Policy by the secretary of defense and that is because, of course, the secretary of defense and state had already certified that ukraine was working to graduate to working to ensure the end of corruption that had met the standards that were required for funding. The other thing is when Lieutenant Colonel vindman thought that the words that he heard were appalling and seemed to him to be inappropriate for a call to the president as it relates to a question tying the military aid to the investigation, biden and sons and others and not official policy, he immediately gave it to the nfc counsel, john eisenberg. John eisenberg, took the information and then ultimately put it and put it in a separate coated filing and asked that the Lieutenant Colonel not say anything about it. That is unusual because you would think if it was a normal business and if it in to do with standard u. S. Foreign policy it would be okay to talk about that call, but they knew a major mistake had been made. They knew that the president had offered to give military aid if he got an investigation against his political rival and his political rival happened to be joe biden, and he knew that that was, in fact, koven spike with usually using Public Office and public money for public and private desires. Let me also say that friends talk about the courts. We have not shied away from the courts. In fact, judge howell, regarding the grand jury material, specifically said there is an impeachment inquiry, you cant stand in the way, mr. President. Judge jackson indicated in her decision that the president was not a king, and so we are here to talk about not as a mother, someones child who may have some concerns like every americans child may have which i am saddened that those personal matters were raised. We are here to talk about the abuse of this president and the obstruction of congress because in rodinos statement during the nixon proceedings he made it very clear to president nixon regarding his failure to comply with subpoenas issued pursuant to the watergate impeachment inquiry and the constitution reenforces the fact that we have the sole power of impeachment and the underlying decisions of the two Court Decisions i mentioned were that we were in an impeachment inquiry and as a remind tore reminder to my colleagues this commit improved articles on the obstruction of congress matter. I wanted to clean up and bring some more points on that, and it was clear that it was a case where the president could not dictate to the house impeachment inquiry what he was refusing to give or not. This is where my friends steer off the rails. They refuse to acknowledge the facts of the case. The president took public money with a public intent, with the private intent to use those monies to deny mr. Zelensky who was going to go ahead and announce investigations on cnn, but was stopped in his tracks when the whistleblowers letter or statement was released. It was out the bag that the president had done this on the july 25th call. Lets be clear, this is about facts and the constitution. I yield back, mr. Chairman. The gentle lady yields back. For what purpose do you seek recognition. Did the gentle lady strike the last word . Y excuse me. I move to strike the last word. I have been anxiously sitting here all day long and i want to say this to the American People before our day ends today. My colleagues and i have been explaining the evidence that weve heard. Weve been talking about all of the documents and heard from so many witnesses along the way, and as we have been upholding our constitutional obligation to defend the constitution some today have argued that we have not upheld our constitutional obligation to legislate, to solve problems and that all we want to do is impeach the president of the United States, and i truly want to assure the American People and to give you hope that this is not true. I want to make sure that we set the record straight so that you know were working on your behalf and despite what many people in the country think, congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. This congress has been working very, very hard on behalf of the American People in spite of everything thats happening with this impeachment. This very day, a bill, we passed a bill that lowers the cost of prescription drugs for hundreds of millions of americans hr3. It will save our taxpayers over 456 billion over the next decade and allow for the expansion of Medicare Coverage including hearing, dental and vision benefits. Just this week we achieved monumental changes to the u. S. Mexicocanada trade agreement. Y weve been waiting a very long time for that. This agreement is huge. Its a huge win for our families, workers and Business Owners in every District Across the United States, and we continue to work to make sure that we stay competitive in a global environment. Yesterday we voted to support the ndaa, the legislation that will keep our country safe and will give a raise to our Service Members and includes important reforms like paid parental leave for all federal employees and the tax, and even on this committee weve worked together. This week my republican colleague, congressman rushen thaler introduced legislation that would end online child exploitation. Since weve been sitting in this room today a deal has been forged by our colleagues to fund our government and avoid another shutdown. Throughout this investigation my colleagues and i have been fulfilling our duties as members of congress. Do not be deceived. We have been working on the American Publics behalf, every single day in spite of the tragedy that were in now with this impeachment. This congress, the house of representatives, we have passed over 275 bills. 275 bills, and we are defending our democracy, and delivering on the promises that we made to each and every one of our constituents. I want the American Public to know this. We are truly disheartened by what is happening here with impeachment but do know that we are working on your behalf each and every single day. We will continue to do what we swore an oath to do and that is to protect and serve you even in this moment, in this tragedy, be rest assured we will do just that, and i yield back the balance of my time. The gentle lady yields back. What purpose do you seek recognition . Seek to strike the last word want. Gentleman is recognized. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. In law school i teach my students to try to take the best argument of their opponents and not the worst arguments and so im going toing noer all of the frivolous process objections about the rooms and the temperature and all that kind of stuff weve heard about and im going to try to make what i think is the best argument or reconstruct the best argument thats come out today, and i understand that our colleagues face a difficult task because 70 of the American People believe that the president has done something wrong in these axe actions of trying to pressure a Foreign Government to get involved in our election. And so theyve got a problem there, and theyve got another problem which is that there is an overwhelming and uncontradicted body of evidence that the president did that. The president withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in Security Assistance that we had voted for a besieged foreign ally resisting russian aggression because he was trying to get the president of that country, zelensky to agree to conduct a press conference in which he would say he was investigating the bidens, and he also wanted president zelensky to validate vladimir put knows favorite disinformation Conspiracy Theory about the 2016 campaign which is that it was ukraine and not russia that engaged in a sweeping and Systematic Campaign to interfere in our elections. So what do you do with that . We can understand why theyve been talking about process for month, but i think they understand this is a Serious Investigation with rigorous methods and serious, inescapable conclusions and the American People are focused on it. The majority not only support the investigation. A majority would like to see the president impeached. According to fox news. In any event, huge numbers of americans are disturbed by this. What have they come up with . Theyve not found an alibi. He cant claim somebody else did it, but theyve come up with a defense which to me looks like its a mitigating factor, a plea for mercy. The president did all of these thing, but his motive is misunderstood. All of us think that he was doing it because he wanted to advance his own reelection prospects. In some sense he wanted to help for whatever reason Vladimir Putin and putin has been on tv bragging about the fact that everyone is focused on the ukraine in the 2016 election and not russia. Note to mr. Putin, thats not right. We understand exactly whats going on here, but in any event, the new argument and that the president was not trying to advance his own political interest. What he was trying to do was to advance his passionately held and yet little known campaign against corruption and thats why so much of our discussion today has been about corruption because theyre trying to say he was waging this campaign about corruption, and now weve noted a number of problems there, and i want to just catalog some of the other ones to try to put this into in order so people did understand the problem with their best argument. The first is that the president never raised the word corruption on the july 25th telephone call. Bidens name was mentioned several times. It wasnt corruption, corruption, corruption. It was biden, biden, biden. And he never raised any other companies at all. It was all about burisma, Hunter Bidens company and thats all that he mentioned and as far as i know hes never mentioned any other company in connection with corruption in ukraine. In 2017 and 18 when congress voted money for ukraine the president passed it along and he didnt raise corruption in ukraine or the bidens at that point, it only became an issue in 2019. In 2019, why . Because joe biden had surpassed him in the Public Opinion polls and now suddenly it was a big issue, and so he cared about it. Well, whats the other evidence here . The president s team, Rudy Giuliani and parnas and fruman engaged in a Smear Campaign against a u. S. Ambassador who was crusading against corruption in the ukraine and the president got her out of the way. He pulled her back so all of the evidence shows they were promoting and a corrupt scheme and they werent trying to attack it. The yield back. The gentleman yields back. Who seeks recognition . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I move to strike the last word. The gentle lady is recognized. And briefly, mr. Chairman and members, mr. Raskin just said bidens name was used multiple times. Well, i think thats a little misleading. Again, the only place in this whole telephone call where biden is even brought up is in one little paragraph and that was on page 4 of five pages of the transcript. I mean, most of this call was about congratulating president zelensky and the new parliament, talking about how you know, a lot of these European Countries arent pitching in with the aid that was to ukraine as much as the United States has and you know, all kind of things. It was a long phone call and its disingenuous to say that biden was mentioned several times. Let me read again. In fact, i know that President Trump tweets this out, read the transcript, and i wish people would because everybody watches tv and they get all these comment, but i did this with my husband. I said would you just please read the transcript. Its only five pages long. It doesnt take that much time, and you know, after he read it, and hes, like, thats it . Thats all they got . But here, this is the mention about biden. Page 5. The other thing, theres a lot of talk about bidens son that biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it it sounds horrible to me. Thats it, folks. Thats all there is. So mr. Mr. Chairman, i yield back. The gentle lady yields back. The question occurs on the amendment. Those in favor say aye . Opposed no. No. In the opinion of the chair, the noes have it. The clerk will call the roll. [ roll call ] mr. Johnson of georgia . Mr. Johnson of georgia votes no. Mr. Deutsch . Mr. Deutsch votes no. Miss bass . Miss bass votes no. Mr. Richmond . No. Mr. Richmond votes no. Mr. Jefferies . Mr. Jefferies votes no. Mr. Sis linney . No. Some swalwell votes no. Mr. Raskin . No. Miss jay pol. Mr. Correa . No. Miss scanlon votes no. Miss garcia . No. Miss garcia votes no. Miss mcbath. No. Miss mcbath votes no. Mr. Scanton votes no. Miss dean votes no. Miss mccarsel powell votes no. Miss escobar votes no. Mr. Collins votes aye. Mr. Sensenbrenner votes aye. Mr. Chabot votes aye. Mr. Gohmert . Mr. Gohmert votes aye. Mr. Buck votes aye. Mr. Radcliffe. Yes. Miss roby . Miss roby votes aye. Mr. Johnson of louisiana . Aye. Mr. Johnson of louisiana votes aye. Mr. Biggs . Mr. Biggs votes aye. Mr. Mcclintock votes aye. Miss lesko votes aye. In klein votes aye. Mr. Armstrong votes yes. Mr. Stuby . Mr. Stuby votes yes. Has everyone voted who wishes to vote. Mr. Correa, you are not recorded. Mr. Correa votes no. Anyone else who wishes to vote who hasnt voted . The clerk will report. Mr. Chairman there are 17 ayes and 23 nos. The amendment is not agreed to. Are there any further amendments in the nature of the substantive . Mr. Chairman, i have an amendment at the desk. Mr. Rushenthalor, an amendment to hres 75 by mr. Rushenthalor. Page 5 beginning on line 6, strike article 2. I withdraw my point of order. The gentleman is recognized for five minutes to explain his amendment. Thank you, mr. Chairman. My amendment would strike all of article 2 which is the obstruction of congress charge. The facts simply do not align with the democrats claim of obstruction. Our government has three branches for a reason. When there is a disagreement between the legislative branch, the republicans recognize this in 2011 when they investigated president obamas fast and Furious Scandal. The fast and Furious Scandal allowed 2,000 firearms to fall into the hands of drug cartels and resulted in the death of an american Border Patrol agent. People actually died in the president obama scandal. Throughout the investigations of the scandal they made numerous attempts to accommodate the Obama Administration, yet despite their effort, president obama invoked executive privilege and barred testimony and documents. So what did the republicans do . The appropriate thing. They went to the courts. Compare those efforts during this impeachment sham. House democrats could have worked through the administration to reach accommodations for their request, but they didnt. House democrats should have worked through the court, but they didnt, and why is that . Its simple, because they have a political, expedient deadline to send