impeachment trial, they are just off the senate floor as it begins on this saturday but the president's case being made will start in just moments with neil cavuto. stay with us. ♪ ♪ ♪ neil: the capitol, the senate floor where the president's legal team moments away from getting first chance to argue his case in the impeachment trial and respond to house impeachment managers who just wrapped up their own arguments over the last 4 days, they were telling senator that is the president did indeed abuse his power and obstruct justice and now they obstructed the congress of the united states itself but republicans is far are not con

-- convinced to remove the president from office. pat cipollone will take the place, governing, everybody, glad to have you, i'm neil cavuto, thanks for joining our special coverage of the next step of third impeachment trial of our nation's history, today's opening argued to be 3 hours, we will will be here the both time and we will be talking to any senators during any breaks and when things wrap up. first, chad covering it all in capitol hill. >> we are looking at the senate floor, they usually come up a couple of minutes after the top of the hour, but we will see the chief justice come in and gavel the senate into cigs, 5 or 6 minutes of business there,

usually directs with issue at hand, that's something to listen to as well and we move to another phase, there were 3 saturday sessions in the trial of president clinton and pat cipollone. he called the movie trailer, they will not take full 8 hours, a lot of the reasons because senators are anxious to get out of here, when i've been talking to them, neil, this is about as anxious as i have seen any lawmakers get out of the building, we've had lengthy sessions, the senate impeachment rules require that you meet on saturday and that's why they are

here on saturday. senate impeachment says that, that's when we will have longer sessions where they take about 8 hours like the house impeachment managers, something that happened just a couple of moments ago, the house impeachment managers walked over what they call their trial record, they loaded this up on carts and walked it from the house side of the capitol to the senate, all 7 were there, 28,500 pages in trial record and they know it's incomplete, documents and testimony that they wanted from the white house and the administration and they never got that, so what are we expecting to see, expect to hear a lot today, jay sekulow thought they they overplayed their hands and when i spoke with angus king yesterday, he thought that was a

prebuttal with the anticipation that they would talk about the binds and the need to have bidens testify and that's why they wanted to do the prebuttal. neil, chad, this is already starting, the republicans now get their chance to take on this case. >> you are our hope for the years to come, we trust the power of your prevailing above dense -- providence, lord, we acknowledge that your thoughts are not our thoughts and your ways are not our ways for as the heavens are higher than the

earth so are your thoughts high every than our thoughts and your ways higher than our ways, lord, we love you, empower our senators, renew their strength, we pray in your dependable enable, amen. >> amen. >> please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. >> i pledge allegiance to the united states of america and to the republic for which it states, one nation, under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

senators, please be seated, if there's no objections, they are approved to date. the sergeant at arms. while the senate of the united states is sitting for the trials of the article of impeachment exhibited by the house of representatives against donald john trump, president of the united states. >> colleagues we will expect two sessions. >> pursuant to provisions of senate resolution 483 the counsel for the president have 24 hours to make the presentation of their case, will senate will now hear you. priding officer mr. cipollone to

begin presentation for the president. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. senators, leader mcconnell, democratic leader schumer and thank you for your attention, i want to start out just very briefly giving you a short plan for today. >> we are going to be respectful of your time as leader mcconnell said, we anticipate 2 points. you heard the house manager for nearly 24 hours over 3 days. we don't anticipate using that much time, we don't believe they have come anywhere near close to meet their burden for what they

are asking you to do, we believe that when you hear the facts and that's what we intend to cover today, the facts, you will find that the president did absolutely nothing wrong, and what we intend to do and have greater detail on monday, what we intend to do today is go through their records that they established in the house and we intend to show you some of the evidence that they decided over their 3 days and 24 hours that they didn't have enough time or made a decision not to show you and every time you see one of these pieces of evidence, asking yourself why didn't i see that in the first 3 days, they had it, it came out of the their

process, why didn't they show that to the senate, and i think that's an important question because as house managers, really should be to give you all of the facts because they're asking you to do something very, very consequential and i would submit to you to use the word that mr. schiff used a lot, very dangerous, and that's the second point that i'd ask you to keep in mind today, they're asking you not only to overturn the results of the last election, but as i've said before, they're asking you to remove president trump from the ballot in an election that's occurring in approximately 9 months, they're asking you to tear up all of the

ballots across this country on your own initiative take that decision away from the american people and i don't think they spent 24 hours talking to you about the consequence of that for our country, not one minute. they didn't tell you what that would mean for our country. today, this year and forever into our future, they're asking you to do something that no senate has ever done and do it with no evidence and that's wrong, and i ask you to keep in mind. i ask you to keep in mind. so what i would do is point out one piece of evidence for you

and then i'm going to turn it over to my colleagues and they will walk you through their record and they will show you things that they didn't show you. now, they didn't talk a lot about the transcript to have call which i would submit is the best of what happened on the call and they said things over and over that are simply not true, one of them was there's no evidence of president trump's interest in burden sharing, that wasn't the real reason but they didn't tell you that burden sharing was discussed in the call .

the president said and i read this line, i will say that we do a lot for ukraine, we spend a lot of effort and a lot of time, more than european countries and they should be helping you more than they are, germany does almost nothing for you, all they do is talk, it's something that i was speaking about, when i was speaking to angela merkel, she talks ukraine but she doesn't do anything, a lot of the european countries are the same way, so i think it's something that you want to look at but the united states has been very, very good to ukraine, that's where they picked up again with the quote, but they left out the entire

discussion of burden sharing, they didn't have 24 hours to tell you this, yes, you are absolutely right, not only 100% but actually 100% and i can tell you the following, i did talk to angela merkel and i did meet with her and i also met and talked with macron and i told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing on the issues with the sanctions. they are not working as much as they should work for ukraine, it turns out that even though

logically the european union should be our -- should be our biggest partner but technically the united states is a much bigger partner than the european union and i'm very grateful to you for that because the united states is doing quite a lot for ukraine, much more than the european union especially talking about sanctions against the russian federation, you heard a lot about the importance of confronting russia and we will talk about that. you will hear president trump has strong record on confronting russia, president trump has a strong record of support for ukraine.

so that's one very important example, they come here to the senate and they ask you, remove a president, tear up the ballots in all of your states, discussion of burden sharing that's in the call itself, that's emblematic of the entire presentation. i'm going to turn the presentation over to my colleague mike, he will walk you through many more examples. during each example ask

yourself, why am i just hearing about this now after 24 hours of sitting through arguments and the reason is we can talk about the process, we will talk about the law, but today we are going to confront them on the merits of their argument, now they have the burden of proof and they have not come close to meeting it. i want to ask you about one issue regarding process, if you were really interested in finding out the truth, why would you run a process the way they ran? if you were really confident in your position on the facts, why would you look everybody out of it from the president's side. why would you do that? we will talk about the process arguments, but the process

arguments also are compelling evidence on the merits, the fact that they came here for 24 hours and hid evidence from you is further evidence that they don't really believe in the facts, that this is for all their talk about election interference, that they are here to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in american history and we can't allow that to happen, it would violate our constitution, it would violate our history, it would violate our obligations to the future, most importantly, it would violately -- the american people

decide elections, they have one coming up in 9 months, so we will be very efficient and we will begin presentation, we will show you a lot of evidence that they should have showed you, efficiently and quickly, so that we can all go have an election. thank you and i yield to my colleague michael pepirro. >> mr. chief justice, members of the senate, good morning, again, my name is michael pepirro, i

serve as deputy counsel to the president, it's my honor and privilege to appear before you on behalf of president donald j. trump. >> and what is the president's response? well, it reads like a classic organized shakedown and in not so many words this is the essence of what communicates, we've been very good to your country, very good, no other country has done as much as we have but you know what i don't see much reciprocity, i have a favor i want from you though, and i will say this only 7 times so you better listen good. i want you to make dirt on political opponent, understand lots of it on this and on that, i'm going to put you in touch

with people, my attorney general bill barr, he has the whole wait of the american law enforcement behind him and i'm going to put you in touch with rudy, you're going to love him, trust him, you know what i'm asking and so i'm only going to say this a few more times, in a few more ways, and by the way, don't call me again, i will call you when you've done what i've asked, this is in some trying to communicate. >> that's fake, that's not the real call, that's not the evidence here, that's not the transcript that mr. cipollone just referenced and we can shrug it off and say we were making light or a joke but that was in a hearing in the united states house of representatives discussing the removal of the

president of the united states from office. there are very few things if any that can be as grave and serious, let's stick with the evidence. let's talk about the facts and the evidence in this case. the most important piece of evidence that we have in the case and before you is the one that we begin with 4 months ago, the actual transcript of the july 25, 2019 call between president trump and president zelensky; the real transcript. if that were the only evidence we had, it would be enough to show that the democrats' entire theory is completely unfounded, but the transcript is far from the only evidence demonstrating that the president did nothing wrong. once you sweep away all of the

bluster and innuendo, selective leaks, the closed-door examinations of the democrats' hand-picked witnesses, the stage public hearings, what we are left with are 6 key facts that have not and will not change. first, the transcript shows that the president did not condition either security assistance on anything. the paused security assistance funds aren't even mentioned on the call. second, president zelensky and other ukrainian officials have said that there was no quid pro quo and no pressure on them to review anything. third, president zelensky and

high-ranking ukrainian officials did not even though, did not even know until the end of august, over a month after the july 25 call. fourth, not a single witness testified that the president himself said that there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a presidential meeting or anything else. fifth, the security assistance flowed on september 11th and presidential meeting took place without the ukrainian government announcing any investigations. finally, the democrats blind drive to impeach the president does not and cannot change the fact as attested by the democrats' own witnesses that president trump has been a better friend and stronger supporter of ukraine than his

predecessor. those are the facts. we plan to address some of them today and next week. each one of these 6 facts standing alone is enough to sink the democrats' case, combined they have established since the beginning the president did nothing wrong, quid pro quo is unfounded and contrary to the facts, the truth is simple and right before our eyes, the president was at all times acting in national interest in pursuit of oath of office, but before i dive in and speak further about the facts, let me mention something that my colleagues will discuss in grater detail, the facts that i'm about to discus today are the democrats' facts. this is important because the house managers spoke to you for a very long time, over 21 hours

and repeatedly claim today you that their case is overwhelming and uncontested, it's not. i'm going to share a number of facts with you this morning that the house managers didn't share with you during more 21 hours, i'll ask you as mr. cipollone already mentioned that when you hear me say something that the house managers dent present to you, why they didn't tell me that, is that something i would have want to have known, why am i hearing for the first time from the president's lawyers, it's not that they didn't have enough time, that's for sure. they only showed you a very selective part of the record, their record. and they, remember this, they have the very heavy burden of

proof before you, the president is forced to mount a defense in this chamber against the record that the democrats developed, the record that we have to go on today is based entirely on house democratic facts precleared in basement bunker, not mostly, entirely. yet even those facts absolutely exonerate the president. let's start with the transcript. the president did not link security assistance to any investigations on the july 25 call. step back. on july 25, president trump called president zelensky, this was their second both call, on april 21st, president trump called to congratulate president zelensky on winning the presidential election, on july 25, the president called because president zelensky's party had just won a large

number of seats in parliament. on september 24th, before speaker pelosi had any idea what president trump and president zelensky actually said on july 25 call, she called for impeachment inquiry of president trump, in the interest of full transparency and to show that he had done nothing wrong, president trump took the unprecedented step of declassifying the transcript so that the american people can see for themselves exactly what the two discussed. what did president trump said to president zelensky, president trump raised two issues, i'm going to be speaking about those two issues a fair amount this morning, they are the two issues that go to the core of how president trump approaches foreign aid. when it comes to sending u.s. taxpayer money overseas, the president is focused on burden

sharing and corruption. first, the president rightly had real concerns about whether european and other countries were contributing to ensuring ukraine's security. second, corruption. since the fall of the soviet union ukraine has suffered one of the worst environments of corruption, a parade of witnesses testified in the house about the pervasive corruption in ukraine and it's in america's foreign policy and national security interest to help ukraine combat corruption. turning the call right off the bat, president trump mentioned burden sharing to president zelensky. president trump told president zelensky that germany does almost nothing for you and a lot of european countries are the same way, president trump specifically mentioned speaking to angela merkel of germany who talks ukraine but she doesn't do

anything. president zelensky agreed, you're absolutely right, he spoke with the leaders of germany and france and told them that they are not doing quite as much as they need to be doing. in the call president trump was talking about burden sharing, president trump turned to corruption in the form of foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election. there's absolutely nothing wrong with asking a foreign lead the other help get to the bottom of all forms of foreign interference in american presidential election, you'll hear more about that later from one of my colleagues, what else did the president say? the president also warned president zelensky that he appeared to be surrounding himself with predecessor and suggested that a very fair and very good prosecutor was shut down by some very bad people, again, one of my colleagues will speak more about that. the content of the july 25 call was in line with the trump

administration's legitimate concerns about corruption and reflected the hope that president zelensky who campaigned on a platform of reform would finally clean up ukraine. so what did president trump and president zelensky discuss? two issues, burden sharing, corruption. just as importantly what wasn't discussed on the july 25 call, there was no discussion of the paused security assistance on the july 25 call, house democrats keep pointing to president zelenky's statement that i would like to thank you for great support on area of defense but he wasn't talking about, javelin missiles, we are ready, president zelensky, we are ready, we are ready to buy

more javelins for defense purpose, javelins are the antitank missiles only made available by the ukraines by president trump, president obama refused to give javelins to ukraines for year. they were not part of the security assistance. those are different programs entirely. don't take my word for it, both former ambassador to ukraine marie yovanovitch informed that they were unrelated. the house managers didn't tell you about ambassador yovanovitc, why not, they couldn't 2 to 5 minutes out of 21 hours to make sure that the javelin sales

being discussed were not part of the security assistance. i would like you to do us a favor, though, because the country has been through a lot and ukraine knows a lot about it it. as everyone knows by now, president trump asked president zelensky and he made clear that us referred to our country and not himself, more importantly, the president was not connecting do us a favor to javelin sales that president zelensky mentioned, that makes no sense there, even if it had been the javelin sales were not part of security assistance that had been temporarily paused. i want to be very clear about this, when the democrats claim that the javelin sales discussed are part of security assistance, it is misleading, they are trying to confuse you and wrap everything in instead of unpaming -- unpacking it the

right way. as you know, head of state calls are staffed by a number of aides on both sides, lieutenant colonel alexander vindman raised concern about a call, that was just a policy concern. lieutenant colonel vindman admitted that he did not know there was a crime or anything of that nature but he had deep policy concerns, policy concerns, so there you have it. but the president, the president sets the foreign policy. in a democracy such as ours, the elected leaders make foreign policy while the unelected staff such as lieutenant colonel vindman implement the policy, other witnesses were on the july 25 call and had very different reactions to that of

lieutenant vindman, lieutenant general keith kellogg, former acting national security adviser and a long-serving and highly-decorated veteran attended the call. according to general kellogg, i was on the much reported july 25th call with president trump and president zelensky, 34-year highly experienced combat veteran who retired with rank of lieutenant general in the army, i heard nothing wrong or improper on the call. i had and have no concerns. identified those witnesses as jennifer williams and tim morrison.

jennifer williams now claims she has concerns about the call, you heard that from house managers, they were very careful in the way they worded that. what they didn't tell you is that ms. williams was so troubled at the time of the call that she told exactly zero people of her concern. she told no one for 2 months following the call, not one person. ms. william didn't raise any concerns about the call when it took place, not with lieutenant general kellogg, not with counsel, not with anyone. ms. williams waited to announce her concerns until speaker pelosi publicly announced impeachment inquiry, the house managers didn't tell you that, why not? tim morrison, colonel vindman's boss was also on the call, reported the call to counsel

security lawyers not because he was troubled of the call but worried about leaks and in his words how would it play in washington's polarized environment, i want to be clear mr. morrison testified, i was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed, mr. morrison further testified that there was nothing improper and nothing illegal about anything that was said on the call, in fact, mr. morrison repeatedly testified that he disagreed with lieutenant colonel vindman's assessment that president trump made demands of president zelensky or that he said anything improper at all. here is mr. morrison. >> in the president did he not ask zelensky of the bidens? >> that's not what i understood the president to be doing. >> do you believe in your opinion that the president of the united states demanded that president zelensky under take?

>> no, sir. >> again, there were no demands from your perspective, mr. morrison? >> that's correct, sir. >> is it fair to say that as you were listening to the call, wow, the president bribing the president of ukraine, that never crossed your mind? >> it did not, sir. >> he was extorting the president of ukraine? >> it did not, sir. >> or doing anything improper? >> correct, sir. >> significantly the ukrainian government never raised any concerns about the july 25 call, just hours after the call ambassador william taylor head of the u.s. mission in ukraine had dinner with then secretary national defense council, the call went well, he wasn't disturbed by anything, the house managers didn't tell you that. why not?

ambassador kirk volker was not on the call, but ambassador volker spoke regularly with president zelensky and other top officials in ukraine government and even met with president zelensky appear the call and in no, way shape or form that he received neglect -- any indication whatsoever for anything that reserve else quid pro quo. >> the day after the call you met with president zelensky? >> that's correct. >> he made no mention of quid pro quo? >> no. he made no mention of bribery? >> no. >> the fact is that ukrainians were not even aware of this hold on aid, is that correct? >> that's correct. >> they didn't tell you about this testimony from ambassador volker, why not?

president zelensky himself has confessed on 3 occasions that the july 25 phone call was good and normal and nobody pushed me. when president zelensky adviser was asked whether he felt there was a connection between u.s. military aid and the requester -- the request of investigation he was adamant that it was not connected to the issue. the best evidence that there was no pressure or quid pro quo is the statements of the ukrainians themselves. the fact that president zelensky himself felt no pressure and did not perceive to be any connection between security assistance and investigations would in any ordinary case, in any court be totally fatal to the prosecution, the judge will throw it out and the case would be over, what more do you need

to know? the house team knows that. they know the record inside out, upside down, left and right. so what do they do? how do they try to overcome the direct words from president zelensky and his administration that they felt no pressure. they tell you that the ukrainians must have felt pressure, regardless of what they've said, they know what's in president zelensky's mind better than president zelensky. i want you to remember this, every time that democrats say president trump issued quid pro

quo on july 25 call, they are saying that president zelenssky and top advisers are being untruthful. they acknowledged that's what they are saying, they have said in the past few days, tell me how that helps u.s. foreign policy and national security to say that about our friends? quid pro quo on the call, we know that from the transcripts, but the call was not the only evidence showing that there was no quid pro quo, there couldn't have possibly been a quid pro quo because the ukrainians did not even know that the security assistance was on hold until it was reported in the media by politico at the end of august, more than a month after the july july 25 call. think about this, democrats

accuse president of leveraging to force zelensky to announce investigations, how could that be when the ukrainians were aware, there can't be a threat without the person not knowing he's being threatened. ambassador volker testified that the ukrainians did not know about the hold until reading in politico. deputy assistance secretary of state george kent testified that no ukrainian official contacted him about paused security assistance until the first intense week in september, let's hear from the four of them. >> i believe the ukrainians became aware of the hold on august 29th and not before. that date is the first time any of them asked me about the hold by forward an article that had been published in politico.

>> it was only after when the politico argument that i got call from several calls from officials. >> was that the first time that you believe ukrainians may have had a real sense that the aid was on hold? >> yes. >> mr. kent, had you had any ukrainian official contacting you concerned about -- when was the first time that ukrainian official contacted you concerned about potential withholding of u.s. aid? >> it was after first intense week of september. >> it wasn't until the politico article? >> that's correct, i received a text message from one of my ukrainian counterparts on august 29th forwarding the article and that's the first they raised it with me. >> the house managers didn't show you this testimony from any of the four witnesses, why not? why didn't they give you the context of this testimony?

and think about this as well, if the ukrainians had been aware of the review on security assistance, they, of course, would have said something. there were numerous high-level diplomatic meetings between senior ukrainian and u.s. officials during the summer after the review on the security assistance began but before president zelensky learned of the hold through the politico article, if the ukrainian had known about the hold, they would have raised it in one of the meetings yet the ukrainians didn't say anything about the hold at a single one of those meetings, not on july 9, not on july 10, not on july 25, not on july 26, not on august 27. at none of those meetings, none of those meetings did the ukrainians mentioned the pause on security assistance. ambassador volker testified that he was regularly in touch with

the senior highest level officials in the ukrainian government and ukrainian officials would confide things and would have asked if they had any questions about the aid. nobody said a word to ambassador volker until the end of august, then within hours of the politico article being published they texted and to ask about the report, in other words, as soon as the ukrainians learned about the hold, they asked about it. now, mr. schiff said something during the 21 hours or more than 21 hours that he and his team spoke that i actually agree with, which is when he talked about common sense. many of us at the tables and in the room are former prosecutors at the state, federal or military level.

prosecutors talk a lot about common sense. common sense comes into play right here. the top ukrainian official said nothing, nothing at all to their u.s. counterparts during all of these meetings about the pause on security assistance but then, boom, as soon as the politico article comes out, suddenly in that first intense week of september in george kent's words, security assistance was all they want to talk about, what must we conclude, that they didn't know about the pause until august 28. article comes out, flurry of activity, that's common sense. it's absolutely fatal to the house managers' case, the house managers are aware that the ukrainians lack of knowledge is fatal to their case until they desperately tried to muddy the

water. secretary of defense laura cooper presented two emails, two emails that people on her staff received from people at the state department regarding conversations with people at the ukraine embassy that could have been about u.s. security assistance to ukraine. what they did not tell you is that ms. cooper testified that she could not say for certain whether the emails were about the pause on security assistance, she couldn't say one way or the other, she also testified that she didn't want to speculate about the meaning of the word, the house managers also didn't tell you that cooper testified that i reviewed my calendar and the only meeting about ukrainian official raising security question with me is on september 25th at the ukrainian independence day celebration,

the house managers didn't tell you that, the house managers also mentioned that one of ambassador volker's advisers claimed that embassy officials learned earlier than the politico article, but when asked when she heard from the ukraine embassy officials ms. croft didn't take notes and remember that ambassador volker, her boss who was in regular contact with president zelensky, i believe that ukrainians became of the hold of august 29th and not before. in contrast of testimony of volker, taylor, morrison and kent, the words of the high-ranking ukrainians themselves and the flurry of activity that began on august 28th and that's the

evidence that they want you to consider as the basis to remove the dually elected president of the united states. the bottom line is it is not possible for the brief security assistance review to have been used as leverage to president zelnsky and top ukraine officials did not know about it. that's what you need to know. the house managers didn't know how important the issue is, they told us we need today check our -- needed to check our facts, we did, we are right. president zelensky did not know of hold on aid until august when politico article was published. we know there was no quid pro quo on july 25 call and at the time of the call there was simply no evidence anywhere that

president trump ever linked security assistance to any investigations. most of the democrats' witnesses have never spoken to the president at all, let alone about ukraine security assistance. the two people in the house record who asked president trump about whether there was any linkage between security assistance and investigations were told in no uncertain terms that there's no connection between the two. when ambassador of the european union gordon sonland, i want nothing, i want no quid pro quo, even earlier on august 31, senator asked the president if there was any connection between security assistance an investigations, the president answered no way. i would never do that. who told you that? two witnesses, ambassador taylor

and tim morrison said they came to believe security assistance was linked to investigations but both witnesses based this belief entirely on what they heard from ambassador sonland before ambassador sondland spoke to the president, nearly taylor or morrison spoke to the president about the matter. how did sondland come to believe that there was assistance to investigations, the house managers didn't tell you, why not? in his public testimony ambassador sondland used variations, assume, presume, guess, speculate and belief, here are some examples. >> that was my presumption, my personal presumption, that was my belief. that was my presumption, yeah. i presume that might have to be done in order to get the aid released. it was a presumption.

i've been very clear as to when i was presuming and i was presuming on the aid, it would be pure, you know, guess work on my part, speculation, i don't know. that was the president goldman, nobody told me directly that the aid was linked to anything, i was presuming it was. >> didn't show you any of this testimony, not once during their 21-hour presentation, 21 hours, more than 21 hours and they couldn't give you the context to evaluate ambassador sondland. all the democrats have to support the alleged link security assistance and investigations is ambassador's sondland's assumptions and presumptions. >> is it correct no one on this planet told you that donald trump was tieing this aid to the investigations because if your answer is yes, then the chairman

is wrong and the headline on cnn is wrong, no one on this planet told you that president trump was tieing aid to investigations, yes or no? >> yes. >> so you really have no testimony today that ties president trump to a scheme to withhold aid in exchange of the investigations? >> other than my own presumption. >> when he was done presuming, assuming and guessing, ambassador sondland finally decide today ask president trump directly, what does the president want from ukraine, here is the answer. >> president trump when i asked him the open-ended question as i testified before previously, what do you want from ukraine, his answer was, i want nothing, i want no quid pro quo, tell zelenky to do the right thing. >> ambassador sondland stated that this was the final word he

heard from the president of the united states, he messaged taylor and volker, the president has been very clear, no quid pro quos of any kind, if you're skeptical of ambassador sondland's testimony it was corroborated by one of your colleagues, senator heard that the security assistance might be linked to investigations, so on august 31 senator johnson asked the president directly, whether there was some kind of arrangement where ukraine would take some action and the hold would be lifted, again, president trump's answer was crystal clear, no way, i would never do that, who told you that? as senator johnson wrote i have accurately characterized his reaction as angry, they didn't tell you about senator johnson's letter, why not?

the democrats' entire quid pro quo theory is based on nothing more than than the initial speculation of one person, ambassador sondland, that speculation is wrong, despite the democrats' hopes the ambassador's mistaken belief does not become true because he repeated it. many times and apparently to many people, under secretary of state david hale, george kent and ambassador volker all testified that there was no connection between security assistance and investigations. >> you believe that the policy issues that he raised concerning ukraine were valid, correct? >> yes. >> did the president of the united states ever say to you i'm going to allow aid of the united states to go to ukraine unless there were investigations into barisma the bidens and the

2016 elections? >> no, he did not. >> did the ukrainians ever tell you that they understood that they would not get a meeting with the president of the united states, a phone call with the president of the united states, military aid or foreign aid from the united states unless they undertook investigations of barism and the bidens and the 2016 elections? >> no, they did not. >> the house managers never said that, why not? why they didn't show you this testimony, why they didn't tell you about the testimony? why they didn't full testimony in full and proper context for your consideration? because none of this fits their narrative and it wouldn't lead to predetermined outcome. thank you for your attention, i yield to mr. sekulow.

>> mr. chief justice, majority leader mcconnell, democratic leader schumer, house managers, members of the senate, let me begin by saying that you cannot simply decide this case in a vacuum. schiff said yesterday, i believe it was his father who said you should put yourself in someone else's shoes. let's for a moment put ourselves in the shoes of the president of the united states right now. before he was sworn into office he was subjected to an investigation by the federal bureau of investigation called cross-fire hurricane. the president within 6 months of his inauguration found a special

counsel being appointed to investigate a russia-collusion theory. in their opening statement, several members of the house managers tried to once again relitigate the mueller case. here is the bottom line. this is part 1 of the mueller report. this part alone, the house managers and the presentation, a couple times referenced this for that. let me tell you something, this cost $32 million. this investigation took 2800 subpoenas. this investigation had 500 search warrants.

this had 230 orders for communication records. this had 500 witness interviews. all to reach the following conclusion and i'm going to quote from the mueller report itself, it can be found on page 173. as it relates to this whole matter of collusion and conspiracy, ultimately, the words of bob mueller in his report, this investigation did not establish that the campaign coordinated or conspired with the russian government in selection interference activities. let me say that again. this, the mueller report, resulted in this. that for this. ultimately not established that the campaign coordinated or

conspired with the russian government in its election-related interference activities. this for that. in his summation on thursday night, manager schiff presented that they determined not to go with agencies and instead decided to listen to people that he trusted and he would inquire about the ukraine issue, mr. schiff did not like the fact that the president did not apparently blindly trust some of the advice given by the intelligence agencies. first of all, let me be clear. disagreeing with the president's decision on foreign policy matters or whose advice he's going to take is in no way is impeachable offense.

second, mr. schiff and mr. nadler of all people because they chair significant committees, really should know this and they should know what's happened. let me remind you of something, just 6/10 of a mile from this chamber sits the foreign intelligence surveillance court, also known as the fisa court. it is the federal court established and authorizeded under the federal intelligence surveillance act to oversee requests by federal agencies for surveillance orders against foreign spies inside the united states, including american citizens. because of the sensitive nature of its business, the court is a more secret court. its hearings are closed to the public. in this court there are no defense counsel, no opportunity to cross examine witness and no ability to test evidence. the only material that the court ever sees are those materials submitted on trust, on trust by

members of the intelligence community. with the presumption that they would be acting in good faith. on december 17th, 2019 the fisa court issued a scathing order in response to the justice department inspector general's report and fbi's cross fire hurricane investigation into whether or not the trump campaign was coordinating with russia. we already know the conclusion. that report detailed the fbi's pattern of practice, systematic abuses of obtaining surveillance order requests and the process they utilize. in its order, and this is the order from the court, i'm going to read it. this order responds to reports that personnel of the frl bureau of investigation provided false information to the national security division of the department of justice and

withheld material information from the nsd which was detrimental to the fbi's case in connection with four applications to the foreign intelligence surveillance court. when the fbi personnel misled nsd, in the ways that are described in these reports, they equally misled the foreign intelligence surveillance court. this order has been followed up, there's been another order. it was declassified just a couple of days ago. thanks in large part, the court said, to the office of inspector general's u.s. department of justice, the court has received notice of material misstatements and omissions in applications filed by the government in the above captioned documents, doj assesses that with respect to the applications and it lists two specific docket numbers, 17375, and 17679, if not earlier, there was not--

there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that carter page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. the president had reason to be concerned about the information he was being provided. now, we could ignore this. we could make believe this did not happen, but it did. so as we begin introducing our arguments, i want to correct a couple of things on the record as well. that's what we're doing today. we really intend to show over the next several days that the evidence is actually really overwhelming that the president did nothing wrong. mr. schiff and his colleagues repeatedly told you that the intelligence community assessment, that russia was acting alone, responsible for

the election interference implying that this somehow debunked the idea that there might be, you know, interference from other countries, including ukraine. mr. nadler deployed a similar argument saying that president trump thought quote, ukraine, not russia interfered in our last presidential election and this is basically what we call a straw man argument. let me be clear. the house managers over 23 hour period kept pushing this false dichotomy that it was either russia or ukraine, but not both. they kept telling you that the conclusion of the intelligence community and mr. mueller was russia alone with regard to the 2016 elections. of course, that's not -- the report that bob mueller wrote focused on russian interference. although there is some information in letters regarding ukraine and i'm going to point

to those in a few moments. in fact, let me report -- i think i'll talk about those letter right now. this is a letter dated may 4th, 2018 to mr. yuriy lutsenko, the prosecutor general of ukraine. it was a letter requesting that his office cooperate with the mueller investigation involving ukraine issues and issues involving ukraine government or law enforcement officials. it's signed by senator menendez, senator leahy and senator durbin. i'm doing this to put this in an entire perspective. house managers tried to tell you that the importance -- remember the whole discussion and my colleague, mr. purpura talked

about this between president zelensky and president trump and the bilateral meeting in the oval office at the white house. as if an article of impeachment could be based upon a meeting not taking place in the white hou house, but taking place someplace else. like the united nations general assembly, where, it in fact did take place. now dr. fiona hill was quite clear saying a white house meeting would supply the ukrainian government with quote, the legitimacy it needed especially vis-a-vis the russians and the white house with recognition of their legitimacy as a sovereign state, but here is what they did not play. here's what they did not tell you. and i'm going to quote from dr.

hill's testimony on page 145 of her transcript. these are her words. this is what she said under oath. it wasn't always the white house meaning per se, but definitely a presidential level meeting. you know, a meeting with zelensky and the president. i mean it could have taken place in poland, in warsaw. it could have been, you know, a proper bilateral and some other context. but in other words, a white house level presidential meeting. that could be found on page 145. and contrary to what manager schiff and some of the other managers told you, that this meeting did in fact occurred. it occurred at the u.n. general assembly on september 25th, 2019 ch 2019. those were the words of dr. hill that you did not hear.

this case is really not about presidential wrongdoing. this entire impeachment process is about the house managers insistence that they are able to read everybody's thoughts, they can read everybody's intention, even when the principal speakers, the witnesses themselves insist that those interpretations are wrong. manager schiff, manager schiff, managers garcia and demings relied heavily on selected clips from ambassador sondland's testimony. i am not going to replay those. my colleague, mr. purpura played those for you, it's clear. we're not going to play the same clips seven times. he said it. you saw it. that's the evidence.

miss lofgren said that, you know, m numerous witnesses testified, it's a quote, there is no reason why the hold was lifted on september 11, again, suggesting that the president's reason for the hold, ukrainian corruption and burden sharing were somehow created after the fact. but again, as my colleague just showed you, burden sharing was raised in the transcript itself. mr. schiff stated here that jut like the implementation of the the hold president trump provided no reason for the release. this also is wrong. in their testimony, ambassadors volker and sondland said that the president raised his concerns about ukrainian corruption in the may 23rd, 2019

meeting with the ukraine delegation. deputy defense secretary laura craft testified that she received an e-mail in june of 2019 listing follow-ups from a meeting between the secretary of defense chief of staff and the president relating specifically to ukrainian security assistance, including asking about what other countries are contributing. burden sharing. that could be found in laura cooper's deposition, pages 33 and 34. the president mentioned both corruption and burden sharing to senator johnson, as you already heard. it's also important to note that as ambassador david hale testified that foreign aid generally was undergoing a review in 2019, from page 84 of

his november 6th, 2019 testimony, he said the administration did not want to take a sort of business as usual approach to foreign assistance. a feeling that once a country has received a certain assistance package, it's something that continues forever. they didn't talk about that in the 23-hour presentation. dr. fiona hill confirmed this review and testified on november 21st, 2019, i will again quote from page 75 of her testimony, that quote, there had been a directive for wholesale, a whole scale review of our foreign policy. foreign policy assistance, and the ties between our foreign policy objectives and that assistance. this had been going on actually for many months.

so multiple witnesses testified that the president had longstanding concerns and specific concerns about ukraine. the house managers understandably, understandably ignore the testimony that took place before their own committees. in her testimony of october 14th, 2019 dr. hill testified at pages 118 and 119 of her transcript that she thinks the president has actually quite publicly said that he was very skeptical about corruption in ukraine and then she said, again in her testimony, and in fact, he's not alone because everyo everyone-- because everyone has expressed great concerns about corruption in ukraine.

similarly, ambassador yovanovitch testified that they all had concerns about corruption in ukraine and as noted on pages 142 of her deposition transcript when asked what she knew about the president's deep-rooted skepticism about ukraine's business environment, she anticipated that president trump delivered an anti-corruption message to former ukrainian president poroshenko in their first meeting in the white house on june 20th, 2017 ch. and nfc senior director morrison confirmed on november 19th, 2019 at page 63 in his testimony transcript that this was during the volker, morrison public hearing, that he was aware that the president thought ukraine had a corruption problem, his words again, and he continued, as did many others familiar with ukraine. and according to her october

30th, 2019 testimony, the special advisor for ukraine negotiations at the state department katherine croft also heard the president raise the issue of corruption with then president poroshenko of ukraine during a bilateral meeting at the united nations general assembly, this time in september of 2017 ch. special advisor croft testified she also understood the president's concerns that, quote, ukraine is corrupt because she has been -- this is her words, tasked to write a paper to help then nsa head mcmasters, general mcmasters make the case to the president in connection with prior, prior security assistance. these concerns were entirely justified. when asked, and again a quote

from dr. hill's october 14th, 29 hearing transcript, certainly, these are her words, eliminating corruption in ukraine was one of, if the central goals of a foreign policy. now, does anybody think that one election of one president that ran on a reform platform, who finally gets a majority in their legislative body, that corruption in ukraine just evaporates? that's like looking at this-- goes back to the mueller report. you can't look at these issues in a vacuum. virtually every witness agreed that confronting corruption should be at the forefront of u.s. policy. now, i think there's some other things we have to understand

about timing. this, again, is according to the testimony of tim morrison. his testimony. and this is when president zelensky was first elected. there was -- this is -- there was-- these are his words, concerns whether he would be a genuine reformer and whether he would root out corruption. at this time, this was before the election unclear whether president zelensky's party would actually be able to get a workable majority. i think we're all glad that they did. to say that that's been tested or determined that corruption in ukraine has been removed, the anti-corruption court of ukraine did not commence its work until september 5th of 2019.

121 days ago, four months ago. we're acting as if there was a magic wand, that there was new elections and everything was now fine. i will not, because we're going to hear more about it, get into some of the meetings the vice-president had. you'll hear that in the days ahead. manager crowe said this. what's most interesting to me about this, president trump was only interested in ukraine aid. his words. nobody else. the u.s. provide aids to dozens of countries around the world. lots of partners and allies, he didn't ask about any of them. just ukraine. i appreciate your service to our country. i really do. i didn't serve in the military

and i appreciate that. but let's get our facts straight. that is what manager crowe said. here is what actually happened. president trump has placed holds on aid a number of times. we just take basic due diligence to figure this out. in september 2019, the administration announced that it was withholding over $100 million in aid to afghanistan over concerns about government corruption. in august, 2019 president trump announced that the administration and were in talks to substantially increase south korea's share, burden sharing of the compensations of u.s. military aid support for south korea. in june president trump cut or paused over $550 million in foreign aid to el salvador, honduras and guatemala because those countries were not fairly

sharing the burdens of preventing mass migration to the united states. in june the administration temporarily paused $105 million in aid to lebanon. the administration lifted that hold in december with one official explaining that the administration continually reviews and thoroughly evaluates the effectiveness of all united states foreign assistance to ensure that funds go towards activities that further u.s. foreign policy. and also further our national security interests. like any administration would. in september, 2018, the administration canceled a $300 million-- $300 million in aid to pakistan because it was not meeting its counterterrorism obligations. you didn't hear about any of

that from my democratic colleagues, the house managers. none of that was discussed. undersecretary hale, again, his transcript said that, quote, aid has been withheld from several countries across the globe for various reasons. dr. hill similarly explained there was a freeze put on all kinds of aid, also freeze put on assistance because it was a process at the time of an awful lot of reviews going on on foreign assistance. that's the hill deposition transcript. she added, this was one of the star witnesses for the managers, she added, this again not played, that in her experience, stops and starts are sometimes common with foreign assistance. and that the office of management and budget holds up dollars all the time including the path for dollars going to ukraine in the past. similarly, ambassador volker affirmed that aid gets held up from time to time for a whole

assortment of reasons. manager crowe told you that the president's ukraine policy was not strong against russia, noting that we help our partner fight russia over there so we don't have to fight russia here. our friend on the front lines and trenches and with sneakers. and this was following the russian invasion of ukraine, and stood by ukraine and that's true that the united states has stood by the ukraine since 2014. only one president since then took a very concrete step. some of you supported it. and that step included actually providing ukraine with lethal weapons, including javelin missiles. that's what president trump did. some of you in this very room, some of you managers actually supported that. here is what ambassador taylor said that you didn't hear in the 23 hours.

you didn't hear this. javelin missiles are serious weapons. they will kill russian tanks. ambassador yovanovitch agreed stating that ukraine policy under president trump, president trump actually got stronger, stronger than it was under president obama. there was talks about sanctions. president trump has also imposed heavy sanctions on russia for president zelensky thanked him. the united states has imposed heavy sanctions on russia. president zelensky thanked him. manager jeff ris said the idea that trump cares about corruption is laughable. here is what dr. hill said. they didn't play this. eliminating corruption in ukraine was one of if not the

central goal of u.s. foreign policy in ukraine. let me say that again. dr. hill testified that eliminating corruption in ukraine was one of if not the central goal of u.s. foreign policy in ukraine. you're taking notes you can find that at hill deposition transcript 34 colon 7 through 13. dr. hill also said that she thinks the president is actually quite publicly said that he was very skeptical about corruption in ukraine. in fact, he's not alone, she said this as well, everyone has expressed, again, great concerns about corruption. ambassador yovanovitch, they didn't play this. she also said we all had concerns. national security director morrison confirmed that, quote, he was aware that the president thought ukraine had a corruption problem, as did many other people familiar with it.

i am not going to continue to go over and over and over again the evidence that they did not put before you. because we would be here for a lot longer than 24 hours. but to say that the president of the united states did not -- was not concerned about burden sharing, that he was not concerned about corruption in ukraine, the facts from their heari hearing, the facts from their hearing establish exactly the opposite. the president wasn't concerned about burden sharing? read all of the records.

and then there was mr. schiff saying yesterday, maybe we can learn a lot more from our ukrainian ally. let me read you what our ukrainian ally said. president zelensky. when asked about these allegations of quid pro quo, he said i think you read everything, i think you read the text. he says, we had a good phone call. those are his word. it was normal. we spoke about many things. i think, and you read it, that nobody pushed me. they think you can read minds, i think you look at the words. would yield balance of my time to my colleague the deputy white house counsel pat philbin. he's going to address two issues, we're going to try to do this in a systematic way in the

days aheadment one involving issues related. and come up, and want to do this in sequence. subpoenas, and -- since it was end of theirs and fresh in everybody's mind. mr. chief justice. >> mr. chief justice, senators, majority leader mcconnell, democratic leader schumer, good morning. as mr. sekulow said i'm going to touch on a couple of issues related to obstruction and due process as just to hit on some points before we go into more detail in the rest of our presentation. i'd like to start with one of the points that manager jeffries

focused a lot on towards the end of the presentation yesterday related to the obstruction charge and second article of impeachment because he tried to portray a picture of what he called blanket defiance, that there was a response from the trump administration that was simply, we won't cooperate with anything, we won't give you any documents, we won't do anything and it was blanket defiance, really, without explanation, that that was all there was, an assertion that we wouldn't cooperate and he said, and i pulled this from the transcript, that president trump's objections are not generally rooted in the law and are not legal arguments. and that's simply not true. that's simply not truth. in every instance when there was resistance to a subpoena, resistance to a subpoena for a witness or for documents, there was a legal explanation of the justification for it. for example, they focused a lot on an october 8th letter from

the counsel, pat cipollone, but they didn't show you an october 18th letter up on the screen now that went through in detail why subpoenas that had been issued by manager schiff's committees were invalid. because the house has not authorized their committees to conduct any such inquiry or to subpoena information in further rance of it. that's because the house had not taken a vote to authorize the committee to exercise the power of impeachment to issue any compulsory process. i'll get into that in a moment. not only was there a reason, and not just blanket defiance. every step that they took was an opinion by the department of justice from the office of legal counsel. and those are explained in our brief and made the opinion from

the legal counsel is actually attached in our trial memorandum as an appendix. mr. jeffries and other managers suggested the trump administration took the approach of no negotiation, blanket refusal and no attempt to accommodate. that's also not true. in the october 8th letter that mr. cipollone sent to speaker pelosi and said explicitly, quote, if the committees wish to return to the regular order of oversight requests, we stand ready to engage in that process as we have in the past. in a manner consistent with well-established bipartisan constitutional protections and a respect for the separation of powers enshrined in the constitution. end quote. it was manager schiff and his committees that did not want to engage in any accommodation process. we had said that we were willing to explore that.

house managers have also asserted a numbers of times that came up on the first long night when we were here until 2:00 as well, the trump administration never asserted executive privilege, never asserted executive privilege and i explained at the time, it's technically true, but misleading, misleading because the rationale on which the subpoenas were resisted never depended on an assertion of executive privilege. each of the rationales that we covered, and i'll go into one, house subpoenas were not authorized, does not depend on making that formal assertion of executive privilege. it's a different legal rationale. the subpoenas weren't authorized because there was no vote. or the subpoenas were to senior advisors to the president who are immune from congressional compulsion or the subpoenas were forcing executive branch officials to testify without the presence of agency counsel,

which is a separate legal infirmty, again supported by an opinion from the office of legal counsel at the department of justice. but let me turn to the specific issue of the invalidity of the subpoenas because they weren't supported by a vote of the house authorizing manager schiff's committees to exercise the power of impeachment, to issue compulsory process. manager jeffries said there were no supreme court precedents suggesting such a requirement and that every investigation into a presidential impeachment in history has begun without a vote from the house. and those statements simply aren't accurate. there is speak -- supreme court precedent explaining the principle either house of congress gets its authority only by a resolution by the parent

body. united states versus rumley, and watkins versus united states makes it very clear and it's common sense. the constitution assigns the sole power of impeachment to the house of representatives, to the house, not to any member, not to a subcommittee and that authority can be delegated to a committee to use only by a vote of the house. it would be the same here in the senate. the senate has the sole power to try impeachments, but if there were no rules that had been adopted by the senate, would you think that the majority leader himself could simply decide that he would have a committee receive evidence, handle that, submit a recommendation to the senate and that would be the way that the trial would occur, without a vote from the senate to give authority to that

committee? i don't think so. it doesn't make sense. it's not the way the constitution assigns that authority. and it's the same in the house. here there was no vote to authorize a committee to exercise power impeachment and this law has been boiled down by the d.c. circuit in exxon corp. versus ftc, to explain it that way, to issue a valid subpoena, a committee or subcommittee must conform strictly to the resolution establishing its investigatory powers. there must be a resolution voted on by the parent body to give the committee that power. and the problem here is there is no standing rule. there was no standing authority giving manager shift's committee the authority to use the power of impeachment to issue compulsory process. rule 10 of the house discusses legislative authority. it doesn't mention impeachment.

and that is why in every presidential impeachment in history, the house has initiated the inquiry by voting to give a committee the authority to pursue that inquiry. so, coulden tr ee een -- contrary to what manager jeffries suggested, there has always been in every presidential impeachment inquiry a vote from the full house to authorize the committee and that's the only way the inquiry begins. there were three different votes for the impeachment of president andrew johnson. in january of 1867, march of 1867 and february of 1868. for president nixon, chairman rudino of the house judiciary committee explained there was a move to have him issue subpoenas after the saturday night massacre, and they determined that they did not have that authority in the house judiciary committee without a vote from the house.

and he determined, as he explained, that a resolution has always been passed by the house, it is a necessary step if we are to meet our obligations. there's been reference to investigatory activities starting in the house judiciary committee in the nixon impeachment prior to the vote from the house, but all that the committee was doing was assembling publicly available information and information that had been gathered by other congressional committees. there was never an attempt to issue compulsory process until there had been a vote by the house to give the house judiciary committee that authority. similarly, in the clinton impeachment, there were two votes from the full house to give the house judiciary committee authority to proceed. first the vote on the resolution, 5 to 5, just to allow the committee to examine

the independent counsel report and determine, make recommendations and how to proceed and then a separate resolution, house resolution 581 that gave the house judiciary committee subpoena authority. and at the time, in a house report, the house judiciary committee explained, i'm quoting, because the issue of impeachment is of such overwhelming importance, the committee decided that it must receive authorization from the full house before proceeding on any further course of action, because impeachment is delegated solely to the house of representatives by the confusion, the full house should be involved in decision making regarding various stages of impeachment. here, the house democrat skipped over that step completely. what they had instead was simply a press conference from speaker pelosi. announcing that she was

directing committees to proceed with an impeachment inquiry against the president of the united states. speaker pelosi didn't have the authority to delegate the power of the house to those committees in her own. so why does it matter? it matters because the constitution places that authority in the house and ensures that there's a democratic check on the exercise of that authority. that there has to be a vote by the full house before there can be a proceeding to start inquiring into impeaching the president of the united states. one of the concerns of impeachment was a potential for a partisan impeachment, a partisan impeachment pushed merely by a faction, and a way to ensure a check on that is to require democratic accountability from the full house to have a vote from the entire house before an inquiry

can proceed. that didn't happen here. it was only half five weeks of hearings that the house decided to have a vote. and what that meant at the outset was that all of the subpoenas that were issued under the law of the supreme court cases i discussed, all of those subpoenas were invalid and that is what the trump administration pointed out specifically to the house. that was the reason for not responding to them. because under long settled precedent there had to be a vote from the house to give authority and the administration would not respond to subpoenas that were inval invalid. now, the next point i'd like to touch on briefly has to do with due process. because we've heard from the house managers that they offered the president due process at the house judiciary committee.

and manager nadler described it as he sent the president a letter, the president's counsel a letter offering to allow the president to participate and the president's counsel just refused as if that was the only exchange and there was just a blanket refusal to participate. but let me explain what actually happened. and i should note before i get into those details, there was a suggestion, also, that due process is not required in the choice proceeding, that it's simply a privilege. but that wasn't the position that manager nadler has taken in the past. in 2016 he said, quote, the power of impeachment is a solemn responsibility, assigned to the house by the constitution and to this committee by our peers. that demands a rigorous level of due process. in the clinton impeachment in

1998 he explained, what does due process mean? it means among other things, the right to confront the witnesses against you, to call your own witnesses and to have the assistance of counsel. now, i think we all know that all of those rights were denied to the president in the first two rounds of hearings. the first round of secret hearings in the basement bunker where manager schiff had three committees holding hearings, and in and around the public hearings, to take the testimony that had been screened in the basement bunker and have it in a public televised setting, which was totally unprecedented in any presidential impeachment inquiry, in both the clinton and the nixon inquiries, for every public hearing, the president was allowed to be present by counsel and cross examine witnesses. but the house managers say that's all right because when we got to the third round of hearings, after people had

testified twice, then we were going to allow the president to have some due process. but the way that played out was this. first they scheduled a hearing for december 4th that was going to hear solely from law professors. and by the time they wanted the president to commit whether he would participate, it was unclear, they couldn't specify how many law professors or who the law professors were going to be and the president's counsel wrote back and declined to participate in that. at the same time manager nadler had asked what other rights under the house resolution 660, the rules governing the house inquiry the president would like to exercise. and the president's counsel wrote back, asking specific questions in order to be able to make an informed decision and asked whether you intend to allow fact witnesses to be

called, including the witnesses who had been requested by ranking member nunes. whether you intend to allow members of the judiciary committee and the president's counsel to cross examine fact witnesses and whether your colleagues on the judiciary committee will be allowed to call witnesses of their choosing and manager nadler did not respond to that letter. there wasn't information provided and we had discussions with the staff on the judiciary committee to try to find out what were the plans, what were the hearings going to be like. and the way the week played out on december 4th, there was the hearing with the law professors. the first hearing before the judiciary committee, and on december 5th, the morning of december 5th, speaker pelosi announced the conclusion of the entire judiciary process because she announced she was directing

chairman nadler to draft articles of impeachment. so the conclusion of the whole process was already set. then after the close of business on the 5th, we learned from the staff that the committee had no plans, other than a hearing on december 9th, to hear from staffers who had prepared hipse committee reports and had no plans to have other hearings, no plans to hear from fact witnesses, no plans to do any factual investigation. so the president was given a choice of participating in a process that was going to already have the outcome determined, the speaker had already said articles of impeachment were going to be drafted and where there were no plans to hear from any fact witnesses. that's not due process. and that's why the president declined to participate in that process because the judiciary

committee had already decided they were going to accept an ex parte record, developed in manager schiff's process and there was no point in participating in that. so the idea that there was due process offered to the president is simply not accurate. the entire proceedings in the house from the time of the september 4th press conference until the judiciary committee began marking up articles of impeachment on december 11th lasted 78 days. it's the fastest investigatory process for a presidential impeachment in history. and for 71 days of that process, for 71 days of the hearings and taking of deposition and hearing testimony, the president was completely locked out.

he couldn't be represented by counsel, he couldn't cross examine witnesses, he couldn't present evidence. he couldn't present witnesses for 71 of the 78 days. that's not due process. and it goes to a point that mr. cipollone raised earlier, why would you have a process like that? what does that tell you about the process? as we've pointed out a couple of times, cross examination in our legal system is regarded as the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth, it's essential. the supreme court has said in goldberg versus kelly, for any determination that's important that requires determining facts, cross examination has been one of the keys for due process. why did they design a mechanism here where the president was locked out and denied the

ability to cross examine witnesses? it's because they weren't really interested in getting at the facts and the truth. they had a timetable to meet. they wanted to have impeachment done by christmas, and that's what they were striving to do. now, as a slight shift in gears, i want to touch on one last point before i yield to one of my colleagues. and that relates to the whistleblower. the whistleblower, who we haven't heard that much about. who started all of this. the whistleblower, we know from a letter that the inspector general of the intelligence community sent that he thought

that the whistleblower had political bias. we don't know exactly what the political bias was because the inspector general testified in the house committees in executive session and that transcript is still secret. it wasn't transmitted up to the house judiciary committee. we haven't seen it, we don't know what's in it. we don't know what he was asked and what he revealed about the whistleblower. now you would think that before going forward with an impeachment proceeding against the president of the united states that you would want to find out something about the complainant that had started all of this because motivations, bias, reasons for wanting to bring this complaint could be relevant. but there wasn't any inquiry into that.

recent reports, public reports suggest that potentially the whistleblower was an intelligence community staffer who worked with then vice-president biden on ukraine matters, which, if true, would suggest an even greater reason for wanting to know about potential bias or motive for the whistleblower. and at first, when things start started, it seemed like everyone agreed that we should hear from the whistleblower, including manager schiff. and i think we have what he said. >> but, yes, we would love to talk directly with the whistleblower. we'll get the unfiltered testimony of the whistleblower. we don't need the whistleblower. >> what changed? at first manager schiff agreed, we should hear the unfiltered testimony from the

whistleblower. but then he changed his mind. and he suggested that it was because now we had the transcript, but the second clip there was from september 19th which was four days after the transcript had been released. but there was something else that came into play and that was something that manager schiff had said earlier when he was asked about whether he had spoken to the whistleblower. >> we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower. we would like to. >> and it turned out that that statement was not truthful. around october 2nd or 3rd, it was exposed that manager schiff's staff, at least, had had spoken with the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed the complaint and potentially had given some guidance of some sort to the whistleblower and after that point, it became critical

to shut down any inquiry into the whistleblower. and during the house hearings, of course, manager schiff was this charge. he was chairing the hearing and that creates a real problem from a due process perspective, he was a fact witness. since he was saying something that wasn't truthful about that contact, he had a reason to not want that inquiry and it was he who ensured that there wasn't any inquiry into that. now, this is relevant here, i think, because as you've heard from my colleagues, a lot of

what we've heard over the past 23 hours, over the past three days, has been from chairman schiff and he has been telling you i think so this like what's in president trump's head. what's in president zelensky's head. it's his interpretation of the facts and evidence trying of pull inferences out of things. and there's another statement that chairman schiff made that i think we have on video. >> you admit, all you have right now is a circumstantial case? >> actually no, chuck, i can tell you that the case is more than that. and i can't go into the particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now, so, again, i think-- >> you have seen direct evidence of collusion? >> i don't want to go into specifics, but i will say that there is evidence that is not circumstantial and is very much

worthy of investigation. >> so that was in march of 2017 when chairman schiff as ranking member of hipsy was telling the american public he had more than circumstantial evidence, that president trump's campaign had clueded with russia. and the mueller report as mr. sekulow pointed out, after 32 million and after 500 search warrants, roughly 500 search warrants termed there was no collusion, that that wasn't true. and we wanted to point these things out simply because for this reason, chairman schiff has made so much of the house's case about the credibility of

interpretations that the house managers want to place on not hard evidence, but on inferences. they want to tell you what president trump thought. they want to tell you don't believe what zelensky said. we can tell you what zelensky actually thought. don't believe what the other ukrainians actually said about not being pressured, we can actually what they actually thought. that it is very relevant to know whether the assessments of evidence that he's presented in the past are accurate. and we submit that they have not been and that that is relevant for your consideration. with that, i will yield to my colleague, mr. cipollone. >> mr. chief justice, members of the senate, i have good news, just a few more minutes from us today. but i want to point out a couple

of points. number one, just to follow up on what mr. philbin just told you. do you know who else didn't show up in the judiciary committee to answer questions about his report in the way ken starr did in the clinton impeachment? ken starr was subjected to cross examination by the president's counsel. do you know who didn't show up in the judiciary committee? chairman schiff. he did not show up. he did not give chairman nadler the respect of appearing before his committee and answering questions for his committee. he did send his staff, but why didn't he show up? another good question you should think about.

now, they've come here today and they basically said, let's cancel an election over a meeting with the ukraine, with the ukraine. and as my colleagues have shown, they failed to give you key facts about a meeting and lots of other evidence that they produce themselves. but let's talk about the meeting. it's all about an invitation about a meeting. if you look at the first transcript, at the first transcript the president said to president zelensky, when you're settled in and ready i'd like to invite you to the white house. we have a lot to talk about, but we're with you all the way and president zelensky said, well, thank you for the invitation. we accept the invitation and look forward to the visit, thank

you again. then president zelensky got a letter on may 29th inviting him again to come to the white house. and then going back to the transcript of the july 25th call, again, a part of the call that they didn't talk to you abo about, president trump said whenever you would like to come to the white house, feel free to call. give us a date and we'll work that out. i look forward to seeing you. president zelensky replied, thank you very much. i would be very happy to come and would be happy to meet with you personally and get to know you better. i'm looking forward to our meeting and i also would like to invite you to visit ukraine and

come to the city of kyiv, which is a beautiful city. we have a beautiful country which would welcome you. then he said, on the other hand, i believe on september 1 we will be in poland. and we can meet in poland, hopefully. now, they didn't read you that part of the transcript and they didn't tell you what happened. a meeting in poland was scheduled. president trump was scheduled to go to poland. he was scheduled to meet with president zelensky. what happened? president trump couldn't go to poland. why? because there was a hurricane in the united states and he thought it would be better for him to stay here to help deal with the hurricane. so the vice-president went. why didn't they tell you that?

why didn't they tell you that president zelensky suggested, hey, how about we meet in poland? why didn't you tell them that that meeting was scheduled and had to be canceled for a hurricane? why? so that was our first question that we asked you. you heard a lot of facts that they didn't tell you. facts that are critical, facts that they know completely collapse their case on the facts. now you heard a lot from them. you're not going to hear facts from the president's lawyers. they're not going to talk to you about the facts. that's all we've done today. and ask yourself, ask yourself, given the facts you heard today that they didn't tell you, who doesn't want to talk about the facts? who doesn't want to talk about

the facts? the american people paid a lot of money for those facts, they paid a lot of money for this investigation. and they didn't bother to tell you, ask yourself why. if they don't want to be fair to the president, at least out of respect for all of you, they should be fair to you. they should tell you these things. and when they don't tell you these things, it means someth g something. so think about that. impeachment shouldn't be a shell game. they should give you the facts. that's all we have for today. we ask you out of respect to think about, think about