mr. jordan. mr. jordan votes yes. mr. johnson of louisiana votes aye. mr. mcclintock votes aye. voting aye. voting aye. mr. armstrong votes yes. voting yes. >> are there any members who wish to vote who haven't voted? >> mr. richmond. mr. richman's votes no. >> or any other members who haven't voted who wish to vote? the clerk will report. >> mr. chairman there are 17

ayes and 23 nos. mr. chairman, i have an amendment at the desk. the gentle lady reserves a point of order. >> evident to the amendment. offered by congressman gaetz of florida. striking lines ten through 11 insert the following. a well-known corrupt company burisma and its hiring of hunter biden. >> the gentleman is recognized to explain his amendment. >> thank you. this reference strikes -- this movement strikes the reference to joe biden and replaces it with the true topic of the investigation, burisma and hunter biden. an essential element of the democrats case on abusive powers that the bidens did nothing wrong. it can only be an abuse of power and not a correct use of power if the president was pursuing

something under which there was no reasonable basis to ask a question about hunter biden and burisma. hunter biden and burisma was an interesting story. i think just about every american knows there is something up with that. $86,000 a month? no experience? working for some foreign government while your dad is the vice president of the united states. is there anyone who believes its okay? i know we have a few of my democratic politics they be running for president or who might run for president one day. would you let your vice president have their son or daughter or family member moonlighting for a foreign company? a valuable using which familiar to the former vice president. come on, man. this looks dirty as it is. hunter biden was making more than five times more than a board member for exxonmobil. i have heard of that company. i wanted to re-up on hunter biden and learn more and i found this extensive profile in the

new yorker. here's what it says. hunter said that at that point he had not slept for several days, driving east on interstatl of his car which jumped the median and skated to a stop on the shoulder of the westbound side. he called hertz which came to collect the car and gave them a another car. they said they found a crack pipe in the car. they called the police department and officers filed a narcotics offense report listing items seized in the car including plastic bag containing white powdery substance, secret service business card, credit cards, and hunter biden's driver's license. that is what we would call evidence. i don't want to make light of anybody's substance abuse issues. i know the president is working real hard to solve those. it's a little hard to believe that burisma hired hunter biden

to resolve their international disputes when he could not resolve his own dispute with hertz rental car over leaving cocaine and a crack pipe in the car. it continues. hunter stayed in los angeles for about a week. he said he needed to get away and forget soon after his arrival in l.a. he said he asked a homeless man where he could buy crack. hunter said the man took him to a nearby homeless encampment where a passageway, someone put a gun to his head before realizing he was the buyer. he returned to buy more crack a few times that week. again, not casting any judgment on challenges people go through in their personal life but it's hard to believe this was the guy wandering through homeless encampments buying crack. that might be one of the reasons why when abc asked hunter biden, do you think he would've gotten a job in the absence of your dad being the vice president?

well, he said, probably not. i look to the record evidence and i look to the testimony of mr. kent. mr. kent was one of the witnesses they called on the first day. he said burisma was so dirty that our own embassy had to pull out of a joint sponsorship with them. when ambassador yovanovitch was being prepped for her senate confirmation, the obama administration was so worried about the corruption around burisma and hunter biden that they held special prepped moments to try to get ready for the inevitable questions about this obvious corruption that the president asked about. mr. kent, can one of their witnesses from the first day, also gave testimony that burisma, the head of burisma had stolen $23 million in the u.s. and the u.k. and that he paid a bribe to get off the hook. again, it's not as if burisma is pulling out new plays. their playbook is to do dirty stuff and then pay bribes and hire the people necessary to make those problems go away.

this is why the minority hearing issue is so important. you wonder why republicans are so angry we didn't have a hearing with our own witnesses and own evidence. you may wonder if they feel so good about their case, why did they block our ability to put in evidence? we have the ability to show that burisma is corrupt. we have the ability to show hunter biden is corrupt, and that totally exculpate the president. there is no way in the united states of america that honestly pursuing actual corruption is impeachable. that's why i have offered the amendment and i encourage my colleagues to vote for it. >> mr. chairman, i withdraw my point of order. >> mr. chairman. >> the gentleman yields back. for what purposes? >> i move to strike the last word. mr. chairman, i rise in opposition to this amendment and i would say that the pot calling

the kettle black is not something we should do. i don't know what members if any have had any problems with substance abuse, been busted, dui. i don't know. but if i did, i wouldn't raise it against anyone on this committee. i don't think it's proper. and you know, i think we've got to get back down to what is most important here. this is a question that stands out like a big throbbing sore toe inside a shoe that is too small. that's this question: is it ever okay for a president of the united states of america to invite foreign interference in an upcoming presidential

election campaign? >> does the gentleman seek an answer? >> the gentleman has the time. >> the silence was and is deafening and there will be plenty of time for you to respond to that question i would invite you to do so. i give you an opportunity about ten to 15 seconds well you could get your story together, and nobody came up with a story. so i'm going to let you move to strike the last word and explain that to the american people. it's never proper for united states president to hold a foreign country over a barrel

to make them do that president's personal bidding and holding needed security assistance, dangling it, and dangling the fact that i'll give it to you if you do this. that's exactly what happened. it's like the american people understand what happened. those are the facts. the president said it when he released the transcript of the summary of that phone call on july 25. the summary of the president's own words shows that the president tried to get president zelensky to interfere in the upcoming presidential election. that is established by the facts. this is not about hunter biden. they have said that on the other side repeatedly up until they

start talking about hunter biden having some substance abuse problems. you can't have it both ways. let's be honest. this is about our conscience, the conscience of the nation. the conscience of my friends on the other side of the aisle. do you believe that we should allow this to go unaddressed, with the president did? because we are a country of precedent. we are a country of rule of law. we are a country of norms and traditions. are we going to allow the violation of our norms, our traditions, our legal precedent. after all, bribery was not a crime. there was no criminal code when the framers past the constitution, but they said bribery in there and what it

meant was i am offering you something if you do something for me. i will give you this. in other words, you give me this and i will give you that. that's what we had in this case. that's what bribery means. it doesn't depend on the statute. it depends on what we know was done. so let's not get bogged down in technicalities and in character assassination. let's keep our eye on what really happened in this case and whether or not our consciences dictate that we do something about it. we can't let it go unaddressed and the way we deal with it, the grave abuse of the public trust is with the drastic action that it requires. this is a drastic circumstance. the drastic action is impeachment, and that's why we're here today and i asked my

colleagues to let your conscience be your guide. i yield back. >> mr. chairman, i moved to strike the last word. my mind is boggled by the gentleman from georgia saying that bribery was okay until 1787 when the constitution was adopted and two years later when congress passed the first criminal code. first of all, there's a common law definition of bribery. i think people long before 1787 realized that bribery was no good. we also had criminal codes in each of the 13 independent states, colonies, before the declaration of independence. >> will the gentleman answer my question? >> no, i didn't interrupt you. >> the gentleman has the time. >> okay. the second thing is if you on

the other side of the i'll believe that joe biden is a man who tells the truth, you ought to support this amendment. because joe biden, ever since hunter's involvement with burisma, has been repeatedly asked whether he made any arrangements to get hunter this really cushy job and he said no or my sons business involvements are my sons. so you put joe biden's name in your articles of impeachment when the real malefactor is hunter biden. hunter is not running for anything. if the real malefactor really is hunter biden, i guess you are claiming that the president was trying to influence the 2020 election would go out the window. but if you think that joe biden is a man who tells the truth, and i will give him the benefit

of the doubt though because i think he deserves it, than let's get rid of joe biden in this article of impeachment, substitute his son's name and proceed. i challenge you, because every one of you that will vote no on this amendment is going to be saying i think joe biden is a liar. if you don't think joe biden is a liar, vote yes. i yield the balance of my time to mr. gaetz. >> thank you, mr. chairman. again, it's important to analyze the burden of proof here. it's the democrats were saying any question about the biden situation, burisma, it could only be an abuse of power. i think this amendment really reflects how the president was using his power perfectly, entirely appropriately. and it also shows how scared they are of the facts. if we have the opportunity to:

those who were engaged and worked with the ukrainian embassy, folks like alexandra chalupa. if you were able to bring forth hunter biden, demonstrate the bias of the whistle-blower, the american people would see we are not in this debate and in this discussion because the president did anything wrong or impeachable or criminal. we are here fundamentally because they cannot accept the fact that he won the 2016 election. i think all americans know the president has a different approach. to accept their standard would mean that if someone announces they are running for office, it's kind of like an instant immunity deal for anything they would ever do. are they really saying that if joe biden, hunter biden, burisma were engaged in some corrupt act of the just because joe biden announced for the presidency that that somehow ought to absolve him of that criminal activity? it is a ludicrous position. maybe it's informed by the fact

that y'all got a little lucky on the hillary clinton stuff. she thought that because she was in a presidential election that her crimes didn't have to be held to account and in a way, that turned out to be the case. you know what, it shouldn't be the standard in the united states of america and i'm glad that we have a president who is at times skeptical of foreign aid, who does put america first, who understands that in corrupt places, the resources we provide don't always make it into an area of need. we conclude with this: once the meetings happened demonstrated president zelensky was a true reformer, that he wasn't corrupt, that he was honest, honest from the point of his campaign all the way up to the point when he said there was no pressure put on him or his government for this aid. if you accept that proposition, it's very clear the president was entirely appropriate in those questions and i've got to say the debate on the last amendment. we average the point in time where president trump isn't the only president being attacked in

this hearing. the gentleman from tennessee went after zelensky as an actor, a politician and they presume is a liar when he says there was nothing wrong. you know what, they can't -- >> my name was called. >> they are attacking zelensky and it shows the absurdity. >> time is expired. for what purpose does ms. jackson lee seek recognition? >> i was asking if i could respond because my name was called. >> the gentle lady is recogniz recognized. >> this is about distraction, distraction, distraction. our good friends spent three hours saying the president did not target the bidens. now they are saying that he did. which is it? i am holding the classified-unclassified conversation. let me just clarify a certain point. that point is i did read the transcript. it did say "us."

but there's nothing in the president's note that even suggested that the question he asked was for the american people. in testimony by mr. goldman who obviously went through every aspect of this, i asked the question about whether or not the president said anything from the notes that are given, the briefing that is given by those representatives of the united states government. the staff of the national security council, the state department, defense department on corruption. he didn't speak anything about corruption that he was briefed on. if you go through the call, he continues to mention the bidens. this, again, is about ukraine. the president did ask ukraine, the president of ukraine, a

vulnerable leader of a country that is fledgling and trying to survive. let me say i intend to introduce into the record an article that indicated very clearly that people did die. trump froze military aid as ukrainian soldiers perished in battle, "los angeles times." i ask unanimous consent to submit that into the record. the facts are... the facts are president trump provided 510 million in aid in 2017 and 359 million in 2018 but he wanted to stop in 2019, the year or months before the 2020 election. in addition, president trump advisors confirmed that president trump's investigation into 2016 election interference and the bidens were not u.s.

policy. as well, they have debunked any association that there was anything to the impropriety of the former vice president and his service as it related to ukraine. i think it's important the department of defense and state department have confirmed ukraine met all anticorruption benchmarks and the aid should be released. that is the policy of the united states of america. there was no need for this president to in essence try to make up his own policy. in his own statement of administrative policies, and i ask unanimous consent to have those in the record, this is from the white house. nothing in this said to discuss corruption. why? because ukraine and already met the standards of independent executive agencies that they had met that standard of corruption. the money should have been

released. we well know, as the process of the whistle-blower and the timing, that president zelensky, desperate for money, people dying the field, was asked to do a cnn announcement. he was going to be on one of cnn's well-known shows dealing with international politics. it was stopped in its tracks, as testified by witnesses under oath, because of the whistle-blower's statement. let me be very clear. there is some representation of crime, crime, crime. scholars indicated these are impeachable offenses. the conduct of the president is impeachable and there's enough evidence to show but as i indicated yesterday, this, my friends, is a legal document, the constitution. it's a legal document. you can reach and violate the law of the constitution. there are constitutional crimes.

the vastness of the impeachment process does include the excess of power by the president of the united states. i knew barbara jordan. my friends wanted to quote her. she also said the framers confided in the congress the power if need be to remove a president in order to strike a delicate balance between the president swallowing with power and grown to radical and preservation of the independence of the executive. you can violate the crimes of the constitution. abusive power includes that. this amendment should be defeated. >> gentle lady, time is expired. for what purposes does mr. ratcliffe seek recognition? >> i moved to strike the last word. i want to answer my colleague from georgia, mr. johnson's question. is it ever okay to invite a foreign government to become

involved in an election involving a political opponent? the answer is yes. it better be. we do it all the time. have you that quickly forgotten how the trump-russia investigation proceeded? the obama administration asked great britain and italy and australia and other countries to assist in its investigation of a person who was a political opponent from the opposite party. i keep hearing over and over again you can't investigate political opponents. we have a member of this committee who was come as a member of this committee and the intelligence committee, investigating his political opponent, donald trump, at the very moment he was running to replace him as president. my colleague on the intel committee, mr. castro was investigating president trump at the very same moment his brother was running to replace

president trump. president trump, the only one with a really legitimate reason to be doing it. he's the chief executive. chief executive. we are in the judiciary committee, right? we do understand the constitution. we understand the president is the executive branch. all power in the executive branch derives from the president, and the president can and should ask for assistance from foreign governments in ongoing criminal investigations. there was an ongoing criminal investigation into what happened in the 2016 -- attorney general barr at the time of the july 25 call had long before that u.s. attorney john durham to investigate exactly that issue. it wasn't just appropriate. it was absolutely the presiden president's constitutional duty.

hunter biden, the president has is the chief executive the ability to ask matters -- about matters where there is a prima facie case of corruption what we have with respect to hunter biden? tons of money for a position where he has no ukrainian experience, no experience with ukraine or with energy and at the very same time that ukrainians were deciding hunter biden was the perfect person to get that sweetheart deal, the chinese were deciding that hunter biden was the perfect person to get a sweetheart deal to manage $1.5 billion in financial assets. and when the ukrainian government wanted to investigate corruption, like we all keep talking about they need to, they started investigating burisma and what happens? joe biden says you better fire that prosecutor investigating

corruption into burisma or you are not going to get a billion dollars. six hours later, that's what happened. that's called influence peddling. that is a crime. there is a prima facie case of that and it's absolutely appropriate for a president to ask about that. i yield to my friend. >> i thank the gentleman for yielding. i want to respond to the gentle lady from texas. she said the president made up his own policy. that's how it works in our country. you get your name on a ballot and you run for office and you go talk to the american people. they evaluated on election day and they decide who they want making the policy. that's how it works in our country. it's not the unelected people telling the elected individuals how we do things. the unelected people aren't directly accountable to we the people. it's what makes our system of

the best, the greatest. when you turn it on its head, that's when you get problems. we saw it happen because we heard chuck schumer say on january 3, 2017, when you mess with the intelligence community, they have six ways from sunday of getting back at you. that's a scary statement because that is saying that the unelected people can get back at the person who put their name on a ballot and got elected to high office. the highest office in the situation. for someone in the united states congress to say the president made up his own policy and some of that is wrong, that should be a frightening position to take. i guess that's where the democrats are today. in their quest to go after this president, making statements like that, statements by our colleague and statements by senator schumer. i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. >> strike the last word. there are issues for the election and their issues for

this committee. the behavior of vice president biden's son and the behavior of president trump's two sons and daughter may be discussed in the election. but here we are talking about the abuse of presidential authority. the president does take care that the laws be faithfully executed. we know from the emails from the state department of the department of defense that the ukrainians knew that the aide was being withheld. that is documentary evidence. we also know that whatever was going on the people might not like with the vice president's son and the vice president, that was known in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018. it wasn't until vice president biden was beating president trump in the polls

that this issue was raised to try and force a foreign country to invent an investigation to be used politically. that is not seeing that the laws are faithfully executed. that is an abuse of presidential authority. i would yield now to the gentleman from florida. >> it's been about three hours since i made this point. i guess it needs to be made from time to time. we can't simply allow the mischaracterization and the misstatement of the rules, the history of the rules and house resolutions to advance political arguments here. we can't stand for it. so i want to address again the statements that there was some right to have witnesses come in. it's absolutely true that's the

case. over 50 years ago when the rule was written, rule 6, it said its normal procedure for witnesses representing both sides of the issue to give testimony at committee hearings. that's what happened at the december forum meeting and that's what happened in decembe. let's be honest about the rules. house resolution 660, i would point out provides an opportunity for the president of the united states to come. he could've come on december 4. he could have sent any of his witnesses and he didn't. but no one should be surprised because that's been the president's approach throughout. to refuse to allow anyone, anyone with the kind of information that my colleagues claim they are interested in from coming to testify and coming to answer questions directly. with that, i yield to my friend from new york. >> i thank the distinguished gentleman from florida. >> it's my time.

>> i thank the distinguished gentle lady from california. there were key witnesses testified during the intel hearing. we don't hear a thing about those witnesses for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, a thing. those witnesses were not political operatives. they were patriots. in fact, they were trump appointees. ambassador taylor, trump appointee. ambassador sondland, trump appointee. dr. fiona hill, trump appointee. jennifer williams, trump appointee. lieutenant colonel vindman, trump appointee. ambassador volker, trump appointee. they all confirmed that donald trump pressured a foreign government to target an american citizen for political gain and at the same time withheld without justification

$391 million in military aid. undermining america's national security. let's look at ambassador volker's testimony. he testified about the issue of raising the 2016 elections on vice president biden, the things i consider to be conspiracy theories. what was his response? it was pretty simple. "i think the allegations against vice president biden are self-serving and not credible." that's what this is all about. i yield back. >> mr. chairman, i yield back. >> the gentle lady yields back. for what purposes do you seek recognition? >> support of the amendment. thank you, mr. chairman. >> the gentleman is recognized. >> it's amazing. we are hearing from the same

people accusing us of covering up, not willing to face the truth. they are the same arguments we've been hearing for three years now. first it was accusing us of not being willing to face the facts about russia collusion and the president scheming with russia, that turned out all to be allies. we were right and those accusing us of not facing the truth for the ones who are not facing the truth. we heard about all kinds of other allegations, and we said that doesn't appear to be supported. we weren't facing the truth and there was a lot of media support for those positions. but we still persisted and we were the ones that were right. this week, these things are all being borne out. we were right. they were wrong. and now we are not hearing

anyone, men and say we are really sorry when we accused y'all of being crazy and not facing the truth. you are right. there was no russia collusion. you are right. there was no extortion. and my friends across the aisle keep changing the subject. with the call make clear is we are interested in finding out about if there was ukrainian collusion or interference in our election? now, it's amazing how the majority can take two physicians that -- positions that counter indicated tether. first they say there was no effort by republicans, including president trump, to stop interference from foreign countries. we hear that over and over, including yesterday and today. and yet the only way to step up

and do what president obama refused to do. if you remember, president obama belittled president trump, candidate trump for saying that he was concerned about outside interference. in fact president obama made a mockery of anybody that was so stupid that they thought somebody like russia or others might interfere and affect our election. they made fun of them. he wouldn't do anything about outside interference because apparently he must've thought the outside interference was going to help hillary clinton. as we've heard, there are apparently some people who certainly are accused in ukraine of doing all they could to help hillary clinton. in fact it was unheard of to have a foreign ambassador in our country step up and come up with support for hillary clinton. so what we continue to see is projecting. somebody on their side engages

in illegal or improper conduct and that's what the accused president trump or us of doing. and all of this self-righteousness about, you know, for political purposes. this is from a transcript from december 1, 1943, when president roosevelt was talking to stalin. he is talking to stalin. this is apparently in tehran, they are meeting. he wanted to talk to him about internal american politics. from the stenographers, they say president roosevelt said there were in the united states 6 to 7 million americans of political extraction. he didn't want to lose their votes and he was explaining he couldn't go public. he didn't care one basically the soviet union took over poland. he didn't care if they cut down

poland's borders from the east and from the west end he goes on to say they say jokingly that when the soviet armies occupied, invaded and occupied these areas of lithuania, latvia, estonia, he did not intend to go to war with the soviet union on this point. he continues to emphasize, these things he can't go public with. these kind of things have gone on by democrats for many decades. here they come after the one guy, he wants to get to the bottom of 2016 foreign interference, and what do they accuse him of? of getting foreign interference. no, you can't root out foreign interference until you know it was. so you can't have it both ways. well, i guess the democratic party can't have it both ways but this is got to stop before it goes too much further. >> the gentleman yields back.

the gentleman is recognized. >> thank you. i said at a previous hearing for this committee that you were investigating the wrong guy. that it should have been biden. the ukraine was the third most corrupt nation on earth. that hunter biden had just put himself right smack dab in the middle of the corruption and that even though democrats and many of their friends in the media would have you believe that burisma, biden corruption, that this was all just a vast right-wing conspiracy

allegation. in actuality, it was the obama administration that raised this issue first. in 2015, george kent reported his concerns about hunter biden to the vice president's office and the former ambassador to ukraine, marie yovanovitch, sorry about that, said she was coached by the obama administration on how to answer pesky questions related to hunter biden and burisma. that might arise during her senate confirmation process. nearly every single witness to testified at the intelligence committee impeachment inquiry agreed that hunter biden's burisma deal created at the very least the appearance of a conflict of interest. yet the democrats on the intelligence committee under chairman schiff and now democrats in this committee are determined to sweep all of this under the rug, ignore it.

not let us call witnesses on it instead rush to impeach this president. you've got the vice president, joe biden in charge of overseeing our ukrainian policy and his son hunter biden receiving $50,000 a month even though she had no identifiable expertise in energy or ukraine. the democrats wouldn't let us call witnesses or delve into this and it was interesting that joe biden got in an argument with a man at one of his events in iowa recently. he called the man a liar and challenged him to a push-up contest and spouted off a bunch of other malarkey. now the committee, this committee is conducting an impeachment investigation against president trump based on, as professor turley put it, wafer thin evidence and they are

ignoring evidence of something that truly doesn't smell right. wafer thin evidence. this was a professor who acknowledged that he had not voted for president trump. in fact, all four witnesses who testified, none of them had voted for him but he said wafer thin evidence. that's what we are being called to impeach the president on and while we are doing that, there are so many things that are getting ignored. it looks like one thing, usmca, trade deal which is very important to replace nafta, it looks like we might get that across the finish line. i certainly hope so. it will be good for the country. it's bipartisan. but i think if there's anything good to come out of this impeachment, it's probably that it will get passed because the democrats are going to show that we did something. they haven't done much of anything else. we had 68,000 americans who died from opioid over th -- overdose.

the number has gone down but it's not necessarily because we are doing a whole lot better. it's because of narcan. not quite as many are dying. there are just as many people involved with this scourge, these opioids and other drugs. our southern border is still a sieve. we have too many people coming across our southern border and that something we ought to be able to work on in a bipartisan manner and this committee to do something about that and our asylum laws which need to be reformed. we have a $22 trillion debt hanging over our head. the reason i mention these issues, the this committee has jurisdiction over these things and hasn't been doing a thing because we've been spending all of our time on impeachment in one form or another. i have a bill, balanced budget amendment, moving in the right direction of doing something about that. those are in our jurisdiction. infrastructure, not in our jurisdiction but the united states congress ought to

act on it. highways and bridges are crumbling in this country. it's something we generally agree on but the democrats probably don't want the president's take any credit for that so that's not likely to happen. it's unfortunate, taking up all this time on impeachment when there are so many other things we ought to be working on for the benefit of the american people. >> for what purpose does mr. jordan seek recognition? >> yield to the ranking member. >> i want to say it's amazing, they've gotten really sensitive about process on the majority side. when we pointed out that tragedy and travesty of being a rubber stamp for the committee. it's just like everything else. the whim of the chairman and the majority. it all goes to their majority opinion. >> yield to the gentleman from

florida. >> thank you. if the democrats can't prove the bidens are clean, then president trump can be guilty of abusing power if he's asking a reasonable question. they cannot prove that the questions in the bidens are unreasonable. the gentleman from new york said you to start listening to the witnesses. i listened very closely. what i heard was mr. kent say they were so concerned about burisma that we had to pull out about partnership with the embassy. it's okay for the embassy to ask questions, why isn't it okay for the president? ms. yovanovitch saying she had to do special preparation to answer this sticky question about why that vice president son is moonlighting for a foreign company. if it's okay for yovanovitch to ask those questions and for the obama administration to ask, why it that okay for president trump to ask? corrupt people get into this cycle and culture of corruption

and it's disappointing. we go back to this new yorker article that i am directly from. one of kathleen's motions regarding hunter biden's divorce contains a reference to a large diamond that had come into hunter's possession. when i asked about it, he told me he had been given the diamond by chinese energy tycoons. hunter told me that two associates accompanied him to his first meeting with them in miami and they surprised him by giving him a rare vintage of scotch worth thousands of dollars. this guy wasn't just taking these weird jobs from the ukrainians. he was taking diamonds and scotch from the chinese and i think it's entirely up. for the president of the united states to figure out why that's the case. the american people know this is an impeachment movement losing steam. i was watching cnn into the way -- into the hearing, maybe one

of the only folks but i was watching. i heard that the polling on impeachment is bad for democrats. i heard jim judo say that chairman nadler had gone on cnn and said once we have these public hearings, we will animate all this public support for impeachment. now you have the hearings. you've called the witnesses. you know what? you are losing ground. you are losing ground with the media. you are losing ground with the voters, and you're even losing ground among your own democrat colleagues. i believe the public reporting i've seen that some of your moderate members in districts president trump won are begging you to pursue something other than impeachment. this blood lust for impeachment is not going to be visited on us or president trump. it's going to be visited on your own members and they are asking you not to do this. the only standard that speaker pelosi speaker pelosi, chairman nadler and chairman schiff said was a

bipartisan standard. they said it has to be bipartisan. they said it all throughout 2018 but now the only thing that's changed is not the strengthening of the evidence. it's that we are going into an election and they've taken a look at the candidates they have in the democratic field and they and realize they have to create this impeachment platform because their candidates aren't capable of defeating president trump in a fair fight. we know that. the american people know that and so the only bipartisan vote that has occurred on impeachment was a bipartisan vote against opening the inquiry. the only possibility for movement from that vote until now despite wasting all of our time, despite having these hearings, despite all the damage to our institutions through is very weird and aberrational investigation, the only risk is that you will lose more votes than you started with. you lost two of your members the first time and your nocturnal lose less than two of your members. you have a risk of losing more than two. republicans are united.

we see it for what it is and we know as my colleague from ohio, mr. jordan, said, it's not just an attack on president trump lyrically, though it's the election that motivates them for this bizarre behavior. it's not just an attack on the presidency. it's an attack on us. it's an attack on those of us who believe in this president, will understand very well who we voted for and he's got some nontraditional ways of doing business but we also see the great success of this country. more jobs, more opportunity. they have no answer for that in the upcoming election and that's why we're here. >> the gentleman's time is expired. >> i moved to strike the last word. thank you, mr. chairman. i mentioned that looking at the evidence, i am stunned that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle perpetually read every

inference you can make in the light most negative to the present and yet this whole proceeding and the way it's been shaped up indicates there's an incredible inference against their credibility. because of the way they have stacked the cards against the president. i support the gentleman's amendment and i want to read this from a ukrainian source who was named and cited in a recent publication. it says "by inviting inferential foreigners, ukrainian business wants to get additional production. allowing mechanisms to grasp additional fears of influence. having hunter on board, the owner of burisma wanted to create the image." hunter biden using the political kick abilities of his family acted as a rescue buffer. he has worked in the company of a corrupt official.

let's take a look at the documents are colleagues keep referring to. page 4, the other thing president trump says, there's a lot of talk about biden's son, that biden stopped the prosecution. a lot of people want to find out about them. so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. if you can look into it. it sounds horrible to me. that's the essence of what they want to impeach president trump for. it begs the question really do you get immunity, is it an immunity granting event to have a relative run for public office? do you get immunity for that? let's flip it. the question is does the president have the authority to request an investigation? most assuredly. he mentions the attorney general. it's clear that he would like an

investigation into the corruption surrounding the ukrainians. what is president zelensky going to say? he goes on to talk about trying to restore the honesty in his country. that's what he's talking about. you've got the attorney general. you've got the president of both countries acknowledging this corruption. let's get it fixed. it leads you back to this whole question of the democrats wanted to impeach president trump for these amorphous abuse of power issues. these amorphous abuse of congress or issues. obstruction of congress. it's just bizarre. so hunter biden is placed on the board of burisma in 2014. joe biden calls for the removal of chief prosecutor victor spoken in 2016. in the meantime, evidence is

clear that burisma paid about $3.4 million to a company called rosemont seneca, the company of hunter and his partner. it's intriguing, the investigations surrounding burisma stop and burisma's reputation in ukraine is low and it was dubious even before this impeachment inquiry raised it to new attention. let's face it. according to ukrainian sources, burisma is not on everybody's front burner in the ukraine but it is here. we were providing hundreds of millions of dollars to the ukraine. in this president said we need to stop corruption. he mentioned specifically the corruption he heard about.

is that impeachable? no. is asking for an investigation? you do not get immunity just because your father is running for public office. because anyone related to you is running for public office and i will tell you this president has done a remarkable job in spite of three years of constant harassment by the democrats in this body and the media and the left of this country. we have a great economy. he is trying to bring order to the border. we have more people working than ever before. this president has restore the military and actually prestige around the world. there are no more apology tours oon the foreign policy side that we saw in the previous administration. he has really worked to make america's esteem and greatness. >> the gentleman's time has expired. mr. cicilline. >> i moved to strike the last word. >> you are recognized. >> i want to respond to the gentleman from ohio was lamenting about the productivity

of this congress and remind my friends on the other side of the island the american people that we have passed nearly 400 pieces of legislation since democrats took the majority. 275 of those bills are bipartisan. they range in legislation to drive down the cost of prescription drugs, to protect coverage for pre-existing conditions, provide equal pay for equal work, to raise the minimum wage for 33 million americans. the biggest anticorruption bill since watergate. legislation to restore net neutrality, to respond to the climate crisis, universal background checks. the recently completed negotiations on the new trade deals with that list is exhaustive. sadly, 80% of those bills are lying on mitch mcconnell's desk awaiting action so i urge my colleagues to maybe instead of trying to mischaracterize what is one of the most productive congresses in modern history, we ought to assert some energy in persuading mitch mcconnell to do his job i bring those bills to the floor. let's get back to the facts of this impeachment hearing.

first and foremost, there has been this effort to confuse with this is about and what this impeachment is about. it's about the president of the united states using the power of his office to smear a political opponent, drag a foreign power into our elections, corrupt the elections and leverage hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to accomplish that. this amendment would like to wish away the motive of the president to engage in this corrupt scheme but you can't wish it away and you can't amend it away. the facts are the facts where the allegations here urge native in 2015. that's according to the minority part. 2017 and 2018, foreign assistance was provided by ukraine. what happened in 2019? what changed? the president is losing in a national poll by double digits to joe biden. those are the facts.

third, multiple witnesses, trump administration officials testified that vice president biden did nothing wrong, including mr. kent, ambassador yovanovitch, mr. holmes, ambassador volker. vice president's firing of the prior prosecutor was done in accordance with official u.s. policy. it was approved by the justice department. it was the policy of the united states. it was supported by the european union and many countries throughout europe in a bipartisan coalition in congress. this is a corrupt prosecutor. it was official u.s. policy that the vice president was executing. by contrast we have in this ca case, the impeachment proceeding, it's exactly the opposite. what president trump was doing was not official u.s. policy in all the witnesses confirm it. it was not done through the justice department. and it was done against the advice of all of his advisors. so that's why it's very

different about what we are confronting today. this was work which was not done by the apparatus of the state department. this is an effort led by the president's personal attorney, rudolph giuliani, the scheme was led by this whole apparatus outside the state department. let's not confuse these two things. facts matter and the truth matters. you cannot continue just to make assertions when the record is completely the opposite. >> i would like to >> i think the gentleman. president trump and my republican colleagues were so interested in rooting out corruption in ukraine, there is so much they could do that they never did. my republican colleagues for many years were in the majority here to for many years, the vice president's son was on this board where they never investigated this. they're concerned only came about once vice president biden became president trump's chief political opponent.

on april 21 of this year, president trump called president zelensky to congratulate him. in his talking points, president trump was told to bring up rooting out corruption in ukraine. president trump never did it, but the white house and their talking points lied to the american people and said the president had. july 25, again, national security council members worked really hard to tell the president, impress upon the ukrainian president he needs to root out corruption in his country. the president never brings up corruption. the president wanted to investigate any individual u.s. citizen. there is a formal process we go through. the president never asked the attorney general to do this. the president was never interested in fighting corruption in ukraine. he was only interested in weaponizing corruption in ukraine for his own personal benefit and that's why we must hold him accountable for an abuse of power and i yelled back.

>> gentleman yields back. >> i announce this article dated february 12th 2019 just two weeks before the call to president zelensky entitled trump asks top political advisors. >> there are boats on the floor, the number of votes on the floo, the committee will stand in rec. please reconvene immediately after the votes. to the committee stands in recess. >> you are watching the house judiciary committee here as they debate the impeachment roles taking a break because right now, they were of votes that are unrelated to impeachment about health care that are going on on the house floor, so they are returning briefly to let the members go down and vote on those articles. at that point, they're going to

come back and we think debate more. we expect a vote of this committee later today on impeachment. i am doing the right now by jason chaffetz, who sat on this committee. the perfect person to have here, what is your take on what you heard? >> this is going to continue for a while. these two sides disagree. most importantly politically, if the democrats had not persuaded a single person on the republican side of the aisle does not meet the standard that nancy pelosi said earlier. this particular markup will continue on in perpetuity, members can offer amendments as long as they want, they are still in the middle of the amendment, that will break until 2:00 and then they will be back at it and it will probably go into the early if not late evening tonight. >> do you think they will actually vote today? the expectation is they will vote this out of committee or not. do you think that's going to happen? >> from the members i talk to you, yes. are they will eventually