deadline. >> thank you for asking. and we spent a lot of time and folks get wound up about various issue around the world. there's probably no more serious issue than any president of the united states faces than the issue of nuclear arms, especially with countries like russia and china that have massive nuclear inventories. as do-- as does the united states. so we think that a process, an arms control process, even a process to reduce the number of nuclear weapons that the major powers hold is important. it's something that's very important to the president. it's an awesome responsibility to be the president or to advise the president on these issues. i think-- >> we are going to leave this conversation at this point. you can see the rest of it on our website, c-span.org. the u.s. senate is about to gavel in for legislative business. today lawmakers will be given an opportunity to discuss their thoughts on the impeachment of

president trump. many have already announced how they intend to vote. the senate will be sitting as a jury in the trial of the president beginning at 4 p.m. eastern today. they'll vote on those two articles of impeachment shortly thereafter. and now, to live coverage of the u.s. senate here on c-span2. the president pro tempore: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. strong deliverer, our shelter in the time of storms,

we acknowledge today that you are god, and we are not. you don't disappoint those who trust in you, for you are our fortress and bulwark. lord, show our senators your ways and teach them to walk in your path of integrity. through the seasons of our nation's history, you have been patient and merciful. mighty god, be true to your name. fulfill your purposes for our nation and world. we pray in your holy name.

amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes each. the senator from iowa.

mr. grassley: i ask permission to speak for one minute in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. grassley: last night, in the state of the union address, president trump called on congress to put bipartisan legislation to lower prescription drug prices on his desk and that he would sign it. here are the facts. the house is controlled by democrats. the senate requires bipartisanship to get any legislating done. there are only a couple months left before the campaign season will likely impede anything from being accomplished in this congress, so the time to act is right now. i'm calling on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get off the sidelines and work with me and senator wyden as president trump already is to

heed the call to action that he gave us last night and pass the prescription drug pricing reduction act. it's the only significant bipartisan bill in town. president trump, the aarp, and the libertarian kato think tank, to name just a few people involved, have all endorsed the bill. if you're serious about fulfilling promises to lower drawing costs, my office door is open, as senator wyden's door is open. it's time for the senate to act and to deliver for the american people. i yield the floor. mr. merkley: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: as united states senators, our decisions build the foundation for future generations. i want those generations to know

that i stood here on the floor of this chamber fighting for equal justice under law. i stood here to defend our senate's responsibility to provide a fair trial with witnesses and documents. i stood here to say that when our president invites and pressures a foreign government to smear a political opponent and corrupt the integrity of our 2020 presidential election, he must be removed from office. as a number of my republican colleagues have confessed, the house managers have proven their case. president trump did sanction a corrupt conspiracy to smear a political opponent, former vice president joe biden. president trump assigned rudy giuliani, his personal lawyer, to accomplish that goal by arranging sham investigations by the government of ukraine. president trump advanced this corrupt scheme by instructing the three amigos, ambassador

volker, secretary of energy rick perry, and ambassador gordon sondland, to work with rudy to this goal. president trump did use the resources of america, including an oval office meeting and security assistance, to pressure ukraine, which was at war with russia, to participate in this corrupt conspiracy. the facts are clear. but do president trump's acts rise to the level the framers envisioned for removal of a president or are they, as some colleagues in this chamber have said, simply inappropriate but not impeachable? with respect to those colleagues, inappropriate is lying to the public. inappropriate is shunning our allies or failing to put your personal assets into a blind trust or encouraging foreign

governments to patronize your properties. that's something you might call inappropriate. but that word does not begin to encompass president trump's actions in this case. a corrupt conspiracy comprising a fundamental assault on our constitution. this conspiracy is far worse than watergate. watergate was about a break-in to spy on the democratic national committee. bad, yes. wrong, definitely. but watergate didn't involve soliciting foreign interference to destroy the integrity of an election. it didn't involve an effort to smear a political opponent. watergate did not involve an across the board blockade of access by congress to witnesses and documents. if you believe that congress was right to conclude that president nixon's abuse of power merited expulsion from office, you have no choice but to conclude that

president trump's corrupt conspiracy merits his expulsion from office. president trump should be removed from office this very day by action in this very chamber, but he will not be removed because this senate has failed to conduct a full and fair trial to reveal the extensive dimensions of his conspiracy and because the sirens -- a siren's call to party loyalty over country has infected this chamber. every american understands what constitutes a full and fair trial. a full and fair trial has witnesses. a full and fair trial has documents. a full and fair trial does not begin with the jury foreman declaring that he is working hand in glove with the defendant. when discussing why the senate

tries impeachments, alexander hamilton stated where else than in the senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified or sufficiently independent for that daunting responsibility? every american should feel the sadness, the darkness, the tragedy of this moment in which this senate is neither sufficiently dignified nor sufficiently independent for that responsibility. the senate trial became a cover-up when the majority voted on january 22 and again on january 31 to block all access to witnesses and documents. if this -- if this cover-up goes

forward, it will be the latest in a set of corrupt firsts this senate has achieved under republican leadership. it has been the first senate to ignore our constitutional responsibilities to debate and vote on a supreme court nominee in 2016. it became the first senate to complete the theft of a supreme court seat from one administration, giving it to another in 2017. and now it becomes the first senate in american history to replace an impeachment trial with a cover-up. president trump might want to consider this -- with a cover-up in lieu of a trial, there is no exoneration. no matter how badly president trump might want it. no matter how boldly he might claim it, there is no exoneration from a cover-up. if this senate fails to convict president trump when we vote

later today, we destroy our constitutional responsibility to serve as a check against the abuses of a runaway president. it's a devastating blow to the checks and balances which have stood at the heart of our constitution. our tripartate system is like a three-legged stool in which each leg works in balance with the others. if one leg is cracked or weakened, well, that stool topless over. if the senate's responsibility is gutted and the limits on presidential power undermineed, then -- undermined, then there is lasting damage to the checks and balances our founders so carefully crafted. let's also be clear, the situation that we find ourselves in today, it didn't spring out of nowhere. with respect to the chief justice, the road to this moment has been paved by decisions made in the supreme court undermining we the people republic while

justice roberts has led the court. decisions like citizens united in 2010 which corrupted our political campaigns with a flood of dark money, equivalent of a stadium sound system drowning out the voice of the people. decisions like shelby county in 2013 that gutted the voting rights act, opening the door to voter suppression and voter intimidation. if you believe in our republic, you believe in voter empowerment, not voter suppression. decisions like rucho versus common cause in 2019 given a green light to extreme partisan gerrymandering in which politicians choose their voters rather than voters choosing their politicians. one blow after another giving more power to the powerful and undermining the vision that government of, by, and for the people. blow after blow making officials

more responsive to the rich and wealthy donors than the people they are elected to represent. these supreme court decisions have elevated government by and for the powerful and trampled government by and for the people, paving the path for this dark moment in which the u.s. senate chooses to defend a corrupt president by converting a trial into a cover-up. a trial without access to witnesses and documents? that is what one expects of a corrupted court in russia or china, not the united states of america. we know what democracy looks like, and it's not just about having a constitution or holding elections. our democracy is not set in stone. it is not guaranteed by anything other than the goodwill and good faith of the people of this country. keeping a democracy takes

courage and commitment. as the saying goes, freedom is not free. it's an inheritance bequeathed to us by those who have fought and bled and died to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from this earth. fighting for that inheritance doesn't only happen on the battlefield. it happens when americans everywhere go to the polls to cast a ballot. it happens when ordinary citizens distraught at what they're seeing speak up, join a march, or run for office to make a difference. and it happens here in this chamber, this senate chamber when senators put addressing the challenges of our country over the pressures from their party. i urge each and every one of my colleagues, before casting your

vote today, ask yourself will you defend the integrity of our elections? will you deliver impartial justice? will you protect the separation of powers at the heart of our constitution? will you uphold the rule of law, and the inspiring words carved above the doors of the u.s. supreme court, equal justice under law. i stand here today in support of our constitution which has made our nation that shining city on a hill. i stand here today for equal juchts -- justice under law. i stand here today for a full and fair trial as our constitution demands. i stand here today to say that a president who has abused this office by soliciting a foreign country to intervene in the

election of 2020 and bias the outcome, that individual, that president betraying the trust of the american people, undermining the strength of our constitution, that president must be removed from office. i yield the floor.

the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. schumer: madam president, we're not in a quorum call, i presume. the presiding officer: we are not. mr. schumer: i'll speak later this afternoon at about 3:30 prior to the vote on the articles of impeachment about impeachment but this morning i'd like to briefly respond to president trump's third state of the union address. it was a sad moment for democracy. the president's speech last night was much more like a trump rally than a speech a true leader would give. it was demagogic. it was undignified. it was highly partisan. and in too many places just untruthful. instead of a dignified president, we had some combination of a pep rally leader, a reality show host, and a carnival barker.

it's not what presidents are. president trump took credit for inheriting an economy that has beening growing at about the same pace in the last ten years. the bottom line is in the last three years of the obama administration, more jobs were created than under the three years of the trump administration. and yet, he can't resist digging at the past president, even though the past president on on that economic number is better than him. he boosted about how many manufacturing jobs he created. manufacturing jobs have gone down in part because of the president's trade policies for five months this year, or late last year. five-month long recession last year. farmers have struggled mightily. farm income is way down. bankruptcies are the highest they have been in eight years. crop prices are dwindling and

markets may never recover from the damage of the president's trade war as so many contracts for soybeans and other goods have gone to argentina and brazil and these are not one-year contracts. these are long-term contracts. president trump talked at length about health care claiming amazingly at one point he will fight to protect patients with preexisting conditions. this president just lies. just lies. he's in court right now trying to undo the protections for preexisting conditions, and at the same time he says he wants to do it, and all the republicans get up and cheer. his administration is working as hard as it can to take down partisan law that guarantees protections for preexisting conditions. the claim is not partly true, it's not half true, it's not misleading. it is flat objectively unequivocally false. those are my notes, false.

let's call it for what it is, it's a lie. in three years president trump has done everything imaginable to undermine americans' health care. he's even hoping to drag out the resolution in a lawsuit passed the next election. if president trump were truly interested in shoring up protections for people with preexisting conditions he'd drop this lawsuit now. then he'd be doing something, not just talking and having his actions totally contradict his words. until the president drops his lawsuit when he says he cares about americans' health care, he's talking out of both sides of his mouth. when he talks about being the blue-collar president, he doesn't understand blue-collar families. it's true wages went up 3%. if you're making $50,000 a year, that's a good salary. that's about, by my calculation, $30 a week. when you get a medical bill of $4,000 and your deductible is $5,000, when your car has an

accident and it's going to cost you $3,000, $4,000 to fix it and you don't have that money, the $30 a week doesn't mean much. when asked have americans made -- when asked is it easier for you to pay your bills today or the day trump became president, they say it's harder to pay the bills today. that's what working families care about, getting their costs down, their college costs, their education costs, their health care costs, their automobile and infrastructure costs. not these vaunted wall street statistics that the financial leaders look at and think oh, we're great. well, they're great. their 3% increase in income, and it's been greater, puts a lot of money in their pockets. working people don't feel any better. they feel worse because donald trump always sides with the special interests when it comes to things that affect working

families, like health care, like drug costs, like college. and in so many other areas the president's claims were just not true. he claims he's gotten tough on china. he sold out to china a month ago. everyone knows that. because he had hurt the farmers so badly, the bulk of what happened in the chinese agreement was them to purchase some soybeans. we don't even know if that will happen, but it didn't get at the real ways china hurts us. he spoke about a desire for a bipartisan infrastructure bill. we senate democrats put a $trillion bill through years ago. the president hasn't shown any interest in discussing it. when leader pelosi and i went to visit him about infrastructure, he walked out. so this is typical of donald trump. here in his speech he brags about all these things he wants to do or is doing, but his actions belie his words.

maybe the best metaphor was his claim to bring democracy to venezuela. there was a big policy there. it flopped. if the policy was working, juan guaido wouldn't be in the balcony here. he'd be in venezuela. he'd be sitting in the president's palace or at least waging a fight to win. he's here. and the president brags about his venezuela policy. give us a break. he hasn't brought an end to the maduro regime. the maduro regime is more powerful today and more entrenched today than it was when the president began his antimaduro. same thing with north korea, same thing with china, same thing with russia, same thing with syria. the matter of fact is when president trump gets over an hour to speak, the number of

mistruths, mischaracterizations, contradictions is breath taking. no other president comes close. you know, the old expression says watch what i do, not what i say. what the president does will be revealed monday in his budget. that's what he wants to do. if past is prologue, almost everything in that budget will contradict what he said in his speech. in the past he's cut money for health care, cut money for medical research, cut money for infrastructure, cut money for education, cut money to help kids with college, in every one of those things. and, ladies and gentlemen, i have faith in the american people. they will not be fooled. they're used to it. they can tell a little show here, a nonreality show when they see one. they know it's a show. it's done for their amusement, their titillation.

but it doesn't improve america. american people are not happy. the middle class are working to stay in the middle class. those struggling to get there find it harder. their path is speerp. far more than the president's speech, the president's budget is what truly reveals his priorities. the budget will be the truth serum. and in a few days the american people will see how many of the president's words here are reality. i expect very few will be. i yield the floor. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from texas. a senator: madam president, ierd ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cornyn: madam president, i i ask unanimous consent that following my oral remarks that more extensive written remarks that i prepared appear in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. cornyn: thank you. madam president, over the last months our country has been

consumed by a single word, one that we don't use often in our ordinary parlance. that word of course is impeachment. it's filled our news channels, twitter feeds, and dinner conversations. it's led to a wide-ranging debate on everything from the constitutional doctrines, separation of powers to due process of law, something concepts which are the most fundamental building blocks of who we are as a nation. it even prompted those who typically have no interest in politics to tune into c-span or their favorite cable news channel. the impeachment of a president of the united states is simply the gravest undertaking we can pursue in this country. it is the nuclear option in our constitution. it's a choice of last resort.

when a president has committed a crime so serious that congress must act rather than leave the choice to the voters in the election. the framers of the constitution granted this awesome power to the united states congress and placed their confidence in the senate to use it only when absolutely necessary, when there is no other choice. this is a rare historic moment for the members of this chamber faced by the senate only on two previous occasions during our constitution's 232-year history. only two times previously. we should be extraordinarily vigilant to make sure that the impeachment power does not become a regular feature of our differences, and in the process cheapen the vote of the american people. soon l members of the senate will determine whether for the first time in our history a

president will be removed from office and then decide whether he will be barred from the ballot in 2020. the question all senators have to answer is did the president commit, in the words of the constitution, a high crime and misdemeanor that warrants his removal from office, or should he be acquitted of the charges made by the house? i've done my best to listen intently to both sides as they presented their cases during the trial, and i'm confident in saying that president trump should be acquitted and not removed from office. first, the constitution gives the congress the power to impeach and remove a president from office only for treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. but the two articles of impeachment passed by the house of representatives failed to meet that standard. the first charge, as we know,

is abuse of power. house democrats allege that the president withheld military aid from ukraine in exchange for investigations of joe and hunter biden. but they failed to bring forward unassailable evidence of any crime. again, the constitution talks about treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. clearly a criminal standard. and thus failed to meet their burden of proof. and certainly the house managers did not meet the high burden required to remove the president from office effectively nullifying the will of tens of millions of americans just months before the next election. what's more, the house's vague charge in the first article is equivalent to acts considered and rejected by the framers of our constitution. that brings us to the second article we're considering, obstruction of congress.

during the house inquiry, democrats were upset because some of the president's closest advisors and their most sought after witnesses did not testify. to be clear, some of the executive branch witnesses were among the 13 witnesses whose testimony we did hear during the senate trial. but for those witnesses for whom it was clear the administration would claim a privilege, almost certainly leading to a long court battle, the house declined to issue the subpoenas and certainly did not seek judicial enforcement. rather than addressing the privileged claims in court as happened in the nixon and clinton impeachments, the democrat managers moved to impeach president trump for obstruction of congress for protecting the presidency itself from a partisan abuse of power by the house. removing the president from office for asserting long-recognized and constitutionally-grounded privileges that have been invoked by both republicans and

democrat presidents would be -- would set a very dangerous precedent and would do violence to the constitution's separation of powers design. in effect, it would make the presidency itself subservient to congress. the father of our constitution james madison warned against allowing the impeachment power to create a presidential tenure at the pleasure of the senate. even more concerning, at every turn throughout this process, the house democrats violated president trump's right to due process of law. all american law is built on a constitutional foundation securing basic rights and rules of fairness for a citizen accused of wrongdoing. it's undisputed that the house excluded if the president's legal team from both the closed door testimony and almost the entirety of the house's 78-day

inquiry. they channeled personal policy and political grievances and attempted to use the most solemn responsibility of congress to bring down a political rival in a partisan process. it's no secret that democrats' crusade to remove the president began more than three years ago on the very day that he was inaugurated. on january 20, 2017, "the washington post" ran a story with the headline the campaign to impeach president trump has begun. at first speaker pelosi wisely resisted. less than a year ago she said, quote, impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there is something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, i don't think we should go down that path because it divides the country. and she was right. but when she couldn't hold back

the stampede of her caucus, she did a 180-degree about face. she encouraged senate democrats to rush through an impeachment inquiry before an arbitrary christmas deadline. and in the end the articles passed with support from only a single party. not bipartisan. the bipartisanship that the speaker claimed was necessary was actually opposed to the impeachment of the president. that is, democrats and republicans voted in opposition to the articles of impeachment. only democrats voted for the articles of impeachment in the house. once the articles finally made it to the senate after a confusing 28-day delay, speaker pelosi tried to use senator schumer, the democratic leader here tried to use speaker pelosi's playbook. he stained a number of political votes. every member of the senate knew

would fail just so he could secure some perceived political advantage against republican senators in the 2020 election. what should be a solemn constitutional undertaking became partisan guerrilla warfare to take down president trump and make senator schumer the next majority leader of the united states senate. all of this was done on the eve of an election and just days shy of the first primary in iowa. well, to say that timing was a coincidence would be laughable. this partisan impeachment process could not only remove the president from office, it would also potentially prevent his name from appearing on the ballot in november. madam president, we are only nine months away from an election. nine months away from the american people voting on the direction of our country. but our democratic colleagues

don't trust the american people so they've taken matters into their own hands. this politically motivated impeachment sets a dangerous precedent. this is a very important point. this is not just about president trump. this is about the office of the presidency and what precedent a conviction and removal would set for our constitution and for our future. if successful, this would give a green light to future congresses to weaponize impeachment to defeat a political opponent for any action, even a failure to kowtow to congress' wishes. impeachment is a poe foundly serious matter -- profoundly serious matter that must be handled as such. it cannot become the hail mary pass of a party to remove a president. effectively nullifying an election and interfering in the

next. i believe, i think we should all believe that the results of the next election should be decided by the american people, not by congress. the decision to remove a president from office requires undeniable evidence of a high crime. that's the language chosen by the framers of our constitution. but despite our colleagues' best attempts, the facts they presented simply don't add up to that standard. house managers failed to meet their heavy burden of proof that president trump beyond a reasonable doubt committed a crime let alone a high crime. therefore, madam president, i will not vote to convict the president. i hope our democratic colleagues will finally accept the results of this trial just as they have not accepted the results of the 2016 election. and i hope they won't take the

advice of congresswoman waters, maxine waters in the house, and open a second impeachment inquiry. it's time for our country to come together to heal the wounds that divide us and to get the people's work done. it's no doubt as speaker pelosi observed in march of 2019 that impeachment is a source of division in our country, and it's also a period of great sadness. if this partisan impeachment were to succeed, my greatest fair it would become a routine process for every president who serves with the house majority of the opposite party. and we would find ourselves in a recurring impeachment nightmare every time we elect a new president. our country is deeply divided and damaged by this partisan impeachment process.

it's time for us to bring it to a close and let the wounds from this unnecessary and misguided episode heal. madam president, i yield the floor and i would note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call: a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from missouri is recognized. a senator: madam president, i ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. hawley: madam president, i come here today with the business of impeachment before this chamber, and it should hardly be necessary at this late

juncture to outline again the train of abuses and disorses and out-- and distortions and lies that brought us to today's impeachment vote. the secret meetings in the capitol basement, the closed hearings without due process or basic fairness, the failure of the house to follow their own rules and authorize impeachment inquiry and then the bipartisan vote against impeachment, the attempt to manipulate or even prevent a trial here in the united states senate, holding the articles of impeachment for 33 days in brazen defiance of the constitution's mandates. the house democrats have given us the first purely partisan impeachment in our history and the first attempt to remove an elected president that does not even allege unlawful conduct, and animating it all has been the bitter resentment of a

professional political class that cannot accept the verdict of the people in 2016, that cannot accept the people's priorities and that now seeks to overturn the election and entrench themselves in power. that's how we arrived at this moment. that's how we got here. and that's what this is really about. and now, madam president, it is time to bring this fiasco to a close. it is time to end the cycle of retribution and payback and bitterness. it is time to end the abuse of our institutions. and it is time to let the verdict of the people stand. and so i will vote today to acquit the president of these charges. you know, it's been clear for a long time that impeachment is not a priority of the people. it's not even close. it is a pipe dream of politicians. and as the democrats have forced

it on this country over these many months, it has sapped our energy and diverted our attention from the real issues that press upon our country, the issues that people of this nation have tried to get this town to care about for years. i mean the crisis of surging suicides and drug addiction that is driving life expectancy down in my state and across this nation. i mean the crisis at the border where those drugs are pouring across, i mean the crisis of skyrocketing health care costs which burden families, young and old, with bills they cannot pay. i mean the crisis of affordable housing which robs parents of a safe place to raise their children and build a life. i mean the crisis of trafficking and exploitation which robs our young girls and boys of a future and our society of their innocence. i mean the crisis of the family farm and the crisis of education

costs for those who go to college and the lack of good-paying jobs for those who don't. the crisis of connectivity in our heartland where too many schoolchildren can't access the internet even to do their homework at night. i mean the crisis of unfair trade and lost jobs and broken homes, and i could go on. my point, madam president, is this, when i listen to the people of my state, i don't hear about impeachment. no, i hear about the problems of home and neighborhood, of family and community, about the loss of faith in our government and about the struggle to find hope for the future. and this town owes it to these americans, the ones who sent us here, finally to listen, finally to act, finally to do something that really matters to them. we must leave this impeachment

circus behind us and ensure that our constitution is never again abused in this way. it is time to turn the page. it is time to turn to a new politics of the people, to a politics of home, it is time to turn to the future, a future where this town finally accepts the people's judgment and the people's verdict, where this town finally delivers to the people who elected them. a future where the middle of our society gets a fair shake and a level playing field. a future where maybe, maybe this town will finally listen. when i think of all the energy and all the effort that has been expended on this impeachment crusade over almost three years now, i wonder what might have been. today is a sad day, madam president, but it does not have to remain that way.

imagine what we might achieve for the good of this nation if we turned our energy and our effort to the work of the american people. imagine what we could do to keep families in their homes, to bring new possibility to the nation's heartland, to care for our children in every part of this society. imagine what we could do to lift up the most vulnerable among us who have been exploited and trafficked and give them new hope and new life. imagine what we could do for those who have been forgotten from our rural towns to our inner cities. imagine what we could do to give them control over their own destinies. mr. president, we can find the common good. we can push the boundaries of the possible. we can rebuild this nation if we will listen to the american people. so let us begin.

thank you, madam president. i yield the floor. a senator: madam president. the presiding officer: the senator from tennessee is recognized. mr. alexander: thank you, madam president. madam president, in this impeachment proceeding i worked with senators to make sure that we had the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there was no need for more evidence to prove something that i believed had already been proven and that did not meet the united states constitution's high bar for an impeachable offense. there was no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked ukraine to investigate joe biden and his son hunter. he said this on television on october 3, 2019, and he said it during his july 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of ukraine. there was no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld united states aid at least in part to pressure

ukraine to investigate the bidens. the house managers had proved this with what they called a, quote, mountain of overwhelming evidence. one of the managers said it was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. there was no need to consider further the frivolous second article of impeachment that would remove from the president and future presidents, remove from this president for asserting his constitutional prerogative to protect confidential conversations with his close advisors. it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent and to withhold united states aid to encourage this investigation. when elected officials inappropriately interfere with such investigations, it undermines the principle of equal justice under the law. but, madam president, the constitution does not give the senate the power to remove the president from office and ban

him from this year's ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate. the question then is not whether the president did it, but whether the united states senate or the american people should decide what to do about what he did. i believe that the constitution clearly provides that the people should make that decision in the presidential election that begin on monday in iowa. the senate has spent 11 long days considering this mountain of evidence. the arguments of the house managers, the president's lawyers, their answers to senators' questions, and the house record. even if the house charges were true, they don't meet the constitution's, quote, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, unquote, standard for impeachable offense. the framers believed that there

never ever should be a partisan impeachment. that is why the constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the senate to convict. yet not one house republican voted for these articles. if this shallowed, hurried and wholly partisan impeachment were to succeed, it would rip the country apart, pouring gasoline on the fire of cultural divisions that already exist. it would create a weapon of perpetual impeachment to be used against future presidents whenever the house of representatives is of a different political party. our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve, quote, with the consent of the government, unquote, not at the pleasure of the united states congress. let the people decide. a year ago at the southeastern conference basketball tournament a friend of 40 years sitting in front of me turned to me and said, i'm very unhappy with you for voting against the

president. she was referring to my vote against the president's decision to spend money that congress hadn't appropriated to build a border wall. i believed then and now that the united states constitution gives to the congress the exclusive power to appropriate money. this separation of powers creates checks and balances in our government that preserves our individual liberty by not allowing, in that case, the executive to have too much power. i replied to my friend, look, i was not voting for or against the president. i was voting for the united states constitution. well, she wasn't convinced. now this past sunday, walking my dog rufus in nashville, i was confronted by a neighbor who said she was angry and crushed by my vote against allowing more witnesses in the impeachment trial. the senate should remove the president for extortion, she

said. i replied to her, i was not voting for or against the president. i was voting for the united states constitution which, in my view, does not give the senate the power to remove a president from his office and from this year's election ballot simply for actions that are inappropriate. the united states constitution says a president may be convicted only for treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. president trump's actions regarding ukraine are a far cry from that. plus, i said, unlike the nixon impeachment, when almost all republicans voted to initiate an impeachment inquiry, not one single republican voted to initiate this impeachment inquiry against president trump. the trump impeachment, i said to her, was a completely partisan action, and the

framers of the united states constitution, especially james madison, believed we should never ever have a partisan impeachment. that would undermine the separation of powers by allowing the house of representatives to immobilize the executive branch as well as the senate by a perpetual partisan series of impeachments. well, she was not convinced. when our country was created, there never had been anything quite like it. a democratic republic with a written constitution. perhaps its greatest innovation was the separation of powers among the presidency, the supreme court, and the congress. the late justice scalia said of this checks and balances, quo, every tin horned dictator in the world today, every president for life has a bill of rights. what has made us free is our constitution. what he meant was what makes the united states different and

protects our individual liberty is the separation of powers and the checks and balances in our constitution. the goal of our founders was not to have a king as chief executive, on the one hand, or not to have a british-style parliament on the other, which could remove our chief executive or prime minister with a majority or no confidence vote. the principal reason our constitution created a united states senate is so that one body of congress can pause and resist the excesses of the executive or popular passions that can run through the house of representatives like a freight train. the language of the constitution, of course, is subject to interpretation, but on some things its words are clear. the president cannot spend money that congress doesn't appropriate, that's clear. and the senate can't remove a

president for anything less than treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors, and two-thirds of us, the senators, must agree on that. that requires a bipartisan consensus. we senators take an october to base -- an oath to base our decisions on the provisions of our constitution which is what i have endeavored to do during this impeachment proceeding. now, madam president, i ask consent to include a few documents in the record following my remarks. they include an editorial february 3 from "the wall street journal," an editorial from the national review also dated february 3. and an opinion editorial by robert doore, president of the american enterprise institute on february 1, article from the knoxville new sentinel yesterday

and a transcript from my appearance on meet the press on sunday, february 2, 2020. these documents illuminate and further explain my statement today. thank you, madam president. the presiding officer: without objection.

the presiding officer: the senator from nebraska is recognized. a senator: we are not in a quorum call? the presiding officer: that is correct. a senator: i ask unanimous consent to introduce into the senate record and into the impeachment trial record an op-ed that i wrote in the omaha world herald this morning. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sasse: thank you.

ms. harris: mr. president, when the framers wrote the constitution, they didn't think someone like me would serve as a united states senator.

but they did envision someone like donald trump being president of the united states. someone who thinks he is above the law and that rules don't apply to him. so they made sure our democracy had the tool of impeachment to stop that kind of abuse of power. the house managers have clearly laid out a compelling case and evidence of donald trump's misconduct. they have shown that the president of the united states of america withheld military aid and a coveted white house meeting for his political gain. he wanted a foreign country to announce -- not actually conduct, announce an investigation into his political rival, and then he refused to comply with congressional investigations into his

misconduct. and unfortunately, a majority of the united states senators, even those who concede that what donald trump did was wrong, are nonetheless going to refuse to hold him accountable. the senate trial of donald trump has been a miscarriage of justice. donald trump is going to get away with abusing his position of power for personal gain, abusing his position of power to stop congress from looking into his misconduct and falsely claiming he has been exonerated. he's going to escape accountability because a majority of senators have decided to let him. they voted repeatedly to block key evidence like witnesses and documents that could have shed light on the full truth, and we

must recognize that still in america, there are two systems of justice, one for the powerful and another for everyone else. so let's speak the truth about what our two systems of justice actually mean in the real world. it means that in our country, too many people walk into courthouses and face systemic bias. too often, they lack adequate legal representation, whether they are overworked, underpaid, or both. it means that a young man named emmett till was falsely accused and then murdered, but his murderer didn't have to spend a day in jail. it means that four young black men had their lives taken and turned upside down after being falsely accused of a crime in groveland, florida. it means that right now, too many people in america are

sitting in jail without having yet been convicted of a crime but simply because they cannot afford bail. and it means that future presidents of the united states will remember that the united states senate failed to hold donald trump accountable, and they will be emboldened to abuse their power, knowing there will be no consequence. donald trump knows all this better than anybody. he may not acknowledge that we have two systems of justice, but he knows the institutions in this country, be it courts or the senate, are set up to protect powerful people like him. he told us as much. when regarding the sexual assault of women, he said, quote, when you're a star, they let you do it. you can do anything. he said that article 2 of the

united states constitution gives him as president the right to do whatever he wants. trump has shown us through his words and action that he thinks he is above the law, and when the american people see the president acting as though he is above the law, it understandedly leaves them feeling untrustful of our system of justice, distrustful of our democracy. when the united states senate refuses to hold him accountable, it reinforces that loss of trust in our system. now, i'm under no illusion that this body is poised to hold this president accountable, but despite the conduct of the united states senate in this impeachment trial, the american people must continue to strive toward the more perfect union

that our constitution promises, and it's going to take all of us in every state, every town, everywhere to continue fighting for the best of who we are as a country. we each have an important role to play in fighting for those words inscribed on that united states supreme court, equal justice under law. frederick douglass, who like many i consider to be one of the founders of our nation, wrote that, quote, the whole history of the progress of human liberty , that all concessions get made to her august claims, have been borne of earnest struggle. the impeachment of donald trump has been one of those earnest struggles for liberty. in this fight, like so many

before it, it has been a fight against tyranny. this struggle has not been an easy one, and it has left too many people across our nation feeling cynical. for too many people, this trial confirmed something they have always known, that the real tower in this country lies not with them but with just a few people who advance their own interests at the expense of others' needs. for many, the injustice in this trial is yet another example of the way that our system of justice has worked or, more accurately, failed to work. but here's the thing. frederick douglass also told us that, quote, if there is no struggle, there is no progress. he went on to say power concedes nothing without a demand.

and he said it never did, and it never will. in order to wrestle power away from the few people at the very top who abuse their power, the american people are going to have to fight for the voice of the people and the power of the people. we must go into the darkness to shine a light, and we cannot be deterred, and we cannot be overwhelmed, and we cannot ever give up on our country. we cannot ever give up on the ideal that are the foundations for our system of democracy. we can never give up on the meaning of truth and justice, and it is part of our history, our past, clearly our president, and our future that in order to make these values real, in order to make the promise of our

country real, we can never take it for granted. there will be moments in time and history where we experience incredible disappointment, but the greatest disappointment of all will be if we give up. we cannot ever give up fighting for who we know we are, and we must always see who we can be unburdened by where we have been. that is the strength of our nation. so after the senate votes today, donald trump will want the american people to feel cynical. he will want us not to care. he will want us to think that he is all-powerful, and we have no power, but we're not going to let him get away with that. we're not going to give him what

he wants, because the true power and potential of the united states of america resides not with the president but with the people, all the people. so in our long struggle for justice, i will do my part by voting to convict this lawless president and remove him from office, and i urge my colleagues to join me on the right side of history. i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from new hampshire. ms. hassan: mr. president, considering whether to convict a president of the united states on articles of impeachment is a solemn and consequential duty, and i do not take it lightly. even before we had a country, our founders put forward the notion of country first, pledging in the declaration of independence their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor, a pledge they made to an idea, imagining and hoping for a country where no one was above the law, where no one had absolute power. my dad, a world war ii veteran, and my mom raised me to understand that this is what made our country the unique and indispensable democracy that it is. my obligation throughout this process has been to listen carefully to the case that the house managers put forward and the defenses asserted by the president's lawyers, and then to carefully consider the

constitutional basis for impeachment, the intent of our founders, and the facts. that's what i have done over the past few days. the senate verdict stems from presentations on both sides and answers to the almost 200 questions that senators posed to the house managers and the president's advocates. the facts clearly show that president trump abused the public's sacred trust by using taxpayer dollars to extort a foreign government into providing misinformation about a feared political opponent. let me repeat that. the president of the united states used taxpayer money that had been authorized, obligated and cleared for delivery as critical military aid to ukraine to try to force that country to interfere in our elections. he violated the law and the public trust, and he put our national security and the lives of ukranian soldiers on the front lines of russian aggression at risk.

although the country was alerted to the possibility that the president had crossed a critical line because of revelations about his now infamous july 25 phone call, it is not the phone call alone that led to the president's impeachment. instead the phone call was a pivotal point in a scheme that had started earlier spearheaded by president trump's personal lawyer, rudy giuliani. mr. giuliani has acknowledged that he was doing the president's personal and political bidding when he engaged with the ukranian government. and as the newly elected anticorruption ukranian government came into power, in need of recognition and support from the united states, president trump forced officials from ukraine and the united states to negotiate through mr. giuliani, conflating his personal and political interests with the national security and diplomatic interests of our country.

and then as president zelensky resisted the request that he concoct and announce a fake investigation into the bidens, the president and mr. giuliani increased the pressure. suddenly and without explanation or a legally required notification to congress, the president ordered that previously approved and critically needed military aid to ukraine be held up. mr. trump at first through mr. giuliani and then directly solicited interference with an american election from a foreign government, and he ordered others in his administration to work with mr. giuliani to ensure this scheme's success. mr. president, while there is still more evidence that the senate should have subpoenaed both witnesses and documents that would have given us a more complete understanding of what happened, we know as much as we do because of the courage and strength of american patriots

who put country before self, patriots like the intelligence community whistle-blower who was followed by army lieutenant colonel alexander vindman and former u.s. ambassadors to ukraine, marie yovanovitch and william taylor as well as current members of the administration. these americans who came forward were doing exactly what we always ask of citizens. if you see something wrong, you need to speak up. see something, say something. it is a fundamental part of citizenship to alert each other to danger, to act for the greater good, to care about each other and our country without regard to political party. when americans step forward, sometimes at real risk to themselves, they rightly expect that their government will take the information they provide and act to make them safer, to protect their fundamental rights. that's the understanding between the american people and their

representative government. and while the brave women and men who appeared before the house did their jobs, the senate under this majority has unfortunately not. rather than gathering full relevant testimony under oath and with the benefit of cross-examination, the senate majority has apparently decided that despite what it has heard, it is not interested in learning more, not interested in learning more about how a president, his personal agent and members of his administration corrupted our foreign policy and put our nation's security at risk. not interested in learning more about how they planned to use the power of his office to tilt the scales of the next election to ensure that he stays in power. nod interested in -- not interested in learning more about how they worked to cover it up. increasingly over the last few days the president's defense team and more and more of my colleagues here in the senate

have acknowledged the facts of the president's scheme. their argument has shifted from he didn't do it toed a right to, to won't do it again, or even it doesn't really matter. i disagree so strongly. the idea that in our country, established by the very rejection of a monarchy, the president has absolute power is absurd, as is the idea that this president, whose conduct is ultimately the cause of this entire process, will suddenly stop. president trump continues to invite foreign powers to interfere with our elections, maintaining to this day that it was, quote, a perfect call. mr. president, our founders knew that all people, all leaders are fallible human beings, and they knew that our system of checks and balances could survive some level of

human frailty in even as important as an office as the presidency. the one thing they feared it could not survive was a president who would put self-interest before the interest of the american people or who didn't understand the difference between the two. as citizen and chief and one wielding enormous power, presidents must put country first. so our founders knew that we needed a mechanism to hold presidents accountable for behavior that violated that basic understanding and that would threaten our democracy, and they provided a mechanism for removal outside of the election process because of the immense damage a president could do in the time between elections, damage in the case of this president's continuing behavior to our national security and election integrity. our founders believed that they were establishing a country that would be unique in the history

of humankind, a country that would be indispensable built on the rule of law, not the whims of a ruler. generation after generation of americans have fought for that vision because of what it has meant to our individual and collective success. and to the progress of humankind worldwide. that's the america that i have sworn an oath to protect. i will vote in favor of both articles of impeachment because the president's conduct requires it, congress' responsibility as a coequal branch of government requires it, and the very foundation and security of our american idea requires it. thank you, mr. president, and i yield the floor.

mr. jones: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. jones: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, on the day i was sworn in as a united states senator, i took an oath to protect and defend the constitution. just last month at the beginning of the impeachment trial, i took a second oath to do fair and impartial justice according to the same constitution i swore to protect. as i took the oath and throughout the impeachment trial, i couldn't help but think of my father. as many of you know, i lost my dad over the holiday recess. while so many were arguing over whether or not the speaker of the house should send articles of impeachment to the senate, i was struggling with watching him

slip away while only occasionally trying to weigh in with my voice to be heard about the need for witnesses in the upcoming impeachment trial. my dad was a great man, a loving husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who did his best to instill in me the values of right and wrong as i grew up in fairfield, alabama. he was also a fierce patriot who loved this country. although fortunately he was never called on to do so, i firmly believe he would have placed his country even above his family because he knew and understood fully what america and the freedoms and liberties that come with her mean to everyone in this great country and significantly to people around the world. i know he would have put his country before any allegiance to any political party or even to

any president. he was on the younger side of that greatest generation who joined the navy at age 17 to serve our great military. that service and love of country shaped him into the man of principle that he was, instilling in me those same principles. and think of him, his patriotism, his principles and how he raised me, i am reminded of robert kennedy's words that were mentioned in this trial. few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. moral courage is a rare commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence yet it is the one essential vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. candidly to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, i fear that moral courage, country

before party is a rare commodity these days. we can write about it and talk about it in speeches and in the media, but it is harder to put into action when political careers may be on the line. nowhere is the dilemma more difficult than in an impeachment of a president of the united states. very early on in this process i implored my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, in both houses of congress to stay out of their political and partisan corners. many did, but so many did not. even the media continually viewed this entire process through partisan political eyes and how it may or may not affect an election. that is unfortunate. the country deserves better, and we must find a way to move beyond such partisan divides. the solemn oath that i have taken has been my guide during what has been a difficult time

for the country, my state, and for me personally. i did not run for the senate hoping to participate in the impeachment trial of a duly elected president, but i cannot and will not shrink from my duty to defend the constitution and to do impartial justice. in keeping with my oath as senator and my oath to do impartial justice, i resolve that throughout this process i would keep an open mind to consider the evidence without regard to political affiliation and to hear all of the evidence before making a final decision on whether, on either charge against the president. i believe that my votes later today will reflect that commitment. with the eyes of history upon us, i'm acutely aware of the precedents that this impeachment trial will set for future presidencies and congresses. unfortunately, i do not believe that those precedents are good ones. i am particularly concerned that

we have now set a precedent that the senate does not have to go forward with witnesses or review documents even when those witnesses have firsthand information and the documents would allow us to test not just the credibility of witnesses, but also test the words of counsel of both parties. it is my firm belief that the american people deserve more. in short, witnesses and documents would provide the senate and the american people with a more complete picture of the truth, and i believe the american people deserve nothing less. that's not to say, however, that there is not sufficient evidence in which to render a judgment. there is. as a trial lawyer, i once explained this process to a jury is like putting together the pieces of the puzzle. when you open the box and spread all the pieces on the table, it's just an incoherent jumble.

but one by one you hold those pieces up and you hold them next to each other and see what fits and what doesn't. and even if, as was often the case in my house growing up, you're missing a few pieces, even important ones, you more often than not see the picture. as i've said many times, i believe the american people deserve to see a completed puzzle, a picture with all of the pieces, pieces in the form of documents and witnesses with relevant firsthand information which would have provided valuable context, corroboration or contradiction to that which we have heard. but even with missing pieces, our common sense and life's experiences allow us to see the picture as it comes into full view. throughout the trial one piece of evidence continued to stand out for me. it was the president's statement that under the constitution, we have article 2, and i can do

anything i want. that seems to capture this president's belief about the presidency, that he has unbridled power, unchecked by congress or the judiciary or anyone else. that view dangerous as it is explains the president's actions towards ukraine and congress. some of what we've seen and heard is unfortunately a picture of a president who abused the great power of his office for personal gain, a picture of a president who has placed his personal interest well above the interest of the nation, and in so doing threatened our national security. the security of our european allies and the security of ukraine. the evidence clearly proves that the president used the weight of his office and the weight of the united states government to seek to coerce a foreign government to interfere in our election for his personal political benefit.

his actions were more than simply inappropriate. they were an abuse of power. when i was a lawyer for the alabama judicial inquiry commission, there was a saying that the chairman of the inquiry commission and one of alabama's great judges used to say, randal cole, he used to say about judges who strayed from the cannons of ethics, that the judge left his post. sadly, president trump left his post with regard to the withholding of military aid to ukraine and a white house visit for the new ukranian president. and in so doing, he took the great powers of the office of the president of the united states with him. impeachment is the only check on such presidential wrongdoing. the second article of impeachment, obstruction of congress, gave me more pause. i've struggled to understand the house's strategy and their failure to fully pursue

documents and witnesses and wished that they had done more. however, after careful consideration of the evidence developed in the hearings, the public disclosures, the legal precedence in the trial, i believe the president deliberately and unconstitutionally obstructed congress by refusing to cooperate with the investigation into any way. -- investigation in any way. while i'm sensitive to protecting the privileges and immunities afforded to the president and his advisors, i believe it's critical to our constitutional structure that we also protect the authorities of the congress of the united states. here it was clear from the outset that the president had no intention whatsoever of accommodating congress when he brought both -- fought both witnesses and documents being produced. and he engaged in conduct to smear the reputation, of the civil servants who did come forward and provide testimony. the president's actions demonstrate a belief that he is

above the law, that congress has no power whatsoever in questioning or examining his actions and that all who do so do so at their peril. that belief unprecedented in history of this country simply must not be permitted to stand. to do otherwise risks guaranteeing that no future whistle-blower or witness will ever come forward and no future president, republican or democrat, will be subject to congressional oversight as mandated by the constitution, even when the president has so clearly abused his office and violated the public trust. accordingly, i will vote to convict the president on both articles of impeachment. in doing so i am mindful that in a democracy, there is nothing more sacred than the right to vote and respecting the will of the people. but i'm also mindful that when our founders wrote the constitution, they envisioned a time or at least a possibility

that our democracy would be more damaged if we failed to impeach and remove a president such as the moment in history that we face today. the gravity of this moment, the seriousness of the charges, and the implication for future presidents and congresses all contributed to the difficulty with which i've arrived at my decision. i am mindful, mr. president, that i am standing at a desk that once was used by john f. kennedy who famously wrote "profiles in courage" and there will be so many who will simply look at what i'm doing today and say it is a profile in courage. it is not. it is simply a matter of right and wrong. we're doing -- where doing right is not a courageous act. it is simply following your oath. mr. president, this has been a divisive time for our country, but i think it has nonetheless been an important constitutional process for us to follow. as this chapter of history draws to a close, one thing is clear

to me. as i've said before, our country deserves better than this. they deserve better from the president. they deserve better from the congress. we must find a way to come together to set aside partisan differences and to focus on what we have in common as americans. while so much is going on in our favor these days, we still face great challenges, both dom mostically and enter -- domestically and internationally but it remains my official belief that united we can conquer them and remain the greatest hope for the people around the world. mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that my full statement be printed in the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. jones: thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, today the united states senate is called upon to uphold our oath of office and our duty to the constitution because president trump failed to do that himself.

after listening closely to the impeachment managers and the president's defense team, weighing the evidence that was presented to us, and being denied the opportunity to see relevant documents and hear from firsthand witnesses, i will vote to find president trump guilty on both articles of impeachment. i take no pleasure in voting to impeach a president and remove him from office. i agree with those who say impeachment should be rare and american voters should decide our elections. that is why it's so galling president trump blatantly solicited foreign interference in our democratic process and he did it as he geared up for reelection. the evidence shows president trump deliberately and illicitly sought foreign help. he attempted to undermine our democracy using u.s. taxpayer money in the form of u.s. military aid to the ukraine as

leverage for his own personal benefit. the president's aides who heard president trump's call seeking a favor from the ukranian president immediately sensed it was wrong. so when they alerted the white house lawyers, the record of the call was immediately placed on a highly classified computer system. and despite the president's claiming that the version of the call that was publicly released is an exact word-for-word transcript of the conversation, we know from testimony that there are key omissions in the document we all read. compounding the president's misconduct, he then engaged in an extended cover-up that appears to be ongoing to this day. there is a lot to unravel here and i will provide a more detailed legal explanation in the near future. but for now, let me briefly explain my decision and outline my thoughts on the senate's

impeachment proceedings. and the disturbin disturbing pri fear will be set when the majority chooses to side with the president over the constitution's checks and balances. the house of representatives voted to impeach the president for abuse of power and obstruction of congress. based on the uncontested evidence, i concur. it is clear that president trump and others such as mr. giuliani who is serving as the president's lawyer attempted to coerce the newly-elected president of the ukraine to announce two sham investigations, including one that sought to directly damage president trump's rival in the upcoming election. the president's actions served his personal and political needs, not those of our country. his efforts to withdraw military aid and withhold military aid to ukraine for his own personal benefit undermined our national security. the second article of

impeachment charges the president with obstruction of congress for blocking testimony and refusing to provide documents in response to house subpoenas in the impeachment inquiry. again, the house managers produced overwhelming evidence of the president's obstruction and his efforts to cover-up his malfeasance. the president's counsel offered a number of unpersuasive arguments against this article which failed to overcome the following: first, that the legislative branch has sole power over impeachment under the constitution. that couldn't be more clear. second, past presidents of prior administrations and court rules and third, the blatant october 8 letter expressing a complete rejection of the house's impeachment proceedings. the constitution grants the executive branch significant power, but as every student in america learns, our system is one of checks and balances so

that no branch is unentirely unfettered from oversight and the law. president trump could have and would have us believe this system of checks and balances is wrong. in president trump's own words, he expressed the misguided imperial belief in the supremacy of his unchecked power stating, and i quote, i have an article 2 where i have the right to do whatever i want as president. couple this statement with his january 2016 boast that, quote, i could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot somebody and i wouldn't lose votes. that paints a chilling picture of someone who clearly believes incorrectly that he is above the law. the president's attorneys have used this line of faulty reasoning and one notably

preposterous effort the president could avoid impeachment for inappropriate action motivated entirely by his own political and personal interest. the president's defense also failed to sufficiently demonstrate that the president's blanket defiance of subpoenas and document requests overcome the precedence established in prior impeachment proceedings. and the record of congressional oversight of the executive branch. in the clinton impeachment, there was an enormous amount of documentary evidence as well as sworn depositions and testimony by the president and his closest advisors. in the case of the united states v. nixon, house judiciary committee myers and others, the house managers point out that the courts upheld congress' power to investigate is as broad as its power to legislate and lies at the heart of congress' constitutional role. while president trump's impeachment lawyers claim the house should take the president

to court over these previously-settled issues, president trump's lawyers at the justice department are simultaneously arguing in the courts that the judicial branch cannot even rule on such matters. as president trump staked out new expansive and aggressive positions about executive privilege, immunity and the limits of congress' oversight authority, republican leaders went along with it. i've heard a variety of explanations for why my republican colleagues voted against witnesses. but no one has offered the simplest explanation. my republican colleagues did not want to hear new evidence because they have a hunch it would be really, really bad for this president. it would further expose the depth of his wrongdoing and it would make it harder for them to vote to acquit. my colleagues on the other side of the aisle did not ask to be put in this position. president trump's misconduct forced it upon them. but in the partisan rush to

spare president trump from having his staff and former staff publicly testify against him under oath, a bar has been lowered. a constitutional guardrail has been removed. the senate has been voluntarily weakened and our oversight power severely diminished. this short-term maneuver to shield president trump from the truth is a severe blow against good government that will do lasting damage to this institution and our democracy. i hope one day the damage can be repaired. the arc of history is indeed long and it does bend towards justice but not today. today the united states senate and the american people have been denied access to relevant available evidence and firsthand witnesses. we've been prohibited from considering new material information that became available after the house's impeachment vote. the constitution is our national

compass. but at this critical moment, clouded by the fog of president trump's misconduct, the senate majority has lost its way. no longer guided by the constitution. in order to regain our moral bearings, stay true to our core values, and navigate a better path forward, we must hold president trump accountable. the president was wrong to invite foreign interference in our democracy. he was wrong to try and stonewall the investigation. and he is wrong if he tries -- and he thinks he's above the law. and with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from illinois. ms. duckworth: i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: we're not in a quorum call. the senator is recognized. ms. duckworth: thank you, mr. president. from the first words of the constitution, the weight that lies on every american's shoulders has been clear. we the people are the ones that dreamed up this wild experiment we call america, and we the people are the ones charged with ensuring its survival. that's the tension, the push and the pull behind our democracy, because while there is no greater privilege than living in a country whose constitution guarantees our rights, there's no greater burden than knowing that our actions could sap that very same constitution of its power. that our inaction risks allowing it to wither like any other piece of parchment from some

bygone era. for the past few weeks, it's been my sworn duty as a united states senator to sit as an impartial juror in the impeachment trial of donald j. trump. while i wish the president hadn't put our nation in this position, after listening closely with an open mind to both sides, it is now my duty as an american to vote on whether to remove him from office. other than sending our troops into harm's way, i cannot think of a more serious, more somber vote to take in this chamber. but as sobering as it is, the right path forward is clear. throughout this trial, we have seen unprecedented obstruction from the trump administration, obstruction so flagrant it makes nixon in the thick of watergate look like the model of transparency. yet the facts uncovered proved the truth of the matter. trump abused his power when he secretly withheld security aid at a white house meeting to try to force ukraine to announce

investigations into a political rival to help him swing november's election. putting his political self-interest ahead of our national security. he smeared the name of an american ambassador, even seemingly risking her safety because she was simply too principled to further his corruption. she was too clean to help him strong-arm ukraine to do that favor he demanded. when the reports first emerged about what he had done, he denied it. then his explanation changed to, well, maybe i did do it, but it was only because i was trying to root out corruption. except that if that were true, there would be some documentary record to prove that, and we've seen absolutely none, even after i asked for it during the questioning period. and now his defense team has gone so far as to claim that, well, it doesn't matter if he did do it because he's the president and the president can do anything he wants if it will help him get reelected. breathtaking. to put it another way, when he

got caught, he lied. then when that lie was found out, he lied again, then again, then again. and along the way, his own defense counsel could not papier-mache together even the most basic argument to actually exonerate him. the best case they could muster boiled down to when the president does it, it's not illegal. nixon already tried that defense. it did not work then, and it does not work now. because here's the thing. in america, we believe not in rulers but in the rule of law. and although we have seen over the past few months the truth has never changed, it's what national security council officials and decades-long diplomats testified to under oath. it took foreign policy experts and trump administration staffers and, yes, an american warrior with a purple heart who have raised their right hands and told us time after time

since the house hearings began. even some of our republican colleagues have admitted that trump crossed the line. some senators as recently as this weekend but many more said months ago that if trump did do what he's accused of, then it would indeed be wrong. well, now it's obvious that those allegations were true. and it's pretty clear trump's defense team knows that also, because if they actually believe trump did nothing wrong, then his call was perfect, then why would they fight so hard to block the witnesses and the documents that could exonerate him from coming to light? the only reason they would have done so is if they knew that he was guilty, and today the only reason for anyone to vote to acquit trump is if you're okay with him trying to cover it up. now, i know that some folks have been saying that we should acquit him, that we should ignore our constitutional duty and leave him in office because we are in an election year, and that the voters should decide his fate.

that's an argument that rings hollow because this trial was about trump trying to cheat in the next election and rob the voters of their ability to decide, so any action other than voting to remove him would give him the license and the power to keep tampering with that race, to keep trying to turn that election into as much of a sham as an impeachment trial without witnesses. you know, i spent 23 years in the military, and one of the most critical lessons anyone who serves learns is the damage that can be done when troops don't oppose illegal orders. when fealty becomes blind and ignorance becomes intentional. and just as it's the duty of military officers to oppose unlawful orders, it is the responsibility of public servants to hold those -- those in power accountable. former national security -- former n.s.c. official fiona hill understood that. testifying before congress because she knew that politics

must never eclipse national security. ambassador bill taylor understood that as well. the veteran who served in every administration since reagan's answered the question at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, saying under oath that, yes, there was a clear understanding of a quid pro quo. exactly the sort of abuse of power no president should be allowed to get away with. and lieutenant colonel alexander vindman, the purple heart recipient who dedicated decades of his life to our armed forces, he understood the lessons of the past, too, saying that here in america, right matters. my colleagues in this chamber who have attacked lieutenant colonel vindman, who have provided a platform for others to tear him down, just doing what he believes is right, should be ashamed of themselves. we should all be aware of the example we set and always seek to elevate the national discourse. we should all be thoughtful about our own conduct both in

terms of respecting the rule of law and the sacrifices our troops make to keep us safe. because at the end of the day, our constitution is really just a set of rules on some pieces of paper. it is only as strong as our will to uphold its ideals and hold up the scales of justice. so today i am asking each of us to muster up just an ounce of the courage shown by fiona hill, ambassador taylor, and lieutenant colonel vindman. when our names are called from the dais in a few hours, each of us will either pass or fail the most elementary, yet most important test any elected official will ever take -- whether to put country over party or party over country. it may be a politically difficult vote for some of us, but it should not be a morally difficult vote for any of us, because while i know that voting to acquit would make the lives of some of my colleagues simpler come election day, i also know

that america would have never been born if the heroes of centuries past made decisions based on political expediency. it would have been easier to keep bowing down to king george the third than to push 342 chests of tea into the boston harbor. it would have been easier to keep paying taxes to the crown than to wage a revolution. but those patriots knew the importance of rejecting what's easy if it's in conflict with what is right. they knew that the courage of just a few could change history. so when it's time to vote this afternoon, we cannot think of political convenience. if we say abuse of power doesn't warrant removal from office today, we would be paving the way for future presidents to do even worse tomorrow, to keep breaking the law, to keep endangering our country one perfect call, one favor, one high crime and misdemeanor at a time. time and again these past few

months, we have heard one story about our founders perhaps more than any other. the time that benjamin franklin walked out of independence hall after the constitutional convention and someone asked what have we got, a republic or a monarchy, we all know what he said. a republic, if you can keep it. keeping it may very welcome down to the 100 of us in this very chamber. we are the ones the constitution vests with the power to hold the president accountable, and so through our actions we are the ones that vest the constitution with its power. so at this moment, let's not just think of today, but of tomorrow, too, and in this moment, let's remember that here, right matters, truth matters. the truth is that donald trump is guilty of these articles of impeachment. i will vote to do the right thing, and i hope my colleagues will as well, for the sake of

tomorrow and the tomorrow after that, we must. i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. blunt: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from missouri. mr. blunt: i move to suspend the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. blunt: mr. president, later today i'll vote to acquit the president on the chance of the two articles of impeachment -- on the charges of the two articles of impeachment. a not guilty verdict, as every senator on this floor has known for some time, was always what would happen in a house-driven partisan impeachment process. less than a year ago, the speaker of the house said that we should not go through this process unless something was compelling, unless something was

overwhelming, unless something was bipartisan. i think the speaker was exactly right then, and i hope all future speakers look at that guidance as we think about this process of impeachment. in the first 180 years of the constitution, individual members talked about impeachment of presidents, maybe of almost every president, but the congress only seriously touched this topic one time -- one time in 180 years, mr. president. in the last 46 years, presidential impeachment has been before the country three times, and each case has been less compelling than the one before it. we don't want partisan impeachment to become an exercise that happens when one party, not the party of the president, happens to have a majority of the votes in the house of representatives.

impeachment is fundamentally a political process. the members of the senate meet no standards for a regular jury. the jury can override the judge. two-thirds of the senate is necessary to remove the president. we really have no better term in the constitution i suppose to use than trial, but in any classic sense, this isn't a trial. in any classic sense, a partisan impeachment isn't any kind of a real indictment. and maybe first and foremost, mr. president, the house has to do its job. part of that job would be to create a case that would produce a bipartisan vote on the articles in the house. and if you haven't met that standard, going back to the speaker's standard, you should work on the case some more and then wonder if you can't meet the standard, what's wrong with the process you're going through. part of that job is to do

everything necessary to have articles of impeachment that are compelling and complete. the house has time available to it to consider impeachment as they go about their essential work. they can continue to do the work of the congress. they have weeks, months, if they choose to have, maybe even years, to put a case together. they can call witnesses. they can go to court to seek testimony. they can determine if this is an impeachment question or just an oversight question. the house, mr. president, can do lots of things. but once the senate gets the articles of presidential impeachment, they become for the senate an absolute priority. both our rules and reality mean we can't do anything else realistically until we're done dealing with the case the house sent over. that was fundamentally what was so wrong with the house sending

over a case that they said needed more work. if it needed more work, it should have had more work. now, mr. president, you can be for strong review of the executive, you can be for strong congressional oversight and still support the idea of executive privilege. the president has the right to unfettered advice and to know all the options. in fact, i think when you pierce that right, you begin to have advisors who may not want to give all the options to the president because it might appear they were for all the options. but the president's advisors need to see that the president understands all the options and implications of the decision. the president, by the way -- another topic that came up here several times -- the president determines executive policy. the staff, the assistants, whoever else works in the executive branch doesn't determine executive policy.

the president determines executive policy. the staff can put all the notes in front of the president they want to, but it's the president's decision what the policy of the administration would be. and sharing that decision with the congress, sharing how he got to that point -- or later, she got to that point -- is a negotiation balance. the congress says, no. the president says no. i need to have some ability to get advice that isn't all available to the congress. so this is balanced out. and if that can't happen, if that balance can't be achieved, the judiciary decides what the decision should be. the judiciary decides you must talk to the congress about this. that's the kind of idea that occurred. the idea repeatedly advanced by the house managers that the

senate, by majority vote, can decide these questions is both outrageous, mr. president, and dangerous. the idea that the government would balance itself is frankly the miracle of the constitution. nobody had ever proposed, until philadelphia in 1787, one, that the basis for government was the people themselves, but, two, you could have a government that was so finely balanced that it would operate and maintain itself over time. the house managers would really upend that balance by being unwilling to take time, the house had to pursue the constitutional solution, they've decided that we don't have to worry about the constitution to have that solution. to charge that the president's assertion of article 2 rights that go back to washington is one of the actual articles of impeachment is -- that is dangerous.

the legislative branch cannot also be the judicial branch. the legislative branch can't also decide, here's the balance -- the cap-and-dividend and legislative are in a -- the executive and legislative are in a fight about what should be exposed and what shouldn't. you can't have the three balances of power in our government if one of the branches can decide what the legislative branch should decide. in their haste to put this case together, the house sent the senate the two weakest articles of impeachment possible. presidents since washington have been accused by some members of congress of abuse of power. presidents since washington have been accused by some members of congress of failure to cooperate with the congress. the house managers argued against their own case. they repeatedly contended that they'd made their case complete, they'd made their case totally, they'd made their case

incontrovertibly. but they wanted us to call witnesses that they'd chosen not to call. they said they'd already spent -- been in court nine months to get the president's former white house counsel to testify and weren't done yet. but somehow they thought the senate could get that person and others in a matter of days. these arguments have been and should have been rejected by the senate. today the articles of impeachment should be and will be rejected by the senate. based on the speaker's march comments, these articles should have never been sent to the senate. they were not compelling, they were not overwhelming, they were not bipartisan, and -- most importantly, mr. president -- they were not necessary. one of the lessons we send today is to this house and to future houses of representatives, do your job. take it seriously. don't make it political. i would yield back and note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the

clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. lee: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from utah. mr. lee: i ask unanimous consent to suspend the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. lee: mr. president, i've long maintained that most, if not all, of the most serious vexing problems within our federal government can be traced to a deviation from the twin core structural protections of the constitution. there are two of these protections -- one that operates along a vertical axis, the other, a horizontal. the vertical protection we call

federalism, which states a very simple fact that in the american system of government, most power is to be reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people, or it's exercised at the state or local level. it is only those powers innumerated in the constitution that are made federal, those things that the founding fathers appropriately deemed national or that we have otherwise rendered national through a subsequent constitutional amendment. as was the case when james madison wrote federalist number 45, the powers reserved to the states are numerous and indefinite. while those that are given to the congress to be exercised federally are few and defined. few and defined powers with the federal government. numerous and indefinite reserved to the states. the horizontal protection operates within the federal government itself, and it acknowledges that we've got three coequal independent

branches within the federal government. one that makes the laws, one that executes the laws, and one that interprets the laws -- where people can't come to an agreement and have an active, live dispute as to the meaning of a particular law in a particular case or controversy. sadly, we have drifted steadily, aggressively from both of these principles over the last 80 years. for roughly the first 150 years of the founding of our republic and of the operation of our constitutional structure, we adhered pretty closely to them, but over the last 80 years or so, we have drifted steadily. and this has been a bipartisan problem. it's one that was created under the leadership of republicans and democrats alike. in fact, of senates, of house of representatives and white houses of every conceivable combination. we have essentially taken power away from the american people in two steps. first, by moving power from the state and local level and taking

it to washington, in violation of the vertical protection we call federalism. and then a second time, moving it away from the people's elected lawmakers in washington to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats placed within the executive branch of government. but who are neither elected by the people nor accountable to anyone who is electable. and thus they constitute essentially a fourth branch of government within our system, one that is not sanctioned or contemplated by the constitution and doesn't really fit all that well within its framework. this has made the federal government bigger and more powerful. it has occurred in a way that has made people less powerful. it's made government in general, in particular this government, the federal government, less responsive to the needs of the people. it has been fundamentally contrary to the way our system of government operates.

what one might ask does any of this have to do with impeachment? well, in my opinion, everything, or at least a lot. you see, this distance that we have created in these two steps, by moving power from the people to washington, within washington, handing it over from elected lawmakers to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats has created an understandable amount of anxiety among the american people. not all of them necessarily recognize it in the same way that i do or describe it with the same words, but they know something's not right. they know that when their federal government requires them to work many months out of every year just to pay their federal taxes, only to be told later it's not nearly enough and hasn't been enough for a long time since we have accumulated $22 trillion, $23 trillion in debt, and when they come to understand that the federal government also imposes some $2 trillion in regulatory compliance costs on the american people, that this harms the poor

and middle class. it makes everything we buy more expensive. it results in diminished wages, unemployment, and underemployment. on some level, the american people feel this. they experience this. they understand it. it creates anxiety. it was that very anxiety that caused people to want to elect a different kind of leader in 2016, and they did. it was this set of circumstances that caused them to elect donald j. trump as the 45th president of the united states, and i'm glad that they did, because he promised to change the way we do things here, and he has done that. but as someone who has focused intently on the need to reconnect the american people with their system of government, donald trump presents something of a serious threat to those who have occupied these positions of power.

these individuals, while hardworking, well intentioned, well educated, and highly specialized, occupy these positions of power within what we loosely refer to as the executive branch, but it is, in reality, an unelected, unaccountable fourth branch of government. he has bucked them on many, many levels and has infuriated them as he's done so, even as he is implementing the american people's wishes, to close that gap between the people and the government that is supposed to serve them. he has bucked them on so many levels, declining to defer to the opinions of self-proclaimed government experts who claim that they know better than any of us on a number of levels. he pushed back on them, for example, when it comes to the foreign intelligence surveillance act or fisa as it's

sometimes described. when he insisted that fisa had been abused in efforts to undermine his candidacy and to infringe the rights and privacy of the american people. so when he took that position, washington bureaucrats predictably mocked him, but he turned out to be right. he called out the folly of engaging in endless nation-building exercises as part of a two-decade-long war effort that has caught this country dearly in terms of american blood and treasure. washington bureaucrats mocked him again, but he turned out to be right. he raised questions with how u.s. foreign aid is used and sometimes misused throughout the world, sometimes to the detriment of the american people, and the very interests that such aid was created to alleviate. washington bureaucrats mocked him, but he turned out to be right. president trump asked ukraine to investigate a ukrainian energy

company, burisma. he momentarily paused u.s. aid to ukraine while seeking a commitment from the then-newly elected ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky regarding that effort. he wanted to make sure that he could trust this recently elected president zelensky before sending him the aid. within a few weeks, his concerns were satisfied, and he released the aid. pausing briefly before doing so isn't criminal. it certainly isn't impeachable. it's not even wrong. quite to the contrary, this is exactly the sort of thing the american people elected president trump to do. he would and has decided to bring a different paradigm to washington, one that analyzes things from how the american citizenry views the american government. this has in some respects, therefore, been a trial of the

washington, d.c. establishment itself, but not necessarily in the way that the house managers apparently intended, and while the house managers repeatedly invoked constitutional principles, including separation of powers, their arguments have tended to prove the point opposite of the one they intended. yes, we badly need to restore and protect both federalism and separation of powers, and it is my view that the deviation from one contributes to the deviation from the other, but here in order to do that, we've got to respect the three branches of government for what they are, who leads them, how they operate, and who is accountable to whom. for them to view president trump as somehow subservient to the career civil servant bureaucratic class that has

tended to manage agencies within the federal government, including the national security council, the department of defense, the office of management and budget, individuals within the white house and individuals within the state department, among others, is not only mischaracterizing this problem, it helps identify the precise source of this problem. you see, many of these people, including some of the witnesses that we've heard from in this trial, have mistakenly taken the conclusion that because president trump took a conclusion different than that offered by the so-called interagency process, that that amounted to a constitutionally impeachable act. it did not. it did nothing of the sort. quite to the contrary, when you actually look at the constitution itself, it makes clear that the president has the power to do what he did here. the very first section of article 2 of the constitution, this is the part of the

constitution that outlines the president's authority. it makes clear that the executive power of the united states government shall be vested in the president of the united states. it's important to remember that there are exactly two federal officials who are elected within the executive branch of government. one is the vice president and the other is the president. the vice president's duties, i would add, are relatively limited. constitutionally speaking, the vice president is the president of the senate, and thus performs that in a quasi legislative role, but vice the vice presides executive branch duties are entirely bound up with those of the president. they consist of aiding and assisting the president as the president may deem necessary and standing ready to step into the position of the presidency, should it become necessary as a result of disability, incapacitation, or death. barring that, the entire executive branch authority is

bound up within the presidency itself. the president is the executive branch of government, just as the judges who sit across the street themselves amount to the capstone of the judicial branch, just as 100 senators and 435 representatives are the legislative branch. the president is the executive branch. as such, it is his prerogative within the confines of what -- what the law allows and authorizes and otherwise provides, to decide how to execute that. it is not only not incompatible with that system of governance, it's entirely consistent with it, indeed authorized by it that a president should be able to say, look, we have got a newly elected president in ukraine. we have had long-standing allegations of corruption within ukraine. those allegations have been well-founded in ukraine. no one disputes that corruption is rampant in ukraine. a newly elected president comes in. this president or any president

in the future decides, hey, we're giving a lot of aid to this country. $391 million for the year in question. i want to make sure that i understand how that president operates. i want to establish a relationship of trust before taking a step further with that president. and so i'm going to take my time a little bit, i'm going to wait maybe a few weeks in order to make sure that we're on a sure footing there. he did that. there's nothing wrong with that. what's the response from the house managers? well, it gets back to that interagency process. as if people who the american people don't know or have reason to know because those people don't stand accountable to the people, they're not elected by the people, they're not really accountable to anyone who is in turn elected by the people. the fact that these people involved in the interagency process might disagree with foreign policy decision made by the president of the united states, or the fact that this

president of the united states might take a different approach than his predecessor or predecessors does not make this president's decisions criminal. it certainly doesn't make them impeachable. it doesn't even make them wrong. and, mr. president, in the eyes of many, i believe most americans, they want the president to be careful about how the united states spends money. they want the united states to stop and reconsider from time to time. in fact, we spend a lot of money throughout the world on countries that are not the united states. we want a president of the united states to be able to exercise a little bit of discretion in pushing pause before that president knows whether he can trust the newly elected government in the country in question. and so to suggest here that our commitment to the constitution, to suggest here as the house managers have that our respect for the separation of powers

within the constitutional framework somehow demands that we remove the duly elected president of the united states is simply wrong. it's -- it's elevating to a status completely foreign to our constitutional structure. an entity that the constitution does not name. it elevates a policy dispute to a question of high crimes and misdemeanors. those two are not the same thing. at the end of the day, this government does, in fact, stand accountable to the people. this government is of, by, and for the people. we cannot remove the 45th president of the united states for doing something that the law and the constitution allows him to do without doing undo violence to that system of government to which every single

one of us has sworn an oath. we've sworn to uphold and protect and defend that system of government. that means standing up for the american people and those they have elected to do a job recognized by the constitution. i will be voting to defend this president's actions. i will be voting against undoing the vote taken by the american people some three and a half years ago. i will be voting for the principle of freedom, for the very principles that our constitution was designed to protect. i urge all of my colleagues to reject these deeply factually and legally flawed articles of impeachment, to vote not guilty. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor.

i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: will the senator withhold? mr. lee: yes. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. mr. cramer: mr. president, i rise today to officially declare that i will vote against both articles of impeachment brought against president trump by the very partisan and, quite frankly, ridiculous house of representatives. i know my position hardly a surprise, but it's almost as unsurprising as the house impeaching the president to begin with. since the moment he was sworn into office, democrats have schemed to remove donald trump from office. it's not my opinion. i take them at their word. their fixation on his removal was a conclusion in search of a justification, which they manufactured from a phone conversation between world

leaders, leaked -- leaked by one of the many career bureaucrats who seemed to have forgotten that they work for the elected leaders in this country, not the other way around. mr. president, the two articles of impeachment before this body today, in my view, are without merit. they are an affront, in fact, to this institution and to our constitution. representing the very same partisan derangement that worried four founding fathers so much that they made the threshold for impeachment this high. mr. president, the senate exists exactly for moments like this. i didn't arrive at my conclusion flippantly. i don't believe any of my colleagues did either, including my colleagues who come to a different conclusion. despite being sent such fraught articles by the house, the senate did follow its constitutional obligation. during the long days of the trial, we heard sworn testimony from 13 witnesses, read 17

depositions, asked 180 questions, viewed 193 video clips and poured over 28,000 pages of documents. but even more than the house managers' shall will he arguments and lack of evidence against and due process for our president, in the obvious derangement at the very root of every investigation beginning with the corrupt f.b.i. crossfire hurricane counter-investigation during the 2016 election cycle. the articles of impeachment we'll vote on in a few hours should have ended at their beginning. mr. president, can we agree that if a speaker of the house unilaterally declares an impeachment inquiry that represents the opinion of one member of congress not the official authorization of the entire congress, can we agree that a vote to begin an

impeachment inquiry that has only partisan support and bipartisan opposition is not what the founders had in mind and in fact is what they firmly rejected and cautions about. can we agree that impeachment articles passed by a majority of one party and opposed by members of both parties on their face fail if not the letter of the law, certainly the spirit of the constitution? yet even under the cloud of purely partisan politics of the house of representatives, the senate conducted a complete, comprehensive trial resulting, in my view, in a crystal-clear conclusion. the democratic-led house of representatives failed to meet the most basic standard of proof and has dramatically lowered the bar for impeachment to unacceptable levels. mr. president, it is deeply concerning and i believe we must commit to never, ever letting it happen again to the president of any political party.

and that can start today. in just a few hours, the senate will have the opportunity to cast a vote to end this whole ordeal, and in doing so can make a statement that the threshold for undoing the will of the american people in the most recent election and undoing the will of a major political party in the upcoming election should be more than one party's petty obsession. i hope nigh colleagues join me in voting against these charges. but whether he is acquitted or convicted and removed, it is my prayer, as we were admonished many times throughout the week by our chaplain black, that god's will is the one that will be done. then we can move on to the unifying issues the american people want us to tackle -- issues like infrastructure, education, energy security and dominance, national security, and the rising cost of health care, among many others. these, mr. president, are issues

the american people care about. these are issues that north dakotans care about. these are the issues that the people have sent us here to deal with. let's do it together. let's start now. i yield the floor. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from mississippi. a senator: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mrs. hyde-smith: i ask unanimous consent that it be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mrs. hyde-smith: mr. president, i will vote to the acquit president donald j. trump on both articles of impeachment presented by house democrats. i have listened carefully to the argumented presented by the house democratic managers and the white house defense team. those prosecuting the president failed on a legal and constitutional basis to produce the evidence required to

undertake the very serious act of removing a duly elected president from this office. this trial exposed that pure political partisanship fueled a reckless investigation and the subsequent impeachment of the president on weak, vague, and noncriminal accusations. the democrats' case, which lacked the basic standards of fairness and due process, was fabricated to fulfill their one long-held hope to impeach president trump. we should all be concerned about the dangerous precedent and consequences of convicting any president on charges originating from strictly partisan reasons. the founding fathers warned against allowing impeachment to become a political weapon. in this case, house democrats

crossed that line. rejecting the abuse of power and obstruction of congress articles before us will affirm our belief in the impeachment standards intended by the founders. with my votes to acquit president trump, justice will be served. the senate has faithfully executed its constitutional duties to hear and judge the charges leveled against the president. i remain hopeful that we can finally set aside this flawed partisan investigation, prosecution, and persecution of president trump. the people of mississippi and in great nation are more interested in us getting back to doing the work they sent us here to do. i yield my time.

a senator: mr. president.

the presiding officer: the senator from idaho. mr. risch: mr. president and fellow senators, i come to the floor today to talk about the business at hand. obviously it's the vote that we're going to take at 4:00 this afternoon. look, we're subjected to days and days of trial here; many witnesses and witness statements and all that sort of thing. it's incumbent upon us now as jurors to reach a conclusion, and i have done so. i come at this with a little bit of a different view than probably others. i've tried more cases probably than anyone on the floor both as a prosecutor and in private practice. and so i watched carefully as the case was presented to us and how the case had been put together by the managers from the house. and what i learned in the many years of trial experience that i had, that the only way really to try a case and to reach where you want to get is to do it in good faith and to do it honestly. i had real trouble right at the beginning when i saw that the

lead manager read a transcript purr porting to be the -- purporting to be a transcript of the president's phone call that's been in issue here, and it was falsified. and it was falsified knowingly, willfully and intentionally. result when they walked through the door and wanted to present their case, there was a strike there already, and i put it in that perspective. how the case unfolded after that was stunning because i've never seen a case succeed the way they put the case together. they put the case together by taking every fact that they wanted to make fly and put it only in the best light without showing the other side. but more importantly, more importantly, intentionally excluding evidence. and of course this whole thing centered around witness statements that the president had somehow threatened or pressured the president of ukraine to do what he was going to do.

that simply wasn't the case. the transcript didn't say that. admittedly they had a witness that had gone around saying that, and they called every person he told to tell us that that was the situation. the problem was it was hearsay. and there's a good reason why they don't allow hearsay in a court of law, and that is it simply wasn't true. when the person who was spreading that rumor actually talked to the president about it, the president got angry and said that's not true, i would never do that. they never told us that. and once the tape was shown, the house managers spent days putting together that proposition for us, and the president's counsels dismantled that in about an hour and did so really quickly. and as a result of that simply from a factual basis, it is my opinion that the prosecution in this case did not meet its burden. much has been said about witnesses and how they did this and what have you. the constitution is crystal

clear. it gives the house absolute, total, 100% control of impeachment, that is the investigation and the vote on it. it gives us the same thing but on the trial basis. the thing i think was surprising to me is they came over here and tried to tell us how to do their job. i suspect they in the house would feel the exact same way about it if we went over there and told them how they should impeach. they came over here and told us about how we should do witnesses and all that sort of thing. they had every opportunity to prepare the case. it was totally in their hands. they had as much time as they wanted to, and they simply didn't do it. so in that respect, i also found that it was short. but the bottom line for me too was there's a second reason on which i would vote to acquit here, and that is the stunning attack that this was on the united states constitution. this is really the first time in history when a purely political attack was instigated by

reaching to the united states constitution and using what is really a sacred item in that constitution, a process that the founding fathers gave us for good reason, and that is impeachment. it was not intended to be used as a political bludgeon. it simply wasn't. we had if front of us "the federalist" papers and we had the debates of the constitutional convention, and really the one silver lining that came out of this was it underscored again for us the genius of the founding fathers giving us three branches of government, not just three branches of government, but three branches of government that had distinguished lanes in which they operated and most importantly indicating that they were separate but equal. and they wanted not a parliamentary system like they had looked at from britain, where the head of state that was a prime minister that could be removed and changed, as happens all around the world today. they gave us a unique system

with three branches of government. so the founding fathers were very clear. they debated the question of what should it take to get rid of the head of state, and they concluded that the second branch of government couldn't be a strong brage of government if indeed -- branch of government if indeed the president could be removed, as the prime minister could be removed, simply by congress getting unhappy with his policies or disagreeing with him. so, as a result of that, they did give us impeachment, and it is a unique process. they were very clear that it was supposed to be used only in very extreme circumstances and not just simply because of a political disagreement or a policy disagreement. and that's exactly what happened here. "the federalist" papers and the constitutional convention debates are very, very clear that it is not a broad swath of reasons to impeach the president

that is given to the first branch of government but, indeed, a very, very natureio swath. and it was interesting that from the beginning, they picked the two words of treason and bribery, and to that they then had a long debate about what it would be in addition to that. and they had such words as malfee -- malfeasance, misfeasance. they rejected that and said, no, it had to be high crimes and misdemeanors. they narrowed the lane considerably and made it difficult to real estate move the second branch of government and on top of that, for frosting on the cake, they said it has got to be two-thirds. what does that mean? they knew, they knew that human beings, being the way they are, that human beings involved in political process and political parties would reach to get rid of a political enemy using everything they could. so they wanted to see that that didn't happen with impeachment. and so, as a result of that, as

a result of that, they gave us the two-thirds requirement, and that meant that no president was going to be impeached without a bipartisan movement. this movement has been entirely partisan. no republican voted for that, to impeach him in the house of representatives. this afternoon at 4:00 we're going to have a vote, and it's going to be along party lines. and again it is going to be political. so what do we have here? they end of the day, we have a political exercise. and that political exercise is going to fail. and once again, once again, god has blessed america and the republic that benjamin franklin said we have if we can keep it is going to be sustained. madam president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio is recognized. mr. brown: thank you, madam

president. over the past three weeks, we have heard from the house managers and the president's counsel regarding the facts of the case against president donald trump. much like trials in lorraine and lima and lordstown, ohio, or in marietta, in maslun and marion, foe owe, we seen the prosecution, and the president's lawyers present their cases. all 100 of us, every one of us, are the jury. we took an oath to be impartial jurors. we all took an oath to be impartial jurors, just like juries in ohio and across america. but to some of my colleagues, that just appeared to be a joke. the great journalist bill moiiers summed up the past three weeks. what we've just seen is the dictator of the senate manipulating the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the white house whose political party has become the gravedigger

of democracy. let me say that again. what we've just seen is the dictator of the senate manipulating the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the white house whose political party has become the gravedigger of democracy. even before this trial began, leader mcconnell admitted out loud that he was coordinating the trial process with the white house. the leader of the senate was coordinating with the white house on impeachment. i challenge him to show me one trial in my state of ohio or his state of kentucky where the jury coordinated with the defense lawyers. in a fail trial, the defense and prosecution would have been able to introduce evidence, to call witnesses, to listen to testimony. every other impeachment procedure in the senate for 250 years had witnesses. some of them had dozens. we had zero. leader mcconnell rushed this trial through. he turned off cameras in this

body so that the american public couldn't see the whole process. he restricted reporter access. we know reporters roam the halls to talk to members of the house and senate. he reinstructed access there. he twisted arms to make sure every republican was able -- voted with him to block witnesses. he didn't get a couple of them, but he had enough to protect himself. the public already sees through it. this is a sham trial. i've said from the beginning that i would keep an open mind. if there are witnesses who would exonerate the president, the american people need to hear from them. over the course of this trial, we heard mounting, overwhelming everyday that president trump did everything that not even richard nixon ever d he extorted a foreign service officer for rooting out corruption. he put his political campaign above our collective national security. the president said this is just

hearsay. but he and the republican leader, together with 51 of 53 republican senators, blocked every single potential witness we wanted to call. we knew there were witnesses. the president says it was hearsay. we knew there were witnesses that were in the room with president trump. we didn't get to hear from them. we didn't hear from ambassador bowl ton, mulvaney, secretary pompeo. the republican leader denied the american people the chance to hear all of them testify under oath. we've seen more information come to light each day, which builds on the pattern of facts laid out in great detail by the house managers. we've now heard tape recordings of the president of the united states telling associates to get rid of u.s. ambassador yovanovitch, a public servant who devoted her life to fighting corruption and promoting american ideals and policy throughout her career at the state department. with her removal from the post, it appears the president thought he would be able to compel our

ally, ukraine, to investigate president trump's political opponent. reports -- reporters have now revealed that ambassador bolton -- again, madam president, a firstshand witness -- she outlined that the president -- he outlined that the president did exactly what the impeachment articles alleged; he withheld security assistance to an ally at war with russia in exchange for a political favor. there are e-mails showing the president'sukraine's. make no mistake, the full truth is going to come out. the presiding officer, my colleagues on the other side of the offer of officer, they're all going to be embarrassed because they covered this up. it wasn't just the president and the vice president and secretary pompeo and chief of staff mulvaney. it was 51 republican united states senators, including the presiding officer, who is a new member of this body, who covered

up this evidence. it'll come out in week, it'll come out this month, this year, the year after that, for decades to come. when the full truth comes out, we'll be judged by our children and grandchildren. without additional witnesses, we must judge based on the facts presented. the house managers made a clear, compelling case. in the middle of a war with russia, the president froze $400 million in security assistance to ukraine. he asked -- he wanted an investigation into his 2020 political opponent. he refuse a critical meeting with president zelensky in the oval office. these actions don't promote our national security or the rule of law. they promote donald trump personally and his campaign. we know the president extorted president zelensky. he asked the leader of a foreign government to help him. that's the definition of an abuse of power. that's why we have no choice, no choice but to convict this president of abusing his office. all of us know this. to acquit would set a clear,

dangerous precedent. you abuse your office, it's okay. congress will look the other way. this trial, this vote we're about to cost, they're about way more than just president trump. they're about the future of democracy. it will send a message to this president or whomever we elect in november and to all future presidents. it will be heard around the world, our verdict by our allies and enemies alike, especially the russians. are we going to roll out the welcome mat to our -- are we going to give a green light to our president to base our national security not on the security of our alive, but on the president's personal political campaign? these are the issues at stake. we don't hold this president accountable for his abuse of office, if no one in his own party, if no one on this side of the aisle has the backbone to stand up and say, stop, there is no question it'll get worse. how do i know that? i've heard it it from a number

of my republican colleagues. when privately they'll tell me, yes, we are concerned about what the president is is going to do if he is exonerated. i was particular appalled by the words of mr. dershowitz. he said if a president does something that he believes will get him elected in the public interest, that can't be the quid pro quo that results in impeachment. if the president thinks it's okay, he thinks it's going to help his election and he thinks his election is in the public interest, then it's okay. the president can break any law, can funnel taxpayer money towards his reelection, can turn the armor of the state against his political enemies and not be held accountable. that's what this comes down to. remember the words of richard nixon -- when the president does it that means i.t. not illegal. our country rejected that during watergate. we had a republican party with principle in those days and senators with backbone. they told that president to resign because nobody is above the state, nobody is above the law. if we have a president that can turn the office of the press and

the entire executive branch into its own political campaign operation, god help us. my colleagues think i'm exaggerating. we don't have the option to vote in favor of some argues made and not others. mr. dershowitz's arguments will stand forever. they'll be used as precedent by future aspiring autocrats. in the words of house manager schiff, that way madness lies. i know some of my colleague, agree this sets a dangerous press did not. some of you have admitted to me that you're troubled by the president's behavior. you know he's reckless and lies and know what did he was wrong. you've heard republican senator after senator tell me that privately. if you said it to me, if you said it to your family, to your staff, if you've just said it to yourself, i implore you, we have no choice but to vote to

convict. what are my colleagues afraid of? i think about the word of adam schiff in this chamber. if you find that the house has proved its case and still vote to acquit, if you still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel for all of history. your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel for all of history. i ask my colleagues, what are you afraid of? one of our american fundamental values -- we have no kings, no oligarchs, no matter how much money you give to mitch mcconnell's super pac, every one can and should be held accountable. i hope my completion remember that. i -- i hope my colleagues remember that. i hope this'll choose courage over fear, country over party, i hope they'll join me in holding this president accountable, the american people, we all took an oath to serve. we know that. americans are watching. they will not forget. i will close with quoting again

bill moyers. what we've just seen is the dictator of the senate manipulating the impeachment process to save the demagogue in the white house whose political party has become the gravedigger of democracy. madam president, i know my colleagues on the other side of the aisle know better. i hope they vote what they really know. thank you, madam president. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii is recognized. ms. hirono: madam president, when the framers debated whether to include the power of impeachment in the constitution, they envisioned a moment very much like the one we face now. they were fearful of a corrupt president who would abuse the presidency for his or her personal gain, particularly one who would allow any foreign country to interfere in the affairs of our united states. with this fear in mind, the

framers directed the senate to determine whether to ultimately remove that president from office. in normal times, the senate conscious of its ability, would meet this moment with appropriate sobriety and responsibility to conduct a full and fair trial. that includes calling appropriate witnesses and subpoenaing relevant documents. none of which happened here. in normal times, the senate would have weighed the evidence presented by both sides and rendered impartial justice. and in normal times, having been presented with overwhelming evidence of impeachable acts, the senate would have embraced its constitutional responsibility to convict the president and remove him or her from office. but as we've learned too often over the past three years, these are not normal times.

instead of fulfilling its duty later darks the united states senate -- later today, the united states senate will fail its test at a crucial moment of our country about i voting to acquit donald j. trump of abuse of power and obstruction of congress. the senate cannot blame its constitutional failure on the house managers. they proved their case with overwhelming and compelling evidence. manager jerry. mr. nadler: laid out a meticulous case demonstrating how and why the president's actions rose to the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal. manager jeffries explained how donald trump pressured the ukranian leader to conduct phony investigations as part of his effort to cheat and solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election. manager val demings walked us through the evidence of how donald trump used $391 million

of taxpayer money to pressure ukraine to announce politically motivated investigations. she concluded this is enough to prove extortion in court. manager sylvia garcia showed how donald trump's demand for investigations was purely for his personal political benefit. she debunked the conspiracy theories the president's counsel raised against former vice president joe biden. donald trump's political rival and the true target of his corrupt scheme. manager jason crow described vividly the human costs of withholding aid from ukranian troops fighting a hot war against russia. manager adam schiff tied together the evidence of donald trump's abuse of power, the most serious of impeachable offenses and one that includes extortion and bribery.

and manager zoloft gren used her extensive experience to provide perspective on donald trump's unprecedented, unilateral and complete obstruction of congress to cover up his corrupt scheme. she is the only member of congress to be involved in three presidential impeachments. the president's lawyers could not refute the house's case. instead, they ultimately resorted to the argument that even accepting the facts as presented by the house managers, donald trump's conduct is not impeachable. it's what i've called the he did it, so what argument. many of my republican colleagues are using the so what argument to justify their votes to let the president off the hook. and yet the senior senator from tennessee said, i think he shouldn't have done it. i think it was wrong. he said it was inappropriate and

improper, crossing a line. but he refused to hold the president accountable arguing that the voters should decide. the junior senator from iowa said, the president has a lot of latitude to do what he wants to do, but he did it maybe in the wrong manner. she also said that whether you like what the president did or not, the charges didn't rise to the level of an impeachable offense. the junior senator from ohio called the president's actions wrong and inappropriate but said they did not rise to the level of removing a duly elected president from office and taking him off the ballot in the middle of an election. and the senior senator from florida went so far as to say just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a president from office.

by refusing to hold this president accountable, my republican colleagues are reinforcing the president's misguided belief that he can do whatever he wants under article 2 of the united states constitution. donald trump was already a danger to this country. we've seen it in his policy decisions from taking away health care from millions of americans to threatening painful cuts to social security and medicare. to engaging in an all-out assault on immigrants in this country. but today we're called on to confront a completely different type of danger, one that goes well beyond the significant policy differences i have with this president. if we let donald trump get away with extorting the president of another country for his own personal political benefit, the senate will be complicit, complicit in it his next corrupt

scheme. which country will he bully or invite to interfere in our elections next? this pot of taxpayer money will he use as a bribe to further his political schemes? later today i will vote to convict and remove president donald trump for abusing his power and obstructing congress. i am under no illusion that my republican colleagues will do the same. they've organized it's up to the american people to decide as though impeachment were not a totally separate constitutional remedy for a lawless president. as i considered my vote, i listened closely to manager schiff's closing statement about why the senate needs to convict this president. he said, i quote, i do not ask you to convict him because truth or right or decency matters nothing to him. he's referring to the president. but because we have proven our case and it matters to you. the truth matters to you. right matters to you.

you are decent. he is not who you are. it's time for the senate to uphold its constitutional responsibility by convicting this president and holding him accountable. madam president, i yield the floor. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado is recognized. mr. bennet: thank you, madam president. when i was in the second grade, which i did twice because i was dyslexic so i don't know which year of the second grade it was but one of those two years, we were asked to line up in order of whose family had been here the longest period of time and whose family had been here the shortest period of time. and i turned out to be the answer to both of those

questions. my father's family went all the way back to the mayflower and my mom's family were polish jews who survived the holocaust. they didn't leave warsaw because my grandfather had a large family. he didn't want to leave behind. and in the event everybody was killed in the war except my mom, her parents, and an aunt. they lived in warsaw for two years after the war. then they went to stockholm for a year. they went to mexico city for a year, of all places. and then they came to the united states, the one place in the world they could rebuild their shattered lives. and they did rebuild their shattered lives. my mom was the only person in the family who could speak any english. she registered herself in the new york city public schools. she graduated from hunter college high school. she went on to graduate from wellesley college in massachusetts in one generation. my grandparents rebuilt the

business they had lost during the war. and i knew from them how important this symbol of america was to people struggling all over the world. their joy -- they'd been through some of the worst events in human history and their joy of being americans was completely unadulterated. i've meant many immigrants across this country, and i still haven't met anybody with a stronger accent than my grandparents had and i never met anybody who were greater patriots than they were. and they understood how important the idea of america was, not because we were perfect. exactly the opposite of that because we were imperfect. but we lived in a free society that was able to cure its imperfections with the hard work of our citizens to make this country more democratic, more free, and more fair, a country committed to the rule of law.

nobody was above the rule of law. and nobody was treated unfairly by the law, even if you were an immigrant to this country. from my dad's example, i learned something really different. it might interest some people around here to know he was a staffer in the senate for many years. and i actually grew up coming here on saturday mornings throwing paper airplanes around the hallways of the dirksen building and the russell building. he worked here at a very different time in the senate. he worked here at a time when republicans and democrats worked together to uphold the rule of law, to pass important legislation that was needed by the american people to move our country forward, a time when democrats and republicans went back home and said i didn't get everything that i wanted to be sure, but the 65% i did get is worth the bill we had.

this is why the other side needed 35%. those days are completely gone in the united states senate. and i grieve for them. my dad passed away about a year ago and i know how disappointed he would be about where we are. but there isn't anybody who can fix it except the hundred people that are here. and i suppose the american people for whom we ostensibly work. in the last ten years that i've been here, madam president, i have watched politicians come to this floor and destroy the solemn responsibility that we have, the constitutional responsibility we have to advise and consent on judicial appointments, to turn that constitutional responsibility into nothing more than a vicious partisan exercise. that hasn't been done by the american people. that wasn't done by any other generation of politicians that were in this place. it's been done by this

generation of politicians led by the senator from kentucky, the majority leader of the senate. we have become a body that it does nothing. we're an employment agency. that's who we are. 75% of the votes we took last year were on appointments. we voted on 26 amendments last year, 26, 26. in the world's greatest deliberative body we passed eight amendments in a year. pa nepathetic -- pathetic. we didn't consider any of the major issues that the american people are confronting in their lives, not a single one. ten years of town halls when people say to me, michael, we are killing ourselves and we can't afford housing, health

care, higher education, early childhood education. we cannot say -- we can't live a middle class life. we think our kids are going to live a more diminished life than we do. what does the united states senate do? cut taxes for rich people. we don't have time to do anything else around here. and now when we are the only body on planet earth charged with the responsibility of dealing with the guilt or innocence of this president, we can't even bring ourselves to have witnesses and evidence as part of a fair trial. even when there are literally witnesses with direct knowledge of what the president did practically banging on the door of the senate saying let me testify. we're too lazy for that.

the reality is we're too broken for that. we are too broken for that. and we have failed in our duty to the american people. hamilton said in federalist 65 that in an impeachment trial, we were the inquisitors for the people, the senate. we would be the inquisitors for the people. how can you be the inquisitors for the people when you don't even dignify the process with evidence and with witnesses? madam president, i often have schoolkids come visit me here in the senate, which i really enjoy because i used to be the superintendent of the denver public school. and when they come visit me, they very often have been on the mall. they've seen the lincoln memorial. they've seen the washington monument. they've seen the supreme court, this capitol. there's a tendency among