Committee . I believe not. I would have to go back and check. I would assure you not. You may not accept this analogy but heres the analogy we proceeded on because here is the first modern impeachment where the fact finder was the house of representatives itself instead of a special counsel or independent counsel. When the special counsel and independent counsel did their work in the nixon and clinton impeachments, all of it was closeddoor depositions because you dont want the witnesses to be coordinating their testimony. Thats how prosecutorial investigations take place. The House Committee on intelligence was our factfinding committee. Thats why they performed closeddoor depositions because they wanted to avoid witnesses coaching each other and coordinating their testimony. We are driving down an interesting hole. Ranking member of the same committee who said early on that if the president saw something he didnt want, he could write us a letter. That was said. Thats how it would be taken care of. The white house hasnt received all the documents its supposed to have. We are doing impeachment and they havent received the documents. I still have not received the documents. I have not received the documents. Thats in direct violation. I dont know how we get around it, but we can pretend. Heres another thing. The staff member they sent would not testify or answer questions on the methodology and how they did their investigation. Even in an egregious violation in their own report where they named members of congress and their phone records, he would not actually say who ordered it, chairman schiff or him . Ive always defaulted to the member with the pen which would be mr. Schiff. But they said they would not discuss the methodology of the investigation. This has got to be the most amazing thought. When you come to an impeachment and youre trying to give due process to the president of the United States and these are all ignored. We can pretty it up anyway you want to but its just not right. You will impeach him. You have the votes. At the end of the day, is it worth the integrity of the house . I dont think so. Ranking member collins asked, resulting in the schiff report. Never got an answer. Mr. Raskin, house Intelligence Committee, released phone records including four phone calls by Intelligence CommitteeRanking Members. How did the Committee Democrats get those phone records . I have to ask staff counsel to pass me a note. Staff counsel did not answer that, is that correct . Telling us to go ask somebody who didnt ask the question. I understand that we forcefully represented, no member of the house of representatives was targeted with any investigative resource. Really . I respect mr. Raskin but im not sure he got that statement out without stumbling over everything. You cannot say talk about metadata and numbers. At some point, somebody with a Ranking Members phone number have to go and look for the Ranking Members phone number. They had to go look for mr. Solomons phone number. This is what they dont want to deal with. This is how bad it is screwed up. I know they want to gloss over process and how they did the investigation. This is what we are talking about and they wouldnt talk about it so to say that nobody was doing this intentionally is just not being factually accurate. It doesnt happen on its own. I would ask both of you this question. Who matched the phone numbers of Ranking Member nunes and what method did they use . I have no idea. If i could say, the whole line of questions, the president of the United States was given the opportunity to call any witnesses he wanted. Any of the 17 witnesses who appeared before the house Intelligence Committee on oversight and Foreign Affairs could have been called by the president. They wouldve had the opportunity to crossexamine. He didnt want to because all of them essentially told different pieces of the exact same story which is the president executed the shakedown of president zelensky to come and get involved in our campaign. At the expense of former Vice President biden. That just doesnt hold water. I cant say this enough. What i talk to the chairman, sing letters asking when we were going to get witnesses when he didnt even build in time to accept one of our witnesses much less the white house witnesses. Dont tell me you couldve sent witnesses and we wouldve accepted it. It was never on the calendar. These numbers arent particularly new. Who ordered the inclusion of the phone records in the schiff report . Ranking member, im afraid i cant answer these questions. I just dont know. Undoubtedly it was the Intelligence Committee carrying out what seemed to be a political vendetta against another member of congress. Do you think its proper to have the names of individuals swept up and call logs were not the target of a criminal investigation . It is nothing but a political drive by. They couldve done it several ways. Couldve been person 1, anyway, but they chose to use the names. This was a political hit job. Mr. Raskin, do you think it was appropriate for those numbers and names to have been released . There are not the targets of the investigations. They were just swept up. I was not involved in that part of it. Forgive me. Again, i understand. With the gentleman yield . We did have testimony on this. No, im not going to yield my time. You will have your time shortly. The testimony was im not going to tell you. How many times have schiff report or hearsay statements used as evidence . Hundreds. Only 54. When you take off one person talking of another person talking of another person. How many times has that been the only evidence repeat the question. How many times in the schiff report or news reports the only evidence supporting factual assertions. The main factual assertion was mr. Sondland, one. 16 different times. Mr. Raskins, raskin, he did not collect the information until friday, december 6. Does that comport with your memory . That is correct. Judiciary committee majority, did it have access to any evidence be on the actual report from Intelligence Committee until the weekend before the Judiciary Committee considered articles of impeachment . Well, i dont remember exactly what all the deposition statements were released publicly. I think some of them had been released publicly before that time. We can go back and check the exact chronology. Sure. There are members of other certainly understand. Its my understanding chairman schiff did not transmit all the material collected by the Intelligence Committee to the Judiciary Committee. Is that the case . It is still true to this day. Would you not agree the house Judiciary Committee couldve had the time and opportunity to review all that material collected by the Intelligence Committee. Did you vote to have that time . We did not. Its a direct violation of House Resolution 660. Mr. Cole, all i can tell you is that the vast amount weighted up getting was we ended up getting was what was produced publicly long way. The committee made the commitment to release the depositions publicly. I have considered a fair and transparent process. I dont think i got to see a single thing through the Judiciary Committee that i was not just seeing, and being released by the Intelligence Committee. In any event, all of it is in the final report. Is there for all of america to see. I dont want to lose sight of the big picture. We really dont know if its all there in the final report. If you havent seen them yourself. We do not know. Thats a statement assuming something. We dont know. The classic case of evidence being given. We dont know what weve not seen. We know a few things we know it not been transferred but we also have heard of other things its not been transferred. It cant be on the report if its not been transferred. Let me mov move on to the articles themselves. In my view, we have established the Intelligence Committee process was substantially flawed and procedurally defective. Thats my view. Judiciary committee failed to create an evidentiary record sufficient to justify moving forward on articles of impeachment youve relied on the Intelligence Committee where the president was unrepresentative. That violated rules of the house in my view and the entire circus has been politically motivated from the very beginning. All the obstruction of congress charge, its uncommon for the excuse me, is it uncommon and i asked both of you, uncommon for the executive branch to push back against requests for information from congress . No, its not uncommon for the executive branch to push back on the production of this or that document or the timing of particular visit. What was absolutely breathtaking in its unprecedented and radical nature was this president s determination to shut down all discovery. They did not produce a single document that was subpoenaed in this process. The president essentially ordered everyone in the executive branch not to cooperate with us. I think thats a dramatic escalation in kind and degree over anything thats ever been seen before and that includes Richard Nixon who i think trying to block seven or eight particular requests like the watergate tapes. That in itself became part of the case against him for abuse of power. President trump makes rich and nixon Richard Nixon look like a Little League or. Do you think its unusual to push back against congressional subpoenas . No, its common. If its pretty common, you believe its a high crime or misdemeanor to assert privileges in response to congressional requests for subpoena . I want to give a little bit of history since weve had history lessons here. Even in our own committee, whats been interesting is theres been a total walk toward impeachment but was interesting in our committee, we would send subpoenas or we sent out letters. We never followed up. The interesting thing about the committee, we never engaged in the agencies for documents but what i found interesting, mr. Schiff, while youre still struggling, mr. Schiff negotiated with the department of justice and got documents released our committee couldnt. House Foreign Affairs committee had engaged all year with the administration and ways to get documents. Its a matter of how you go about it and to say its unheard of is just not right. I ask this to both of you. The point you are making, there is a accommodations process for resolving interbranch disputes between the house and the executive branch. Is that not correct . Yes. That process really hasnt occurred here. I think mr. Collins, thats what youre telling me. It doesnt fit neatly into the speakers impeachment at christmas time line to borrow your way of looking at it. We have not gone to court. We are not really engaged. This was a normal giveandtake where both sides tend to avoid an exchange where they might go forward and lose something. All that has been set aside. We havent had any process like that. I would point out something that i disagreed with. Mr. Mcgahn. Its being appealed. It shows you the process isnt working as fast as they want. Even the one they had, one of the members of the administration contested, they withdrew their subpoena from the lawsuit because they didnt want to deal with it. I know mr. Raskin would have a different view. I will ask you specifically mr. Collins. Is there any evidence that the paws on the ukrainian assistance was for the president s improper personal, political benefit or could it have had other objectives . That is directed to you, mr. Collins. Im sorry. I apologize. Thats all right. I have thrown a lot of questions that you. Is there any actual evidence of the paws on ukrainian assistance was for the president s improper political personal benefit or might he have had other reasons for withholding aid . He had plenty of other reasons. The law itself says it was the president s call to make sure there was no corruption. Other countries during that time were aid was withheld. You understand this aid wasnt scheduled to go out. It had to be done by september 30. It went out early. From that time frame. There was a recent poll and we talk about this a little bit from our side, the corruption in the ukraine was so prevalent, recent poll said 60 of every day ukrainian said they bribed a public official in the past year. There was reasons for this to be discussed and reasons to go attic. I want to point out one last thing. Fast and furious, the infamous issue with the obama administration. It was seven months from first subpoena until first document. Seven months. That doesnt fit the timeline. This is an essential point that you raise right now. I think there is not any credible evidence from any of the witnesses or anything in the record to suggest that the president was actually trying to ferret out corruption as opposed to impose a corrupt scheme on the president of ukraine. Lets start with this. In 2017 and 2018, the president could have raised corruption and withholding military and Security Assistance to ukraine and never did. Then in 2019, he did. What changed . Joe biden was running for president and the president ial campaign was much on his mind. The president removed ambassador yovanovitch and we learned today from mr. Giuliani that he was involved with that campaign to smear ambassador yovanovitch to say there was something wrong with her. In fact, when she was, according to all the testimony we had all the public information, she was one of the leading anticorruption ambassadors that the United States has on earth. They sabotaged her. They undercut her and subjected her to an unprecedented Smear Campaign that led several witnesses to protest that the state department was not standing by its own ambassador. They got rid of her, as mr. Giuliani said in todays paper, because she was getting in the way of the investigation that they wanted. What investigations . Into biden and into the 2016 conspiracy. Thats pretty clear. It has nothing to do with corruption. Moreover if you go to the july 25 telephone call, President Trump never raised the word corruption once but he did talk about joe biden three times. We didnt hear corruption, corruption, corruption. We heard biden, biden, by then. That was the favor we were looking for, right . He wanted the president of ukraine to say he was investigating the bidens. Thats an unrefuted and uncontradicted in the record. I dont think we should be trying to pull the wool over americas eyes about this. Lets not play makebelieve. If we want to say its okay for the president to do this, lets go ahead and say it but lets not claim he was involved in some kind of anticorruption crusade at the time. I think america knows we can take that seriously. This president cuts anticorruption funding to ukraine by 50 . The chairman of his kit. Paul manafort, was on the goal. President zelensky was the reformer. He was the product of the revolution of dignity in 2014 which tried to bring some democracy and fairness and anticorruption efforts to ukraine. Giuliani and his gang that cant shoot straight, they went over there because he wanted to take advantage of the situation and go back to the corrupt forces in ukraine. This president had one thing in mind his own reelection and how president zelensky could help him. You can see that if you look at the phone conversation. On july 26, he had this phone conversation that was partially overheard by david holmes in the state department. He hears that zelensky will do whatever you want. He says what the president is interested in is the big stuff related to the president s own political ambitions, like the bidens. Hes not interested in the war with russia and i would say obviously hes not interested in corruption. He was interested in the bidens and that was it. Either we think thats an appropriate and proper thing for the president of the United States to be doing or we think its wrong. Some of us believe it rises to the level want to give mr. Collins a chance to respond. President zelensky, any ukrainian official tell you that i felt shaken down . There is lots of evidence i said ive never spoken to him. Is there any statement on the record . I dont think so. There are statements on the record. The statement was we work pressured. The statement was we werent pressured. Stick with are emails. Essentially mr. Yermak, top righthand man to the president of ukraine says the president does not want to be treated as a political pawn in domestic american politics. They were doing everything in their power to try to get out from the straitjacket from this game that was bearing down on them from every different direction. Mr. Collins. That is a story. We are having to expand the story to fit our narrative. Lets dont play makebelieve. If they have something in the phone call, it wouldve been in the articles of impeachment. They dont. There is no direct evidence of what they are trying to spin and that was that there was pressuring or quid pro quo or however you want to put it. The problem here is mark sandy testified under oath that it was a wholesale investigation going into foreign aid. You can quote all you want but this year he testified there was a wholesale investigation on the foreign aid everywhere. Trump actually raised this in 2017 and that was testified to. When you look at this, there is no direct evidence of what was said and to try to come back to put it into a different perspective. Mr. Yermak said there was no connection between the aide and the investigation. If they were trying to get out from under it, i guess if we were looking, they never did anything to get the aid. They never did anything to get the aid. I will try to bring this to a conclusion and i know that there will be a difference of opinion. You both can respond. Contrary to my claims, my friends claims across the aisle