[Pages S443-S457]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

ORDER OF PROCEDURE

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. Chief Justice, for the information of all of our
colleagues, no motions--no motions--were filed this morning, so we will
proceed to the House managers' presentation. We will go for
approximately 2 hours and take a short recess when there is an
appropriate break time between presenters.
The CHIEF JUSTICE. Pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 483, the
managers for the House of Representatives have 24 hours to make the
presentation of their case.
The Senate will now hear you.

Opening Statement

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Mr. Chief Justice, Senators, counsel for the
President, and my fellow House managers: I want to begin by thanking
you, Chief Justice, for a very long day, for the way you have presided
over these proceedings. I want to thank the Senators also. We went well
into the morning, as you know, until I believe around 2 in the morning.
You paid attention to every word and argument you heard from both sides
in this impeachment trial, and I know we are both deeply grateful for
that.
It was an exhausting day for us, certainly, but we have adrenaline
going through our veins. For those who are required to sit and listen,
it is a much more difficult task. Of course, we know our positions. You
have the added difficulty of having to weigh the facts and the law. So
I want to begin today by thanking you for the conduct of the
proceedings yesterday and inviting your patience as we go forward. We
have some very long days yet to come.
So let us begin.
``When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune,
bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the
advantage of military habits, despotic in his ordinary demeanor, known
to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty--when such a
man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity, to join in the cry
of danger to liberty, to take every opportunity of embarrassing the
general government and bringing it under suspicion, to flatter and fall
in with all the nonsense of the zealots of

[[Page S444]]

the day, it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things
into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.''
Those words were written by Alexander Hamilton in a letter to
President George Washington at the height of the panic of 1792, a
financial credit crisis that shook our young Nation. Hamilton was
responding to sentiments relayed to Washington as he traveled the
country that America, in the face of that crisis, might descend from a
republican form of government, plunging instead into that of monarchy.
The Framers of the Constitution worried then, as we worry today, that
a leader might come to power not to carry out the will of the people he
was elected to represent but to pursue his own interests. They feared
that a President would subvert our democracy by abusing the awesome
power of his office for his own personal or political gain. And so they
devised a remedy as powerful as the evil it was meant to combat:
impeachment.
As centuries have passed, our Founders achieved an almost mythical
character. We are aware of their flaws, certainly some very painful and
pronounced indeed. Yet, when it came to the drafting of the new system
of government never seen before and with no guarantee it would succeed,
we cannot help but be in awe of their genius, their prescience even,
vindicated time and again.
Still, maybe because of their brilliance and the brilliance of their
words, we find year after year it more difficult to imagine them as
human beings. This is no less true of Alexander Hamilton,
notwithstanding his recent return to celebrity. But they were human
beings. They understood human frailties, even as they exhibited them.
They could appreciate, just as we can, how power can corrupt. Even as
we struggle to understand how the Framers might have responded to
Presidential misconduct of the kind and character that we are here to
try, we should not imagine for one moment that they lacked basic common
sense or refuse to apply it ourselves.
They knew what it was like to live under a despot, and they risked
their lives to be free of it. They knew they were creating an
enormously powerful executive, and they knew they needed to constrain
it. They did not intend for the power of impeachment to be used
frequently or over mere matters of policy, but they put it in the
Constitution for a reason: for a man who would subvert the interests of
the Nation to pursue his own interests; for a man who would seek to
perpetuate himself in office by inviting foreign interference and
cheating in an election; for a man who would be disdainful of
constitutional limit, ignoring or defeating the other branches of
government and their coequal powers; for a man who believed that the
Constitution gave him the right to do anything he wanted and practiced
in the art of deception; for a man who believed that he was above the
law and beholden to no one; for a man, in short, who would be a King.
We are here today in this hallowed Chamber undertaking this solemn
action for only the third time in history because Donald J. Trump, the
45th President of the United States, has acted precisely as Hamilton
and his contemporaries feared. President Trump solicited foreign
interference in our democratic elections, abusing the power of his
office, to seek help from abroad to improve his reelection prospects at
home. When he was caught, he used the powers of that office to obstruct
the investigation into his own misconduct.
To implement this corrupt scheme, President Trump pressured the
President of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into two
discredited allegations that would benefit President Trump's 2020
Presidential campaign. When the Ukrainian President did not immediately
assent, President Trump withheld two official acts to induce the
Ukrainian leader to comply: a head-of-state meeting in the Oval Office
and military funding. Both were of bright consequence to Ukraine and to
our national interests in security, but one looms largest. President
Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to a
strategic partner at war with Russia to secure foreign help with his
reelection--in other words, to cheat.

In this way, the President used official state powers available only
to him and unavailable to any political opponent to advantage himself
in a democratic election. His scheme was undertaken for a simple but
corrupt reason--to help him win reelection in 2020. But the effect of
the scheme was to undermine our free and fair elections and to put our
national security at risk.
It was not even necessary that Ukraine undertake the political
investigations the President was seeking. They merely had to announce
them. This is significant, for President Trump had no interest in
fighting corruption, as he would claim after he was caught. Rather, his
interest was in furthering corruption by the announcement of
investigations that were completely without merit.
The first sham investigation that President Trump desired was into
former Vice President Joe Biden, who had sought the removal of a
corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor during the previous U.S. administration.
The Vice President acted in accordance with U.S. official policy at
the time and was supported unanimously by our European allies and key
global financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund,
which shared the concern over corruption.
Despite this fact, in the course of this scheme, President Trump and
his agents pressed the Ukrainian President to announce an investigation
into the false claim that Vice President Biden wanted the corrupt
prosecutor removed from power in order to stop an investigation into
Burisma Holdings, a company on whose board Biden's son Hunter sat.
This allegation is simply untrue. It has been widely debunked by
Ukrainian and American experts alike. That reality mattered not to
President Trump. To him, the value in promoting a negative tale about
former Vice President Biden--true or false--was its usefulness to his
reelection campaign. It was a smear tactic against a political opponent
that President Trump apparently feared.
Remarkably but predictably, Russia, too, has sought to support this
effort to smear Mr. Biden, reportedly hacking into the Ukraine energy
company at the center of the President's disinformation campaign only
last week.
Russia almost certainly was looking for information related to the
former Vice President's son so that the Kremlin could also weaponize it
against Mr. Biden, just like it did against Hillary Clinton in 2016,
when Russia hacked and released emails from her Presidential campaign.
President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he would like
nothing more than to make use of such dirt against Mr. Biden, just as
he made use of Secretary Clinton's hacked and released emails in his
previous Presidential campaign.
That brings us to the other sham investigation that President Trump
demanded the Ukrainian leader announce. This investigation was related
to a debunked conspiracy theory, alleging that Ukraine, not Russia,
interfered in the 2016 Presidential election. This narrative,
propagated by the Russian intelligence services, contends that Ukraine
sought to help Hillary Clinton and harm then-Candidate Trump and that a
computer server providing this fiction is hidden somewhere in Ukraine.
That is the so-called CrowdStrike conspiracy theory. This tale is
also patently false, and, remarkably, it is precisely the inverse of
what the U.S. intelligence communities' unanimous assessment was that
Russia interfered in the 2016 election in sweeping in systemic fashion
in order to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.
Nevertheless, the President evidently believed that a public
announcement lending credence to these allegations by the Ukrainian
President could assist his reelection by putting to rest any doubts
Americans may have had over the legitimacy of his first election, even
as he invited foreign interference in the next.
To the degree that most Americans have followed the President's
efforts to involve another foreign power in our election, they may be
most familiar with his entreaty to the Ukrainian President on the now
infamous July 25 call to ``do us a favor, though'' and investigate
Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory.

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That call was not the beginning of the story of the President's
corrupt scheme, nor was it the end. Rather, it was merely part--
although, a significant part--of a months' long effort by President
Trump and his allies and associates who applied significant and
increasing pressure on Ukraine to announce these two politically
motivated investigations.
Key figures in the Trump administration were aware or directly
involved or participated in the scheme. As we saw yesterday, one
witness--a million-dollar donor to the President's inaugural committee
put it this way: Everyone was in the loop.
After twice inviting Ukraine's new President to the White House
without providing a specific date for the proposed visit, President
Trump conditioned this coveted Head-of-State meeting on the
announcement of these sham investigations. For Ukraine's new and
untested leader, an official meeting with the President of the United
States in the Oval Office was critical. It would help bestow on him
important, domestic, and international legitimacy, as he sought to
implement an ambitious anti-corruption platform.
Actual and apparent support from the President of the United States
would also strengthen his position as he sought to negotiate a peace
agreement with Russia's President Vladimir Putin, seeking an end to
Russia's illegal annexation and continued military occupation of parts
of Ukraine.
But most pernicious, President Trump petitioned hundreds of millions
of dollars in congressionally appropriated taxpayer-funded military
assistance for the same purpose to apply more pressure on Ukraine's
leader to announce the investigations. This military aid, which has
long enjoyed bipartisan support, was designed to help Ukraine defend
itself from the Kremlin's aggression.

More than 15,000 Ukrainians have died fighting Russian forces and
their proxies--15,000. The military aid was for such essentials as
sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, radar night-vision
goggles, and other vital support for the war effort.
Most critically, the military aid we provide Ukraine helps to protect
and advance American national security interests in the region and
beyond. America has an abiding interest in stemming Russian
expansionism and resisting any nations' efforts to remake the map of
Europe by dint of military force, even as we have tens of thousands of
troops stationed there.
Moreover, as one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the
United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia
over there and we don't have to fight Russia here.
When the President's scheme was exposed and the House of
Representatives properly performed its constitutional responsibility to
investigate the matter, President Trump used the same unrivaled
authority at his disposal as Commander in Chief to cover up his
wrongdoing.
In unprecedented fashion, the President ordered the entire executive
branch of the United States of America to categorically refuse and
completely obstruct the House's impeachment investigation. Such a
wholesale obstruction of congressional impeachment has never before
occurred in our democracy. It represents one of the most blatant
efforts of a coverup in history.
If not remedied by his conviction in the Senate and removal from
office, President Trump's abuse of his office and obstruction of
Congress will permanently alter the balance of power among the branches
of government, inviting future Presidents to operate as if they are
also beyond the reach of accountability, congressional oversight, and
the law.
On the basis of this egregious misconduct, the House of
Representatives returned two Articles of Impeachment against the
President: first, charging that President Trump corruptly abused the
powers of the Presidency to solicit foreign interference in the
upcoming Presidential election for his personal political benefit; and,
second, that President Trump obstructed an impeachment inquiry into
that abuse of power in order to cover up his misconduct.
The House did not take this extraordinary step lightly. As we will
discuss, impeachment exists for cases in which the conduct of the
President rises beyond mere policy disputes to be decided otherwise and
without urgency at the ballot box.
Instead, we are here today to consider a much more grave matter, and
that is an attempt to use the powers of the Presidency to cheat in an
election. For precisely this reason, the President's misconduct cannot
be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote
will be fairly won.
In corruptly using his office to gain a political advantage, in
abusing the powers of that office in such a way to jeopardize our
national security and the integrity of our elections, in obstructing
the investigation into his own wrongdoing, the President has shown that
he believes that he is above the law and scornful of constraint.
As we saw yesterday on the screen, under article II he can do
anything he wants. Moreover, given the seriousness of the conduct at
issue and its persistence, this matter cannot and must not be decided
by the courts, which apart from the presence of the Chief Justice here
today, are given no role in impeachments in either the House or the
Senate.
Being drawn into litigation, taking many months or years to complete,
would provide the President with an opportunity to continue his
misconduct. He would remain secure in the knowledge that he may tie up
the Congress and the courts indefinitely, as he has with Don McGahn,
rendering the impeachment power effectively meaningless.
We also took the step with the knowledge that this was not the first
time the President solicited foreign interference in our elections. In
2016, then-candidate Trump implored Russia to hack his opponent's email
account, something that the Russian military agency did only hours
later--only hours later.
When the President said, ``hey, Russia, if you're listening,'' they
were listening. Only hours later they hacked his opponent's campaign.
The President has made it clear this would also not be the last time,
asking China only recently to join Ukraine in investigating his
political opponent.
Over the coming days, we will present to you and to the American
people the extensive evidence collected during the House's impeachment
inquiry into the President's abuse of power--overwhelming evidence,
notwithstanding his unprecedented and wholesale obstruction of the
investigation into that misconduct.
You will hear and read testimony from courageous public servants who
upheld their oath to the Constitution and their legal obligations to
comply with congressional action, despite a categorical order by
President Trump not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.
These are courageous Americans who were told by the President of the
United States not to cooperate, not to appear, not to testify, but who
had the sense of duty to do so. But more than that, you will hear from
witnesses who have not yet testified, such as John Bolton and Mick
Mulvaney, Mr. Blair and Mr. Duffey. And if you can believe the
President's words last month, you will also hear from Secretary Pompeo.
You will hear their testimony at the same time as the American people;
that is, if you allow it, if we have a fair trial.
During our presentation, you will see documentary records, those the
President was unable to suppress, that exposed the President's scheme
in detail. You will learn of further evidence that has been revealed in
the days since the House voted to impeach President Trump, even as the
President and his agents have persisted in their efforts to cover up
their wrongdoing from Congress and the public.
You will see dozens of new documents providing new and critical
evidence of the President's guilt that remain at this time in the
President's hands and in the hands of the Department of Defense and the
Department of State and the Office of Management and Budget, even the
White House. You will see them and so will the American people if you
allow it--if, in the name of a fair trial, you will demand it.
These are politically charged times. Tempers can run high,
particularly where this President is concerned, but these are not
unique times. Deep divisions and disagreements were hardly

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alien concepts to the Framers so they designed impeachment power in
such a way as to insulate it as best they could from the crush of
partisan politics. The Framers placed the question of removal before
the Senate, a body able to rise above the fray, to soberly judge the
President's conduct or misconduct for what it was, nothing more and
nothing less.
In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton wrote:

Where else than in the Senate could have been found a
tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent?
What other body would be likely to feel confidence enough in
its own situation, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the
necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the
representatives of the people, his accusers?

It is up to you to be the tribunal that Hamilton envisioned. It is up
to you to show the American people and yourselves that his confidence
and that of the other Founders was rightly placed. The Constitution
entrusts you to the responsibility of acting as impartial jurors, to
hold a fair and thorough trial, and to weigh the evidence before you no
matter what your party affiliation or your vote in the previous
election or the next. Our duty is to the Constitution and to the rule
of law.
I recognize there will be times during the trial that you may long to
return to the business of the Senate. The American people look forward
to the same but not before you decide what kind of democracy that you
believe we ought to be and what the American people have a right to
expect in the conduct of their President.
The House believes that an impartial juror, upon hearing the evidence
that the managers will lay out in the coming days, will find that the
Constitution demands the removal of Donald J. Trump from his office as
President of the United States. But that will be for you to decide.
With the weight of history upon you, and as President Kennedy once
said: ``With a good conscience our only sure reward. . . . ''
In drafting our Constitution, the Framers designed a new and untested
form of government. It would be based on free and fair elections to
ensure that our political leaders would be chosen democratically and by
citizens of our country alone. Having broken free from a King with
unbridled authority who often placed his own interests above that of
the people, the Framers established a structure that would guarantee
that the Chief Executive's power flowed only from his obligation to the
people rather than from a sovereign whose power was confirmed on him by
divine right.
In this new architecture, no branch of government or individual would
predominate over another. In this way, the Founders ensured that their
elected leaders and their President would use the powers of office only
to undertake that which the people desired and not for their personal
aggrandizement or enrichment.
What did those who rebelled and fought a revolution desire? Nothing
different than what we, the generations that have followed, desire:
that no person, including and especially the President, would be above
the law. Nothing could be more dangerous to a democracy than a
Commander in Chief who believed that he could operate with impunity,
free from accountability--nothing, that is, except a Congress that is
willing to let it be so.
To ensure that no such threat can take root and subvert our fledgling
democracy, the Framers divided power among three coequal branches of
government--the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches--
so that ambition may be made to counter ambition. They provided for
Presidential elections every 4 years, and the Framers required that the
President swear an oath to faithfully execute the law and to preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
Even with these guardrails in place, the Framers understood an
individual could come to power who defied that solemn oath, who pursued
his own interests rather than those of the country he led. For that
reason, the Framers adopted a tool used by the British Parliament to
restrain its officials: the power of impeachment. Rather than a
mechanism to overturn an election, impeachment would be a remedy of
last resort, and, unlike in England, the Framers applied this ultimate
check to the highest office in the land, to the President of the United
States. Impeachment removal of a duly elected President was not
intended for policy disputes or poor administration of the State.
Instead, the Framers had in mind the most serious of offenses: those
against the public itself.
Hamilton explained that impeachment was not designed to cover only
statutory common law crimes but instead crimes against the body
politic. Hamilton wrote:

The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which
proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other
words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They
are of a nature which may, with peculiar propriety, be
denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries
done immediately to the society itself.

In other words, impeachment would be confined to abuses of people's
trust and to the society itself. This is precisely the abuse that has
been undertaken by our current President when he withheld money in
support for an ally at war to secure a political benefit. The
punishment for those crimes would fit the political nature of the
offense. As James Wilson--a delegate of the Constitutional Convention
and a future Associate Justice of the Supreme Court--reasoned that
impeachment ``was confined to political characters, to political crimes
and misdemeanors, and to political punishments.'' The Framers
determined that punishment would be neither prison nor fines but,
instead, limited to removal from office and disqualification from
holding future office.
The Framers chose to undertake impeachment for treason, bribery, or
other high crimes and misdemeanors to underscore the requirement of an
offense against society. In this phrase, ``high'' modifies both the
crimes and the misdemeanors in that both relate to a high injustice, a
transgression committed against the people and to the public trust. The
Framers had two broad categories in mind: those actions that are
facially permissible under the President's authority but are based on
corrupt motives, such as seeking to obtain a personal benefit through
public office, and those that far exceed the President's constitutional
authority or violate the legal limits on that authority.
In article I, we deal with the first evil which the Framers wished to
guard against; that is, cases in which a President corruptly misused
the power otherwise bestowed on him to secure a personal reward.
Guarding against a President who undertakes official acts with a
corrupt motive of helping himself is at the heart of the impeachment
power. As one scholar explained, the President's duty to faithfully
execute the law requires that he undertakes actions only when motivated
in the public interest rather than in their private self-interest.
Efforts to withhold official acts for personal gain countermand the
President's sacred oath and, therefore, constitute impeachable behavior
as it was conceived by the Framers.
In article II, we also deal with the second evil contemplated by the
Founders, who made it clear that the President ought not operate beyond
the limits placed on him by legislative and judicial branches.
Impeachment was warranted for a President who usurped the power of the
Constitution that was not granted to him, such as to defy Congress the
right to determine the propriety, the scope, and the nature of an
impeachment inquiry into his own misconduct.
The Framers fashioned a powerful Chief Executive but not one beyond
accountability of law. When a President wields power in ways that are
inappropriate and seek to extinguish the rights of Congress, he exceeds
the power of constitutional authority and violates the limits placed on
his conduct. Obstruction of a separate and coequal branch of government
for the purposes of covering up an abuse of power not only implies a
corrupt intent but also demonstrates a remarkable antipathy toward the
balance of power contemplated and enshrined in our Constitution. It is
a betrayal of the President's sacred oath of office and of his duty to
put the country before himself.
On September 24, 2019, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced
that the House of Representatives would move forward with an official
impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump. The announcement
followed public reporting in the United States

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and Ukraine that the President and his agents sought Ukraine's help in
his reelection effort and revelations that the White House was blocking
from Congress an intelligence community whistleblower complaint
possibly related to this grave offense.
The next day, on September 25, under extraordinary pressure, the
White House released publicly the record of the July 25 call between
President Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The call
record revealed that President Trump explicitly requested that the new
leader undertake investigations beneficial to President Trump's
reelection campaign. Upon release of the record of the call, President
Trump claimed that the call was ``perfect.'' Far from perfect, the call
record revealed a President who used his high office to personally and
directly press the leader of a foreign country to do his political
dirty work. Asking for a favor, President Trump insisted that President
Zelensky investigate a formidable potential political opponent, former
Vice President Joe Biden, as well as the baseless conspiracy theory
that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election to assist
then-Candidate Trump's opponent.
Witnesses who listened to the call as it transpired testified that
they immediately recognized these requests did not represent official
U.S. policy and, instead, were politically charged appeals, not
appropriate for a President to make. Key witnesses emphasized it was
not necessary that Ukraine actually undertake the investigations, only
that the Ukrainian President denounce them.
President Trump's objective was not to encourage a foreign government
to investigate legitimate allegations of misconduct or wrongdoing
abroad, made clear, as well, by the fact that the investigations he
wanted announced have been discredited entirely. Rather, the President
simply wanted to reap a political benefit by tarnishing a political
rival and in attempting to erase from history his previous election
misconduct. To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political dirty
work, President Trump withheld from President Zelensky two official
acts of great importance: that coveted White House meeting to which
President Zelensky had already been invited and $391 million in
military assistance for the Ukrainians to fight the Russians.
For a strategic partner of the United States in a hot war with
Russian-backed forces inside its own borders, this symbolic support
conferred on it by an Oval Office visit with the President of the
United States and the lifesaving support of our military aid was
essential. As the House's presentation will make clear, in directly
soliciting foreign interference and withholding those official acts in
exchange for the announcement of political investigations beneficial to
his election, the President put his own interest above the national
interest.
President Trump undermined the integrity of our free and fair
elections by pressing a foreign power to influence our most sacred
right as citizens, our right to freely choose our leaders, and he
threatened our national security by withholding critical aid from a
partner on the frontlines of war with Russia, an aggressor that has
threatened peace and stability on an entire continent. In so doing, the
President sacrificed not only the security of our European allies but
also our Nation's core national security interests. President Trump
undertook this pressure campaign through handpicked agents inside and
outside of government who circumvented traditional policy channels.
President Trump intentionally bypassed many U.S. Government career
officials with responsibility over Ukraine and advanced his scheme
primarily through the effort of his personal attorney Rudy
Giuliani. President Trump carried out this scheme with the knowledge of
senior administration officials, including the President's Acting Chief
of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Vice President
Mike Pence, National Security Council Legal Advisor John Eisenberg, and
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.

When the President became aware that the scheme would be uncovered,
he undertook an unprecedented effort to obstruct the House of
Representatives' impeachment inquiry to hide it from the public and
from Congress, including all evidence related to his misconduct. That
coverup continues today as the administration has not provided a single
document pursuant to lawful subpoenas by the House.
The administration also continues to prevent witnesses from
cooperating, further obstructing the House's efforts--efforts the
President is, no doubt, proud of but which threaten the integrity of
this institution and this Congress as a coequal branch of power--and
our ability not only to do oversight but to hold a President who is
unindictable accountable.
Despite these efforts to obstruct our inquiry, the House of
Representatives uncovered overwhelming evidence related to the
President's misconduct through interviews with 17 witnesses who
appeared before the Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, and Foreign
Affairs Committees. Many of these witnesses bravely defied White House
orders not to comply with duly authorized congressional subpoenas. Were
it not for them--were it not for Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was
the first through the breach--we may never have known of the
President's scheme.
I want you to imagine, just for a minute, what kind of courage that
took for Ambassador Yovanovitch--the subject of that vicious smear
campaign--to risk her reputation and her career to stand up to the
President of the United States, who was instructing her through his
agents: You will not cooperate. You will not testify. You will tell
them nothing.
Then, there is Bill Taylor, a West Point graduate and a Vietnam
veteran with a Bronze Star and something he was even more proud of--the
Combat Infantryman Badge. He knows what courage is. He showed a
different kind of courage in Vietnam, but he also showed courage, as
did others, in coming forward and defying the President's order that he
obstruct to tell the American people what he knew.
But for the courage of people like them and Lieutenant Colonel
Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, we would know nothing of the
President's misconduct--nothing. When the President directs his ire
toward these people, this is why--because they showed the courage to
come forward.
Now, in the Intelligence Committee, we held 7 open hearings with 12
fact witnesses. Separately, the Judiciary Committee held public
hearings with constitutional law experts and counsel from the House
Intelligence Committee as it sought to determine whether to draft and
consider Articles of Impeachment. The House also collected text
messages related to the President's scheme from a witness who provided
limited personal communications.
Since the conclusion of our inquiry, new evidence has continued to
come to light, through court-ordered releases of administration
documents and public reporting, underscoring that there is
significantly more evidence of the President's guilt which he continues
to block from Congress, including the Senate. Nevertheless, the
documents and testimony that we were able to collect paint an
overwhelming and damning picture of the President's efforts to use the
powers of his office to corruptly solicit foreign help in his
reelection campaign and withhold official acts and military aid to
compel that support.
Over the coming days, you will hear remarkably consistent evidence of
President Trump's corrupt scheme and coverup. When you focus on the
evidence uncovered during the investigation, you will appreciate there
is no serious dispute about the facts underlying the President's
conduct, and this is why you will hear the President's lawyers make the
astounding claim: You can't impeach a President for abusing the powers
of his office. It is because they can't seriously contest that that is
exactly--exactly--what he did, and so they must go find a lawyer
somewhere.
Apparently, they could not go to their own Attorney General. It was
just reported in a memo he wrote, as part of the audition for Attorney
General, that the President can be impeached for abusing the public
trust. He couldn't go to Bill Barr for that opinion. He couldn't even
go to Jonathan Turley, their expert in the House, for an opinion. No,
they had to go outside of these

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experts, outside of constitutional law, to a criminal defense lawyer
and professor. And why? Because they can't contest the facts. The
President was the key player in the scheme. Everyone was in the loop.
He directed the actions of his team. He personally asked a foreign
government to investigate his opponent. These facts are not in dispute.
Ultimately, the question for you is whether the President's
undisputed actions require the removal of the 45th President of the
United States from office because he abused his office and the public
trust by using his power for personal gain by seeking illicit foreign
assistance in his reelection and covering it up.
Other than voting on whether to send our men and women to war, there
is, I think, no greater responsibility than the one before you now. The
oath that you have taken to impartially weigh the facts and evidence
requires serious and objective consideration--decisions that are about
country, not party; about the Constitution, not politics; about what is
right and what is wrong.
After you consider the evidence and weigh your oath to render a fair
and impartial verdict, I suggest to you today that the only conclusion
consistent with the facts and law--not just the law but the
Constitution--is clear as described by constitutional law experts'
testimony before the House: If this conduct is not impeachable, then
nothing is.
Let me take a moment to describe to you how we intend to present the
case over the coming days.
You will hear today the details of the President's corrupt scheme in
narrative form, illustrating the timeline of the effort through the
testimony of the numerous witnesses who came before the House as well
as through documents and materials we collected as evidence during the
investigation. After you hear the factual chronology, we will then
discuss the constitutional framework of impeachment as it was
envisioned by the Founders.
Before we analyze how the facts of the President's misconduct and
coverup lead to the conclusion that the President undertook the sort of
corrupt course of conduct that impeachment was intended to remedy, let
me start with a preview of the President's scheme, the details of which
you will hear during the course of this day.
President Trump's months-long scheme to extract help with his 2020
reelection campaign from the new Ukrainian President involved an effort
to solicit and then compel the new leader to announce political
investigations. The announcement would reference two specific
investigations. One was intended to undermine the unanimous consensus
of our intelligence agencies, Congress, and Special Counsel Robert
Mueller that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help then-
Candidate Trump and another to hurt the Presidency of former Vice
President Joe Biden.
The Kremlin itself has been responsible for first propagating one of
the two false narratives that the President desired. In February 2017,
less than a month after the U.S. intelligence community released its
assessment that Russia alone was responsible for a covert influence
campaign designed to help President Trump win the 2016 election,
President Putin said:

As we all know, during the Presidential campaign in the
United States, the Ukrainian government adopted a unilateral
position in favor of one candidate. More than that, certain
oligarchs--certainly with the approval of political
leadership--funded this candidate--or a female candidate to
be more precise.

Those were Putin's words on February 2, 2017.
Of course, this is false, and it is part of a Russian
counternarrative that President Trump and some of his allies have
adopted.
Fiona Hill, the Senior Director for Europe and Russia at the National
Security Council, described Russia's effort to promote this baseless
theory.
(Text of videotape presentation:)

Dr. HILL. Based on questions and statements I have heard,
some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia
and its Security Services did not conduct a campaign against
our country and that, perhaps, somehow, for some reason,
Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been
perpetrated and propagated by the Russian Security Services
themselves. The unfortunate truth is that Russia was that
foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic
institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our
intelligence agencies, confirmed by bipartisan congressional
reports. It is beyond dispute even if some of the underlying
details must remain classified.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. This, of course, was not the first time that
President Trump embraced Russian activity and disinformation.
On July 24 of last year, Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified
before Congress that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a
``sweeping and systemic fashion'' to benefit Donald Trump's political
campaign. Mueller and his team found ``the Russian Government perceived
that it would benefit from a Trump Presidency and worked to secure that
outcome.'' They also found that the Trump campaign expected it would
benefit electorally from information stolen and released through
Russian efforts.
Just as he solicited help from Ukraine in 2019, in 2016 then-
Candidate Trump also solicited help from Russia in his election effort.
As you will recall, at a rally in Florida, he said the following:
(Text of videotape presentation:)

Mr. TRUMP. Russia, if you are listening, I hope you're able
to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will
probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that
happens.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Following Special Counsel Mueller's testimony,
during which he warned against future interference in our elections,
did the President recognize the threat posed to our democracy and
renounce Russian interference in our democracy? Did he choose to stand
with his own intelligence agencies, both Houses of Congress, and the
special counsel's investigation in affirming that Russia interfered in
our last election?
He did not.
Instead, only one day after Special Counsel Mueller testified before
Congress, empowered in the belief that he had evaded accountability for
making use of foreign support in our last election, President Trump was
on the phone with the President of Ukraine, pressing him to intervene
on President Trump's behalf in the next election.
Let's take a moment to let that sink in.
On July 24, Bob Mueller concludes a lengthy investigation. He comes
before the Congress. He testifies that Russia systemically interfered
in our election to help elect Donald Trump, that the campaign
understood that, and that they willfully made use of that help. On July
24, that is what happens.
On the very next day--the very next day--President Trump is on the
phone with a different foreign power, this time Ukraine, trying to get
Ukraine to interfere in the next election--the next day.
That should tell us something. He did not feel chained by what the
special counsel found. He did not feel deterred by what the special
counsel found. He felt emboldened by escaping accountability, for the
very, very next day, he is on the phone, soliciting foreign
interference again.
Now, that July 25 phone call between President Trump and President
Zelensky was a key part of President Trump's direct and corrupt
solicitation of foreign help in the 2020 election.
The question likely sounded familiar to President Zelensky, who had
been swept into office in a landslide victory on a campaign of rooting
out just the type of corruption he was being asked to undertake on this
call with our President.
Zelensky campaigned as a reformer, as someone outside of politics who
would come up and clean up corruption, who would end the political
prosecutions, end the political investigations. And what is his most
important and powerful patron asking him to do? To do exactly what he
campaigned against. No wonder he resisted this pressure campaign.
Now, President Trump had been provided talking points for discussion
by the National Security Council staff beforehand, including
recommendations to encourage President Zelensky to continue to promote
anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine. So the National Security staff
understood what was in the U.S. national security interests, and that
was rooting out corruption, and they encouraged the President to talk
about it.
But as you see from the record of the call--and I join the President
in saying ``read the call''--that topic was never

[[Page S449]]

addressed. The word ``corruption'' never escapes his lips.
Instead, President Trump openly pressed President Zelensky to pursue
the two investigations that would benefit him personally.
In response to President Zelensky's gratitude for the significant
military support the United States had provided to Ukraine, President
Trump said:

I would like you to do us a favor though because our
country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about
it. I would like you to find out what happened with this
whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike . . . I
guess you have one of your wealthy people . . . The server,
they say Ukraine has it.

That is that crazy conspiracy theory I talked about earlier that
there is this server somewhere in Ukraine that shows that, in fact, it
was Ukraine that hacked the DNC, not the Russians. That is a Russian
propaganda conspiracy theory, and here it is being promulgated by the
President of the United States. And more than promulgated, he is
pressuring an ally to further this Russian propaganda because he was
referring to this extensively discredited conspiracy theory that
Ukraine was the one that really hacked the DNC--the Democratic National
Committee--servers in 2016.
And that reference to CrowdStrike--well, that is an American cyber
security firm. And the theory--this kooky conspiracy theory--is that
CrowdStrike moved the DNC servers to Ukraine to prevent U.S. law
enforcement from getting it.
If Ukraine announced an investigation into this fabrication,
President Trump could remove what he perceived to be a cloud over his
legitimacy--legitimacy of his last election, Russia's assistance with
his campaign--and suggest that it was the Democratic Party that was the
real beneficiary of that.
On the call, President Trump told Zelensky: ``Whatever you can do,
it's very important that you do it if that's possible.''
President Zelensky agreed that he would do the investigation saying:
``Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just
mentioned earlier.''
President Trump then turned to his second request, asking President
Zelensky to look into the sham allegation into former Vice President
Biden. President Trump said to President Zelensky:

The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's 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.

There is no question what President Trump intended in pressing the
Ukrainian leader to ``look into'' his political rival. Even after the
impeachment inquiry began, he confirmed his desire on the south lawn of
the White House, declaring not only that Ukraine should investigate
Biden but that China should do the same.
Let's see what he said.
(Text of Videotape presentation:)

NEWS REPORTER. What exactly did you hope Zelensky would do
about the Bidens after your phone call? Exactly.
PRESIDENT TRUMP. Well, I would think that, if they were
honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the
Bidens. It's a very simple answer.
They should investigate the Bidens, because how does a
company that is newly formed--and all these companies, if you
look at--
And, by the way, likewise, China should start an
investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China
is just about as bad as what happened with--with Ukraine.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. The day after that July 25 phone call, President
Trump sought confirmation that President Zelensky understood his
request to announce the politically motivated investigations and that
he would follow through.
After meeting with Ukranian officials, including President Zelensky
and his top aide, the President's handpicked Ambassador to the European
Union, Gordon Sondland, called President Trump from an outdoor
restaurant in Kyiv to report back. This was the second conversation
between the two about Ukraine in as many days.
David Holmes, an American diplomat dining with Sondland, overheard
the call, including the President's voice through the cell phone. I
described part of that call last night.
Holmes testified that President Trump asked Sondland: ``So he's going
to do the investigation?'' Sondland replied that he is going to do it,
adding that President Zelensky will do ``anything you ask him to do.''
After the phone call, Holmes ``took the opportunity to ask Ambassador
Sondland for his candid impression of the President's views on
Ukraine.'' According to Holmes:
(Text of Videotape presentation:)

Mr. HOLMES. In particular, I asked Ambassador Sondland if
it was true that the President did not give a [expletive]
about Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland agreed the President did
not give a [expletive] about Ukraine. I asked, why not, and
Ambassador Sondland stated, the President only cares about .
. . ``big stuff.'' I noted there was . . . ``big stuff''
going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia. And Ambassador
Sondland replied that he meant . . . ``big stuff'' that
benefits the President, like the . . . ``Biden
investigation'' that Mr. Giuliani was pushing. The
conversation then moved on to other topics.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Those three days in July--the 24th, the 25th, and
the 26th--reveal a lot about President Trump's effort to solicit help
from a foreign country in assisting his own reelection.
On the 24th, Special Counsel Mueller testifies that Russia interfered
in our 2016 election to assist the Trump campaign, which knew about the
interference, welcomed it, and utilized it. That is the 24th.
The 25th is the day of the call, when President Trump, believing he
had escaped accountability for Russian meddling in the first election
and is welcoming of it, asked the Ukranian President to help him
undermine the special counsel's conclusion and help him smear a
political opponent, former Vice President Biden.
And then, the third day in a row in July, President Trump sought to
ensure that Ukraine had received his request and understood it and
would take the necessary steps to announce the investigations that he
wanted.
Three days in July. In many ways those 3 days in July tell so much of
this story. This course of conduct alone should astound all of us who
value the sanctity of our elections and who understand that the vast
powers of the Presidency are reserved only for actions which benefit
the country as a whole, rather than the political fortunes of any one
individual.
President Trump's effort to use an official head-of-state phone call
to solicit the announcement of investigations helpful to his reelection
is not only conduct unbecoming a President, but it is conduct of one
who believes that the powers of his high office are political tools to
be wielded against his opponents, including by asking a foreign
government to investigate a United States citizen, and for a corrupt
purpose. That alone is grounds for removal from office of the 45th
President.
But these 3 days in July were neither the beginning nor the end of
this scheme. President Trump, acting through agents inside and outside
of the U.S. Government, including his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani,
sought to compel Ukraine to announce the investigations by withholding
the head-of-state meeting in the Oval Office until the President of
Ukraine complied.
Hosting an Oval Office meeting for a foreign leader is an official
act available only to one person--the President of the United States.
And it is an official act that President Trump had already offered to
President Zelensky during their first phone call on April 21 and in a
subsequent letter to the Ukranian leader.
Multiple witnesses testified about the importance of a White House
meeting for Ukraine. For example, Deputy Assistant Secretary George
Kent explained that a White House meeting was ``very important'' for
Ukrainians to demonstrate the strength of their relationship with
``Ukraine's strongest supporter.''
Dr. Fiona Hill of the National Security Council explained that a
White House meeting would supply the new Ukranian Government with ``the
legitimacy that it needed, especially vis-a-vis the Russians'' and that
the Ukrainians viewed a White House meeting as ``a recognition of their
legitimacy as a sovereign state.''
This White House meeting would also prove to be important for three
handpicked agents whom President Trump

[[Page S450]]

placed in charge of U.S.-Ukraine issues: Ambassador Sondland,
Ambassador Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the so-called three
amigos. They hoped to convince President Trump to hold an Oval Office
meeting with Zelensky.
During a meeting of the three amigos on May 23, President Trump told
them that Ukraine had tried to ``take [him] down'' in 2016. He then
directed them to ``talk to Rudy'' Giuliani about Ukraine.
It was immediately clear that Giuliani, who was pursuing the
discredited investigations in Ukraine on the President's behalf, was
the key to unlocking an Oval Office meeting for President Zelensky.
Giuliani by then had said publicly that he was actively pursuing
investigations President Trump corruptly desired and planning a trip to
Ukraine. Giuliani admitted: ``We're not meddling in an election, we're
meddling in an investigation.''
On May 10, however, Giuliani canceled the trip to Ukraine to dig up
dirt on former Vice President Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory,
just as President Zelensky won elections for the Presidency and
Parliament.
Faced with a choice between working with Giuliani to pursue an Oval
Office meeting--understanding it meant taking part in a corrupt effort
to secure the political investigations--or abandoning efforts to
support our Ukranian ally, the President's agents fell into line. They
would pursue the White House meeting and explain to Ukraine that
announcement of the investigations was the price of admission.
As Ambassador Sondland made clear:
(Text of Videotape presentation:)

Mr. SONDLAND. I know that members of this committee
frequently frame these complicated issues in the form of a
simple question: Was there a quid pro quo? As I testified
previously with regard to the requested White House call and
the White House meeting, the answer is yes.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. This quid pro quo was negotiated between the
President's agents, Rudy Giuliani, and Ukranian officials throughout
the summer of 2019 in numerous telephone calls, text messages, and
meetings, including during a meeting hosted by then-National Security
Advisor John Bolton on July 10.
Near the end of that July 10 meeting, after the Ukrainians again
raised the issue of a White House visit, Ambassador Sondland blurted
out that there would be agreement for a White House meeting once the
investigations began. At that point Bolton ``immediately stiffened''
and abruptly ended the meeting.
During a subsequent discussion that day, Sondland was even more
explicit. LTC Alex Vindman, a director for Europe and Ukraine on the
National Security Council, testified that Sondland began to discuss the
``deliverable'' required to get the White House meeting. What Sondland
specifically mentioned was ``investigation of the Bidens.'' This is,
again, in that meeting in the White House with a Ukranian delegation
and an American delegation. Sondland explained in that meeting that he
had an agreement with Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney whereby
President Zelensky would be granted the Oval Office meeting if he went
forward with the investigations.
After the meeting, Vindman's supervisor, Dr. Hill, reported back to
Bolton, who told her to tell John Eisenberg, the National Security
Council legal advisor, that he was not ``part of whatever drug deal
Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this.'' She reported their
concerns, as did Vindman.
It remains unclear what action, if any, Bolton or Eisenberg took once
they were made aware of Mulvaney and Sondland's drug deal. Both refused
to testify in our inquiry. However, Dr. Hill testified that she
understood that Mr. Eisenberg informed Mr. Cipollone of her concerns
about the drug deal.
If this body is serious about a fair trial--one that is fair to the
President and to the American people--we again urge you to allow the
House to call both Eisenberg and Bolton, as well as other key witnesses
with firsthand knowledge who refused to testify before the House on the
orders of the President.
Additional testimony and documents are particularly important
because, according to Sondland, ``Everyone was in the loop'' when it
came to the President's self-serving effort. In part relying on email
excerpts, Sondland explained that the President's senior aides and
Cabinet officials knew that the White House meeting was predicated on
Ukraine's announcement of the investigations beneficial to the
President's political campaign.
Hill characterized the quid pro quo succinctly:
(Text of Videotape presentation:)

But it struck me when yesterday, when you put up on the
screen Ambassador Sondland's emails and who was on these
emails, and he said, These are the people who need to know,
that he was absolutely right. Because he was being involved
in a domestic political errand, and we were being involved in
national security foreign policy, and those two things had
just diverged.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. In effect, President Zelensky was being drawn
into this domestic political area. He grew wary of becoming involved in
another country's election and domestic affairs.
Bill Taylor, the Acting U.S. Ambassador for Ukraine at the time,
described a conversation he had with a senior aide to the Ukrainian
leader. He said:
(Text of Videotape presentation:)

[Also] on July 20, I had a phone conversation with
Oleksandr Danylyuk, President Zelensky's national security
advisor, who emphasized that President Zelensky did not want
to be used as an instrument in a U.S. reelection campaign.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Remember that conversation when you hear counsel
say that the Ukrainians felt no pressure to be involved in a U.S.
reelection campaign. But that concern did not deter President Trump. In
his conversation with Sondland shortly before the July 25 call, the
President made clear that he not only wanted Ukraine to do the
investigations or announce them, but also a White House meeting would
be scheduled only if President Zelensky confirmed these investigations,
as Volker communicated to President Zelensky's top aide by text less
than 30 minutes before the phone call between Trump and Zelensky.
Again, we are talking about July 25, in a text 30 minutes before the
Trump-Zelensky phone call. Here is what it says--with Volker texting
Andriy Yermak, a top aide to President Zelensky.

Good lunch--thanks. Heard from White House--assuming
President Z convinces trump he will investigate/``get to the
bottom of what happened'' in 2016, we will nail down day for
visit to Washington. Good luck! See you tomorrow--kurt.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Well, those words couldn't be much clearer:
``assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate/`get to the
bottom of what happened' in 2016, we will nail down [the] . . . visit
to Washington.'' That is a text 30 minutes before that call.
Counsel for the President would like you to think this is just about
that call. You don't get to look outside the four corners of that call.
They don't want you to look at the months that went into preparing for
that call or the months of pressure that followed. But you can just
look at, right now, what happened 30 minutes before that call in this
text message: ``Heard from White House--assuming President Z convinces
trump he will investigate/`get to the bottom of what happened' in
2016.''
If you were wondering whether President Zelensky was aware of what he
was going to be asked on that call, this is how you can tell. He was
prepped. Of course he was prepped. In fact, the missing reference in
the call record to Burisma was a signal Colonel Vindman recognized that
clearly he had been prepped for that call. Why else would the name of
this particular energy company come up in that conversation?
Well, President Zelensky clearly got the message. Toward the end of
the call with President Trump, President Zelensky said:

I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the
United States, specifically Washington DC. On the other hand,
I also wanted to ensure you that we will be very serious
about the case and will work on the investigation.''

Thank you for the invitation. On the other hand, I want to assure you
that we will be very serious about the case, and we will work on the
investigation.
President Zelensky clearly understood the quid pro quo for the White
House meeting on July 25, but his reticence to be used as a political
pawn

[[Page S451]]

kept President Trump from moving forward with a promise to schedule the
meeting, and so the President and his agents pressed on.
In August, Giuliani met with a top Ukrainian aide and made it clear
that Ukraine must issue a public statement and announce investigations
in order to get a White House meeting. Fearful of getting involved in
U.S. domestic politics and having entered office with a promise to
clean up government and corruption, President Zelensky and his aides
preferred a generic statement about investigations, but Giuliani
insisted. No, the statement must include two specific investigations
that would benefit President Trump.
Let's look at a comparison between the statement the Ukrainians
preferred and the one that Giuliani required.
On the left--and I will read it in case you can't see the screens--
the Yermak draft, the Ukrainian draft, says: ``We intend to initiate
and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available
facts and episodes, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this
problem in the future.'' That is pretty generic.
But here is the Giuliani-Volker-Sondland response. This is what had
to be included: ``We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and
unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes.'' Up to
that point, it is exactly the same, until you get to ``including those
involving Burisma and the 2016 US elections,'' and then it goes back to
the Ukrainian draft: ``which in turn will prevent the recurrence of
this problem in the future.''
You can see in this such graphic evidence that the Ukrainians did not
want to do this. They didn't even want to mention this. Giuliani had to
insist: No, no, no; we are not going to be satisfied with some generic
statement. After all, I think we can see this isn't about corruption--
no, this is about announcing investigations to damage Biden and to
promote this fiction about the last election.
So here in these texts, you see that Giuliani, Volker, and Sondland
have added these references to Burisma--a thinly-veiled reference to
former Vice President Biden--and the 2016 election. They wished to
ensure that the Ukrainians mentioned the sham investigation President
Trump required.
The Ukrainians recoiled at the new statement, recognizing that
releasing it would run directly counter to the anti-corruption platform
that Zelensky campaigned on and would embroil them in U.S. election
politics. As a result, Zelensky didn't get his White House meeting. He
still hasn't gotten his White House meeting.
Senators, witness testimony, text messages, emails, and the call
record itself confirm a corrupt quid pro quo for the White House
meeting--an official act available only to the President of the United
States--in exchange for the announcement of political investigations.
The President and his allies have offered no explanation for this
effort--except that the President can abuse his office all he likes,
and there is nothing you can do about it. You can't indict him. You
can't impeach him. That is because they cannot seriously dispute that
President Trump corruptly used an official White House visit for a
foreign leader to compel the Ukrainian President into helping him cheat
in the next election.
The White House meeting, of course, was not the only official act
that President Trump conditioned on the announcement of investigations
into Biden and the conspiracy theory meant to exonerate President Trump
on Russia's interference on his behalf in the last election. In a far
more draconian step, as we discussed, the President withheld $391
million of military aid.
Several weeks before this phone call with President Zelensky but
after Giuliani was already pressing Ukrainian officials to conduct the
investigations his client sought, President Trump ordered the hold on
Ukraine's military aid. Significantly, this was after Congress had
already been notified that most of it was prepared to be spent. Ukraine
had met all of the critical conditions for anti-corruption and defense
reforms in order to receive the funds. We conditioned the funds. They
met the conditions. The funds were ready to go.
At the time and even today, witnesses uniformly testified that the
order to hold the funding came without explanation to the foreign
policy and national security officials responsible for Ukraine. The
only message from the Office of Management and Budget was that the hold
was implemented at the direction of the President.
Since Russia's illegal incursion into Ukraine in 2014, the United
States has maintained a bipartisan policy of delivering hundreds of
millions of dollars of military aid to Ukraine each year, which several
Senators here have personally invested significant time and effort to
ensure. It was President Trump himself who originally authorized
additional financial support for military assistance to Ukraine in 2017
and 2018 without reservation, making his abrupt decision to withhold
assistance in 2019 without explanation all the more surprising to those
responsible for Ukraine policy.

That confusion, however, would soon disappear. The President used the
hold on military aid as leverage to pressure Ukraine to announce these
investigations that he hoped would help his reelection campaign. The
only difference between the prior years when the President approved the
aid without question and the inexplicable hold on aid in 2019 was the
emergence of Joe Biden as a potentially formidable obstacle to the
President's reelection.
These funds that the President withheld--these funds--they don't just
benefit Ukraine; they benefit the security of the United States by
ensuring that Ukraine is equipped to defend its own borders against
Russian aggression.
As Ambassador Taylor noted in his deposition, the United States
provides Ukraine with ``radar and weapons and sniper rifles,
communications that save lives. It makes Ukrainians more effective. It
might even shorten the war. That is what our hope is, to show the
Ukrainians can defend themselves--and the Russians, in the end, will
say: OK, we are going to stop.'' That is in our interest. This isn't
just about Ukraine or its national security; it is about our national
security. This isn't charity; it is about our defense as much as
Ukraine's.
Ambassador Taylor also said that the American aid was ``a concrete
demonstration of the United States' commitment to resist aggression and
defend freedom.'' This is what this country is supposed to be about,
right? Resisting aggression, defending freedom, not exporting corrupt
ideas--that is what we are supposed to be about, right?
It was against this backdrop that American officials responsible for
Ukraine policy sat in astonishment, according to Ambassador Taylor,
when they learned about the hold. Officials immediately expressed
concerns about the legality of President Trump's hold on the assistance
to Ukraine. Their concerns were well warranted, as the Government
Accountability Office, which was just last night pooh-poohed by the
President's counsel--well, that is just some institution of Congress.
Like they are just going to be inherently biased, right? Well, they are
a nonpartisan organization that both parties have come to rely upon.
But I am not surprised that they don't like the conclusion of the GAO,
because the Defense Department warned them that this was going to be
the conclusion, and that conclusion was that the hold on aid was not
only wrong, it was not only immoral, it was also illegal. It violated
the law--a law that we passed so that Presidents could not refuse to
spend money that we allocated for the defense of others and for
ourselves.
The Impoundment Control Act prevents the President and other
government officials from unilaterally making funding decisions when
Congress has made its intent clear. In fact, the act exists precisely
because of previous Presidential abuses of Congress's power of the
purse during the Nixon era. The nonpartisan GAO ruled that the hold on
military aid was not only illegal but that holding underscores the
President's efforts to go to any lengths to ensure his own personal
benefit rather than take care that the laws be faithfully executed as
he swore he would do when he took his oath of office.
Now, because of recent Freedom of Information Act responses in media
reports, we now know additional details about how senior officials
expressed serious reservations about the legality of the hold at the
time. This is not like some big surprise. This is not like something
that just came out of the blue--whoa, an independent watchdog

[[Page S452]]

agency found this was illegal. No, they knew this was illegal at the
time. These concerns were raised at the time.
Certain individuals who may have further information about the hold
who refused to testify at the President's direction--including his
Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney; Robert Blair; OMB official Michael
Duffey, all of them--all of them defied congressional subpoenas but
were included in important email communications that have been made
public only recently.
As you know, these and many other categories of documents from the
White House, the Defense Department, and OMB were subpoenaed by the
House and none was produced--none--at the President's direction and
through Mr. Cipollone's intervention. Although the investigation
developed an overwhelming body of evidence that clearly proves that the
President implemented this hold to pressure Ukraine to announce
investigations, the full story behind the hold--the full and complete
story--is within your power to request.
As you consider the evidence we present to you, ask yourselves
whether the documents of witnesses that have been denied by the
President's complete and unprecedented obstruction could shed more
light on this critical topic. You may agree with the House managers
that the evidence of the President's withholding of military aid to
coerce Ukraine is already supported by overwhelming evidence and no
further insight is necessary to convict the President, but if the
President's lawyers attempt to contest these or other factual matters,
you are left with no choice but to demand to hear from each witness
with firsthand knowledge. A fair trial requires nothing less.
Let's look at some of the evidence that we gathered, notwithstanding
this obstruction.
First, the President withheld the aid without explanation and against
the advice of his own agencies, Cabinet officials, national security
experts, including Secretary Pompeo, Secretary Esper, Ambassador
Bolton, and others. Only Mick Mulvaney, a central figure in this
effort, reportedly supported the hold, and he told us why. During a
press briefing, Mulvaney personally acknowledged that the hold was
ordered as part of a quid pro quo designed to get Ukraine to undertake
the investigation President Trump signed.
Second, the reason for the security assistance hold was undoubtedly
on the President's mind during the telephone call with President
Zelensky on July 25. Near the beginning of their conversation,
President Zelensky expressed his gratitude for U.S. military
assistance, noting the United States' ``great support in the area of
defense.'' Immediately after President Zelensky's reference to defense
and military support, President Trump responded by saying: ``I would
like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through
a lot, and Ukraine knows a lot about it.'' President Trump then
proceeded to openly press Ukraine to conduct these investigations.
Third, numerous officials were aware that President Trump was
withholding the White House meeting until the Ukrainian President
announced the investigations. That the President would ratchet up
pressure on Ukraine to compel its action stunned Ukraine experts like
Ambassador Taylor but followed logically for those engaged in the
President's corrupt scheme.
Fourth, by the end of August, there was still no explanation for the
hold, despite ongoing efforts from numerous officials to persuade the
President to release the money. The leverage of the White House meeting
had not succeeded in coercing Ukraine to announce the investigations,
providing the President and his agents every reason to use the most
aggressive lever of influence, hundreds of millions of dollars in
military support, to compel Ukraine to act. If they didn't feel
pressure, they wouldn't have done it. They wouldn't have done it, but
of course they did.
Imagine if this country were dependent on a more powerful country for
our defense; imagine if we were at war; imagine if we were waiting for
weapons to defend ourselves, something our Framers could have
understood; imagine that we found ourselves in those circumstances, and
much to our astonishment, we couldn't even get a meeting with our ally,
much to our astonishment, they were withholding aid from us. Would you
think we would feel pressure? Of course we would. The Framers had
common sense, and so must we.
Are we to accept: Well, the President said there was no quid pro quo;
I guess that closes the case? In every courtroom in America, jurors--
and I know you are not just jurors. I led the Clinton trial. You are
jurors and judges. Jurors all over America are told: You don't leave
your common sense at the door. Well, we don't have to leave our common
sense at the door here too. Two plus two equals four.
The aid was withheld. You are asking for it. We are asking for it.
His own aides are asking for it, and no one can get an explanation. The
Ukrainians can't get an explanation. All the Ukrainians get is: We want
you to do these investigations. They are promised a White House
meeting. They want a White House meeting. They need a White House
meeting. They are going to be going into negotiations with Putin. They
want to show strength, and they can't get in the door. They see the
Russian Foreign Minister get in the door of the White House. We see the
photos of the President and the Russian Foreign Minister, or the
Ambassador, what a great time they are having, but, no, the President
of Ukraine, our ally, can't get in the door. They are not stupid. They
know what is going on here. They are not stupid. Remember that
conversation I referenced yesterday when the Ukrainians threw it right
back in our face--when Ambassador Volker said to his Ukrainian
counterpart: You shouldn't investigate the former President. You
shouldn't engage in those political investigations. The Ukrainian
response was: You mean like the one you want us to do on the Bidens and
the Clintons? They are not stupid.

By the end of August, there was still no explanation for the hold,
despite efforts by numerous people to seek the release of the funding.
The leverage hadn't succeeded in getting the President to--in coercing
Ukraine to announce the investigations, and so the aid was withheld.
Two witnesses privy to this scheme testified that the only logical
conclusion to reach about the President's continued hold on the aid was
that it was intended to put more pressure on Ukraine to announce the
investigations. As I said, they testified it was as simple as two plus
two equals four.
We can do math, and, more importantly, so can the Ukrainians, and
maybe even more importantly than that, so can the Russians. Multiple
senior officials, including President Trump himself, have confirmed
this logical conclusion. On September 7, Ambassador Sondland spoke
directly to President Trump, who by that point was aware that a
whistleblower complaint was circulating that alleged the contours of
his scheme and that Congress and the public were beginning to ask
probing questions about the hold on aid, including whether the
withholding of the aid was in exchange for reelection help.
During that call of September 7--so in July you have got Mueller's
testimony. You have got the call itself. You have got a followup call
the next day, where the President is speaking to Sondland and wants to
make sure they are going to do the investigations. You have got August,
where they are trying to hammer out a statement, and the Ukrainians are
still resisting.
Then you have September. On September 7, Ambassador Sondland is on
the phone with President Trump. At that point, he is aware that a
whistleblower has filed a complaint alleging the contours of this
scheme and Congress and the public are beginning to ask questions about
the hold on aid, including whether this was to get help in his
reelection.
During this call between the President and Ambassador Sondland,
without a prompt, President Trump told Sondland: There is no quid pro
quo. Now, why would he do that? That is not something that comes up in
normal conversation, right? Hello, Mr. President, how are you today? No
quid pro quo.
That is the kind of thing that comes up in a conversation if you are
trying to put your alibi out there. If you heard about a whistleblower
complaint, if you had seen allegations, if you

[[Page S453]]

know Congress is starting to sniff around, no quid pro quo. But--and I
know this is astonishing--so much of the last 3 years has been a
combination of shock and yet no surprise. Yet, even while the President
is saying no quid pro quo, what does he say? Zelensky must publicly
announce the two political investigations, and he should want to do it.
No quid pro quo, except this quid pro quo.
Sondland immediately relayed the message to President Zelensky,
informing him that without the announcement of the political
investigations, they would be at a stalemate. Sondland made clear that
this reference to a stalemate meant the release of the security
assistance.
President Zelensky, after hesitating for weeks to join the
President's corrupt scheme, finally relented. President Zelensky
informed Sondland that he agreed to do a CNN interview, and Sondland
understood that he would use that occasion to mention these items,
meaning the two investigations at the heart of the scheme.
Candidate Zelensky, who was swept into office with a landslide
victory on a promise of fighting corruption, would be forced to
undertake just the same kind of corrupt act he had been elected to
clean up. Upon learning this, Ambassador Taylor called Sondland to
register his deep concern, telling him that it was crazy--crazy. Taylor
later texted Sondland to reinforce the point: ``As I said on the phone,
I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a
political campaign.''
``As I said on the phone''--clearly, they had discussed it. ``As I
said on the phone.''
Taylor testified about the message and the events leading up to it.
Taylor said that security assistance was so important for Ukraine, as
well as our own national interest. To withhold that assistance for no
good reason other than help with the political campaign made no sense.
It was counterproductive to all of what we had been trying to do. It
was illogical. It could not be explained. It was crazy.
What is more, Ambassador Taylor also came to learn that President
Trump wanted Zelensky in a public box.
He testified--Mr. Goldman was asking the question: ``Now, you
reference a television interview and a desire for President Trump to
put Zelensky in a public box, which you also have in quotes.''
Now, this is in reference, I think, to his written testimony.
``Was that reference to `in a public box' in his notes?''
You remember he kept detailed notes.
Taylor's answer: ``It was in my notes.''
``And what did you understand that to mean, to put Zelensky in a
public box''?
And Taylor responds: ``I understood that to mean that President
Trump, through Ambassador Sondland, was asking for President Zelensky
to publicly commit to these investigations, that it was not sufficient
to do this in private, that this needed to be a very public
statement.''
So we saw earlier, the side-by-side comparison, right, of what the
Ukrainians wanted to say. They wanted to make no mention of these
specific investigations, and now Giuliani insisted: No, no, no. This
isn't going to be credible unless you mention these specific
investigations. This is what it is going to take. And now you see that
Ambassador Sondland has acknowledged to Ambassador Taylor that it is
not enough to use even the right language, apparently. It has to be
done in public. We are not going to take any private commitment. It has
got to be done in public.

As we would later come to understand, this is because President Trump
didn't care about the investigations being done. He just wanted them
announced. He wanted Zelensky in a public box. He wanted it announced
publicly.
Ambassador Taylor also testified that he understood from Sondland
that because Trump was a businessman, he would expect to get something
in return before signing a check.
(Text of Videotape presentation.)

Mr. TAYLOR. During our meeting, during our call on
September 8, Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that
President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about
to sign a check to someone who owes him something, the
businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the
check. Ambassador Volker used the same language several days
later while we were together at the Yalta European strategy
conference. I argued to both that the explanation made no
sense. Ukrainians did not owe President Trump anything.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. This is very telling. Ambassador Taylor, a
Vietnam veteran, a West Point graduate, said that Ukrainians didn't owe
us anything. Clearly, Donald Trump felt Ukrainians owed him, right?
This is not about Ukraine's national security. It is not about our
national security. It is not about corruption. No, it is about what is
in it for me. Those Ukrainians owe me before I sign a check.
And, by the way, that is not his money. That is your money. That is
the American people's money for their defense.
But here we see Ambassador Sondland explain: No, President Trump is a
businessman. Before he even signs a check, he wants to get something,
and, of course, that something he was going to sign that check for or
he was going to make that payment for, with our tax dollars--that thing
that he was going to buy with those tax dollars--was a smear of his
opponent and an effort to lift whatever cloud he felt was over his
Presidency because of the Russian interference on his behalf in the
last election.
The President has offered an assortment of shifting explanations
after the fact for the hold on aid, including that he withheld the
money because of corruption in Ukraine or concerns about burden-sharing
with other European countries. But those arguments are completely
without merit.
First, the President's own administration had determined by the time
of the hold that Ukraine had undertaken all necessary anti-corruption
and defense reforms in order to receive the funds. The Defense
Department and State Department officials repeatedly made this clear as
the hold remained and threatened the ability of the agency to spend the
money before the end of the fiscal year.
Second, the evidence revealed that the President only asked about the
foreign contributions to Ukraine in September, nearly 2 months after
the President implemented the hold and as it became clear that the
public, Congress, and a whistleblower were becoming aware of the
President's scheme.
The after-the-fact effort to come up with a justification also belies
the truth. The European countries provide far more financial support to
Ukraine than the United States. Their support is largely economic. Ours
also includes a lot of military support, but Europe is a substantial
financial backer of Ukraine.
There is something else remarkable about this that I was struck by
yesterday as we were going through the importance of the witness
testimony and looking at some of those redacted emails in which the
administration sought to hide its misconduct.
In those redactions, when we got to see what was beneath them, there
was an indication that this is very close-hold. This is a need-to-know
basis only. Do you remember that? We will show you that again, but it
is one of those emails that only came to light, I believe, recently,
and it is not because the administration wanted you to see this
information. We see there is a desire not to let people know about this
hold.
If the President were fighting corruption, if he wanted Europeans to
pay more, why would he hide it from us? Why would he hide it from the
Ukrainians? Why would he hide it from the rest of the world? If this
were a desire for Europe to pay more, why wouldn't he charge Sondland
to go ask Europe for more? Why wouldn't he be proud to tell the
Congress of the United States: I am holding up this aid, and I am
holding it up because I am holding up corruption?
Why wouldn't he? Because, of course, it wasn't true. There is no
evidence of that.
And, once more, the White House admitted why the President held up
the money. The President's own Chief of Staff explained precisely why
during the October 17 press conference. Let's see, again, what he had
to say.
(Text of Videotape presentation.)

Mr. MULVANEY. That was--those were the driving factors. Did
he also mention to

[[Page S454]]

me in the past that the corruption related to the DNC server?
Absolutely. No question about that. But that's it. That's why
we held up the money. Now, there was a report--
Mr. KARL. So the demand for an investigation into the
Democrats was part of the reason that he went on to withhold
funding to Ukraine?
Mr. MULVANEY. The look-back to what happened in 2016
certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in
corruption with that nation and absolutely appropriate.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. But Mulvaney didn't just admit that the President
withheld the crucial aid appropriated by Congress to apply pressure on
Ukraine to do the President's political dirty work. He also said that
we should just ``get over it.'' Let's watch.

(Text of Videotape presentation.)

Mr. KARL. Let's be clear. What you just described is a quid
pro quo. It is funding will not flow unless the investigation
into the Democratic server happened as well.
Mr. MULVANEY. We do that all the time with foreign policy.
If you read the news reports and you believe them--what did
McKinney say yesterday? Well, McKinney said yesterday that he
was really upset with the political influence in foreign
policy. That was one of the reasons he was so upset about
this. And I have news for everybody: Get over it. There's
going to be political influence in foreign policy.

Mr. Manager SCHIFF. Should the Congress just get over it? Should the
American people just come to expect that our Presidents will corruptly
abuse their office to seek the help of a foreign power to cheat in our
election? Should we just get over it? Is that what we have come to? I
hope and pray that the answer is no.
We cannot allow a President to withhold military aid from an ally or
to elicit help in a reelection campaign. I hope that we don't have to
just get over that. I hope that we just don't have to get accustomed to
that.
Is that what we want to tell our constituents, that, yes, the
President withheld aid from an ally? Yes, it damaged our national
security. And, yes, he wouldn't meet with the foreign leaders important
to us unless he got help in the next election. And, yes, it is wrong to
try to get a foreign power to help.
It is kind of cheating, really, if we are going to be honest about it
and blatant about it. It is cheating. Americans are supposed to decide
American elections, but, you know, I guess we just need to get over it.
I guess that is just what we should now expect of a President of the
United States.
I guess there is really no remedy for that anymore. The impeachment,
maybe that was a good idea 200 years ago, but I guess we just need to
get over it. I guess maybe the President really is above the law
because they say you can't indict the President.
The President says you can't even investigate the President. The
President is in court saying, you can not only not indict the
President, you can't even investigate the President. The Attorney
General's position is that you can't even investigate the President.
Are we really prepared to say that? The only answer to the
President's misconduct is that we need to get over it? What are we to
say to the next President? What are we to say to the President who is
from a different party, who refuses the same kind of subpoenas, and the
President says to you or his Chief of Staff says to you or her Chief of
Staff says to you: Just get over it. I am not doing anything different
than Donald Trump did. Just get over it. He asked for help in the next
election, I am asking for help in the next election. Just get over it.
We do this kind of thing all the time.
People are cynical enough as it is about politics, about people's
commitment to their good, cynical enough without having us confirm it
for them.
I think it is more than crazy. Those were Ambassador Taylor's words.
I think it is more than crazy. I think it is a gross abuse of power.
And I don't think that impeachment power is a relic. If it is a
relic, I wonder how much longer our Republic can succeed.
For months, President Trump and his agents had pressured Ukraine to
announce investigations, and President Zelensky finally yielded. As
previously noted, he scheduled a CNN interview and planned to publicly
announce the politically motivated investigations.
He informed Sondland of this plan during a September 7 phone call. In
the same call, Sondland related to President Zelensky that Trump
required that the Ukrainian leader make the public announcement in
order to get the critical military aid.
President Trump's corruption had finally worn down President
Zelensky, overcoming his effort to remain true to his anti-corruption
platform--until events intervened.
Before Zelensky could do the interview, President Trump learned that
his scheme had been exposed. Facing public and congressional pressure
on September 11, the President finally released the hold on aid to
Ukraine. Just like the implementation of the hold, he provided no
reason for the release, but the reason is quite simple. The President
got caught.
In late August, President Trump learned about a whistleblower
complaint that was winding its way through the intelligence agencies on
its way to Congress.
On September 9, three House committees announced an investigation
into President Trump's Ukraine misconduct and that of his proxy, Rudy
Giuliani. Later that day, again, September 9, the intelligence
community inspector general notified the Senate and House Intelligence
Committees of the existence of the complaint and the fact that it was
being withheld from Congress, contrary to law and in an unprecedented
fashion.
Facing significant public pressure on September 11, the President
gave up and released the money to Ukraine. One week later, President
Zelensky canceled the CNN interview.
And rather than demonstrate attrition or acknowledged wrongdoing, the
President instead has continued his effort, even after the impeachment
investigation began. He not only continued to call on Ukraine to
investigate his political opponent, he called on China to do the same.
This should concern all of us. It is a confirmation not only of the
scheme to pressure Ukraine to help his political campaign but a clear
sign that the President believes that these corrupt acts are
acceptable.
A President this unapologetic, this unbound to the Constitution and
the oath of office, must be removed from that office lest he continue
to use the vast prejudicial powers at his disposal to seek advantage in
the next election.
President Trump's abuse of powers of his office undermined the
integrity of our free and fair elections and compromised America's
national security.
If we don't stand up to this peril today, we will write the history
of our decline with our own hand. If President Trump is not held to
account, we send a message to future Presidents, future Congresses, and
generations of Americans that the personal interests of the President
can fairly take precedent over those of the Nation. The domestic
effects of this descent from democracy will be a weakened trust in the
integrity of our elections and the rule of law and a steady decline of
the spread of democratic values throughout the world.

For how can any country trust the United States as a model of
governance if it is one that sanctions precisely the political
corruption and invitation to foreign meddling that we have long sought
to help eradicate in burgeoning democracies around the world? To
protect against foreign interference in our elections, we have
guardrails built into our democratic system. We have campaign finance
laws to ensure that political assistance can come only from domestic
actors, and we take seriously the need to shore up the integrity of our
voting systems so that a foreign government or actor cannot change vote
tallies. The promise of one person, one vote is only effective if each
vote is cast free of foreign interference. Americans decide American
elections--at least they should.
Now, what if electoral corruption is even more insidious? What
happens when the invitation comes from within? Our Framers understood
that threat too. George Mason noted at the Constitutional Convention
that impeachment was a necessary tool because ``the man who has
practiced corruption and by that means procured his appointment in the
first instance'' could seek to repeat his guilt.
In June of last year, President Trump was clear that, if a foreign
government offered dirt on his political opponent, he would take it, a
statement deeply at odds with the guidance provided at the time by his
own FBI Director, the former Federal Election

[[Page S455]]

Commission Chair, and our Constitution, written some 233 years ago. In
no uncertain terms, it admonishes against any person holding office of
profit or trust accepting any present from any foreign state.
But President Trump did more than take the foreign help in 2019, as
he had done in 2016. This time, he had not only asked for it in the
July 25 call, but when he didn't get the help from the Ukrainian
President in the form of announced investigations, he withheld hundreds
of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded military aid and a coveted
White House meeting to increase the pressure on Ukraine to comply.
Later, he demonstrated no remorse and continued to encourage Ukraine to
conduct the political investigations he wanted, even asking other
countries to do so.
The consequences of these actions alone have shaken our democratic
system. What message will we send if we choose not to hold this
President accountable for his abuse of power to solicit reelection
interference in our upcoming election? The misconduct undertaken by
this President may lead future Presidents to believe that they, too,
can use the substantial power conferred on them by the Constitution in
order to undermine it. Nothing could weaken the integrity of our
elections more, and no campaign finance law or statement by a future
FBI Director could stand up to the precedent of electoral misconduct
set by the President of the United States if we do not say clearly that
this behavior is unacceptable and, more than unacceptable, impeachable.
We also undermine our global standing. As a country long viewed as a
model for democratic ideals worth emulating, we have, for generations,
been the ``shining city upon a hill'' that President Reagan described.
America is not just a country but also an idea. But of what worth is
that idea if, when tried, we do not affirm the values that underpin it?
What will those nascent democracies around the world conclude; that
democracy is not only difficult but maybe that it is too difficult?
Maybe that it is impossible? And who will come to fill the void we
leave when the light from that shining city upon a hill is
extinguished? The autocrats with whom we compete, who value not freedom
and fair elections but the unending rule of a repressive executive;
autocrats who value not freedom of the press and open debate but
disinformation, propaganda, and state-sanctioned lies.
Vladimir Putin would like nothing better. The Russians have little
democracy left, thanks to Vladimir Putin. It is an autocracy; it is a
thugocracy. The Russian story line, the Russian narrative, the Russian
propaganda, the Russian view they would like people around the world to
believe is that every country is just the same, just the same corrupt
system: There is no difference. It is not a competition between
autocracy and democracy. No, it is just between autocrats and
hypocrites.
They make no bones about their loss of democracy. They just want the
rest of the world to believe you can't fight it anywhere. Why take to
the streets of Moscow to demand something better if there is nothing
better anywhere else. That is the Russian story. That is the Russian
story. That is who prospers by the defeat of democracy. That is who
wins by the defeat of our democratic ideals. It is not other
democracies; it is the autocrats who are on the rise all over the
world.
I think all of us in this room have grown up in a generation where
each successive generation lived with more freedom than the one that
came before. We each had more freedom of speech and associations, the
freedom to practice our faith. This was true at home. It was true all
over the world. I think we came to believe this was some immutable law
of nature, only to find it isn't, only to come to the terrible
realization that this year fewer people have freedom than last, and
there is no guarantee that next year people will live in more freedom
than today. And the prospect for our children is even more in doubt.
It turns out, there is nothing immutable about this. Every generation
has to fight for it. We are fighting for it right now. There is no
guarantee that this democracy that has served us so well will continue
to prosper. We will struggle to protect this idea, and even as we do,
we will struggle to protect our security in more tangible ways. Support
for an independent and democratic Ukraine, which is the literal bulwark
against Russian expansionism in Europe, is essential to our security.
Russia showed that when it invaded Ukraine in 2014 and sought to redraw
the map of Europe.
Was our commitment to Ukraine's independence and sovereignty just an
empty promise or are we prepared to support its efforts to keep Russia
contained so they and we may all eventually enjoy a long peace?
Russia is not a threat--I don't need to tell you--to Eastern Europe
alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving ground for just the
types of hybrid warfare that the 21st century will become defined by:
cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the
legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or
financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that, with the
malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine.
Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they
will do so again. Indeed, they have never stopped. Will we allow the
primary country now fighting Russia to be weakened, placing our troops
in Europe at greater risk and opening the door to greater interference
in our affairs at home?
If we allow the President of the United States to pursue his
political and personal interests rather than the national interests, we
send a message to our European allies that our commitment to a Europe
free and whole is for sale to the highest bidder. The strength of our
global alliances relies on a shared understanding of what that alliance
stands for: one built on the rule of law, on free and fair elections,
and on a shared struggle against aggression from autocratic regimes.
We are countries built on a commitment to our people, not unyielding
loyalty to a President who would be King.
A President has a right to hold a call with a foreign leader, yes.
And he has a right to decide the time and location of a meeting with
that leader, yes. And he has a right to withhold funding to that leader
should the law be followed and the purpose be just.
But he does not, under our laws and under our Constitution, have a
right to use the powers of his office to corruptly solicit foreign
aid--prohibited foreign aid--in his reelection. He does not. He does
not have the right to withhold official Presidential acts to secure
that assistance, and he certainly does not have the right to undermine
our elections and place our security at risk for his own personal
benefit. No President, Republican or Democratic, can be permitted to do
that.
Now let me turn to the second Article of Impeachment, which charges
the President with misusing the powers of his office to obstruct and
interfere with the impeachment inquiry.
The evidence you will hear during the House presentation is equally
undeniable and damning. President Trump issued a blanket order
directing the entire executive branch not to cooperate with the
impeachment inquiry and to withhold all documents and testimony. His
order was categorical. It was indiscriminate and historically
unprecedented. No President before President Trump has ever ordered the
complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and
impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives
to investigate high crimes and misdemeanors.
The President was able to block agencies across the executive branch
from producing any records or documents to the House investigative
committees, despite duly authorized subpoenas. The White House
continues to refuse to produce a single document or record in response
to a House subpoena that remains in full force and effect. The
Department of State and Office of Management and Budget, Department of
Energy, and the Department of Defense continue to refuse to provide a
single document or record in response to House subpoenas that remain in
full force and effect.
It is worth underscoring this point. The House has yet to receive a
single document from the executive branch agencies pursuant to its
subpoenas. Not a single piece of paper, email, or other record has been
turned over--not one.

[[Page S456]]

While I pause to get a drink of water, let me let you know for your
timing that I have about 10 minutes left in my presentation. So the end
is in sight.
President Trump has also successfully blocked witnesses--nine of
them--under subpoena from testifying, witnesses with firsthand
knowledge of the President's actions, including his closest aides, some
of whom were directly involved in executing the President's improper
orders. These witnesses include Mick Mulvaney and Robert Blair; Russell
Vought, the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget; Michael
Duffey, a senior official; and the President's chief legal advisor on
the National Security Council, John Eisenberg, among others.
The managers will present in detail what these officials knew about
their role in executing different parts of the President's scheme.
There is no dispute, nor could there be, that President Trump's order
substantially obstructed the House impeachment inquiry. That
obstruction continues unabated today, even as we stand here at the
start of the President's trial.
The President has been able to do so only because of the uniquely
powerful position he holds as our Commander in Chief. No other American
could seek to obstruct an investigation into his own wrongdoing this
way. No other American could use the vast powers and levers of his
government to conduct a corrupt scheme to benefit themselves and then
use those same powers to suppress evidence and bar any cooperation with
the authorities investigating them--not a police chief, not a mayor,
not a Governor, not any elected official in the country, and certainly
not any unelected official in the country.
For those folks watching us from around the country, you know what
would happen to them if they defied a lawful subpoena.
They got a subpoena commanding them to appear. You know what would
happen to them because they are not above the law: They would be
arrested; they would be detained; they would be incarcerated; they
would be forced to comply. They are not above the law, and neither are
we, and neither is the President.
And, yet, despite the fact that he is not above the law, despite the
President's extensive and persistent efforts, the House heard from
courageous witnesses who obeyed lawful subpoenas, and we gathered
overwhelming evidence. The House built a formidable case that forms the
basis of these articles.
The second article for obstruction of Congress is not simply about
President Trump's decision to obstruct a congressional investigation or
even an impeachment inquiry. It should not be misunderstood as some
routine dispute between two branches of government, nor should it be
reduced to the notion that the President was simply protecting himself
or fighting back against a partisan or overzealous Congress. The
charges in the second article are much more serious and urgent than
that.
First, the President's attempt to obstruct the inquiry so
categorically and comprehensively is part and parcel of the President's
furious effort to conceal, suppress, and cover up his own misconduct.
From the very first moment his actions were at the risk of coming to
light, President Trump has sought to hide and cover up key evidence,
even as his scheme to pressure Ukraine was still underway.
As the House's presentation will make clear, the President's coverup
started even before the House began to investigate the President's
Ukraine-related activity. The President learned early on of the
existence of a lawful whistleblower complaint from within the
intelligence community that would ring the first alarm. He deployed the
White House and Justice Department to intervene in an unprecedented
fashion to conceal and then withhold from Congress--for the first time
ever--a credible and urgent whistleblower complaint, even though the
law requires that it be provided to the congressional intelligence
committees.
Once the impeachment inquiry was underway in late September, the
President used the immense and unique power at his disposal to direct
and maintain at every turn the categorical defiance of congressional
scrutiny, even as he attacked the inquiry itself and its witnesses. The
President offered multiple and shifting justifications for obstructing
the House's inquiry, each of them deficient, while his actions and
statements powerfully reflect his own consciousness of guilt.
Second, the ramifications of the President's obstruction go beyond
the sinister motives of simply covering up his actions. His obstruction
strikes at the heart of our Constitution. It threatens the last line of
defense our Founders purposefully enshrined in our system to protect
our democracy.
If Presidents can obstruct an impeachment inquiry undertaken by the
House and evade accountability in the Senate for doing so, they usurp
an essential power granted exclusively to the Congress--and for a
reason. Presidents could seize for themselves the power to neutralize
and nullify the impeachment clause in order to shield themselves from
any accountability. And if Congress is unable to investigate and
impeach a President for abuse of their office, our democracy's
essential check on a rogue President would fail. It would no longer
protect the American people from a corrupt President who presents an
ongoing threat. This is the outcome every American should be concerned
about and one that the Founders warned us about.
Through the impeachment clause, the Framers of the Constitution
empowered Congress to thoroughly investigate Presidential malfeasance--
and to respond, if necessary, by removing the President from office.
This entire framework depends on Congress's ability to discover, and
then to thoroughly and effectively investigate, Presidential
misconduct. Without the ability of Congress to do that, the impeachment
power is a nullity. If you can't investigate it, you can't enforce it
and can't apply it.
What we confront here, in the second Article of Impeachment, is
therefore an impeachable offense aimed at destroying the impeachment
power itself. When a President abuses the power of his office to so
completely defy House investigators, and does so without lawful cause
or excuse, he attacks the Constitution itself. He confirms that he sees
himself as above the law. His actions destabilize the separation of
powers, which defines our democracy and preserves our freedom, and
establish an exceedingly dangerous precedent. And he proves that he is
willing to destroy a vital safeguard against tyranny--a safeguard meant
to protect the American people--just to advance his own personal
interests in covering up evidence.
The House's presentation of the second article will therefore focus
on three core areas that confirm the President's obstruction and
require his removal from office: first, the singular importance and
role of the impeachment clause for our democracy and why an effort by a
President to obstruct an impeachment inquiry is, in and of itself, an
impeachable offense; second, why the President's extensive effort to
cover up evidence of his misconduct is unprecedented in American
history and without lawful cause or justification; and, finally, why
the President's obstruction poses a direct threat to our system of
self-governance, with consequences for all Americans--today and in the
future--and for both Chambers of Congress.
Over the coming days, you will hear from the House managers details
of this scheme and the effort to hide it from Congress. The Articles of
Impeachment that the House presented go to the heart of those efforts,
and let me share a few takeaways.
The House of Representatives has found that, using the powers of his
high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign
government, Ukraine, in the 2020 U.S. Presidential election. He did so
through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the
government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would
benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political
opponent, and influence the 2020 U.S. Presidential election improperly
and to his advantage.

President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to
take these steps by conditioning official U.S. Government acts of
significant value to Ukraine on Ukraine's public announcement of these
investigations. He engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for
corrupt purposes

[[Page S457]]

in pursuit of his personal political benefit.
In doing so, President Trump used the powers of the Presidency in a
manner that compromised the national security of the United States and
undermined the integrity of the U.S. democratic process. He thus
ignored and injured the interests of the Nation.
As part of the House's impeachment inquiry, the committees
undertaking the investigation served subpoenas seeking documents and
testimony deemed vital to the inquiry from various executive branch
agencies and offices and current and former officials.
In response, and without lawful cause or excuse, President Trump
directed executive branch agencies, offices, and officials not to
comply with those subpoenas. President Trump thus interposed the powers
of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of
Representatives and assumed to himself functions and judgments
necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment vested by
the Constitution in the House of Representatives.
As George Washington and his troops retreated across the Delaware
River in early December 1776, they were read the words of Thomas Paine,
published that month in his pamphlet, ``The American Crisis'':

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer
soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink
from the service of their country; but he that stands by it
now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

Seventeen days later, George Washington crossed the Delaware, leading
to a decisive victory for those who would come to shape our promising
young country.
As much as our Founders feared an unchecked Chief Executive able to
pursue his own will over the will of the people, they also feared the
poison of excessive factionalism that could divert us from a difficult
service to our country. As George Washington warned in his farewell
address, ``the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party
are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to
discourage and restrain it.''
Our political parties and affiliations are central to our democracy,
ensuring that good and bad political philosophies alike are considered
in the marketplace of ideas. Here, the American people can choose
between the policies of one party or another and make decisions about
their political leaders up to and including the President of the United
States based on the degree to which that person represents their
interests and values. That is not factionalism; that is the foundation
of our democracy.
But when a leader takes the reins of the highest office in our land
and uses that awesome power to solicit the help of a foreign country to
gain an unfair advantage in our free and fair elections, we all--
Democrats and Republicans alike--must ask ourselves whether our loyalty
is to our party or whether it is to our Constitution. If we say that we
will align ourselves with that leader, allowing our sense of duty to be
usurped by an absolute Executive, that is not democracy; it is not even
factionalism. It is a step on the road to tyranny.
The damage that this President has done to our relationship with a
key strategic partner will be remedied over time, and Ukraine continues
to enjoy strong bipartisan support in Congress. But if we fail to act,
the damage to our democratic elections, to our national security, to
our system of checks and balances will be long-lasting and potentially
irreversible.
As you will hear in the coming days, President Trump has acted in a
manner grossly incompatible with self-governance. His conduct has
violated his oath of office and his constitutional duty to faithfully
execute the law. He has shown no willingness to be constrained by the
rule of law and has demonstrated that he will continue to abuse his
power and obstruct investigations into himself, causing further damage
to the pillars of our democracy if he is not held accountable.
He cannot be charged with a crime, so says the Department of Justice.
There is no remedy for such a threat but removal from office of the
President of the United States.
If impeachment and removal cannot hold him accountable, then he truly
is above the law.
We are nearly 2\1/2\ centuries into this beautiful experiment of
American democracy, but our future is not assured.
As Benjamin Franklin departed the Constitutional Convention, he was
asked: ``What have we got? A Republic or a Monarchy?'' He responded
simply: ``A Republic, if you can keep it.''
A fair trial, impartial consideration of all of the evidence against
the President is how we keep our Republic.
That concludes our introduction.

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