Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER.
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, the House of Representatives continues to interview key witnesses as part of its impeachment inquiry. Each witness has reportedly added details and context to the central focus of the inquiry; that the President allegedly pressured a foreign leader to interfere in domestic politics and used the power of his office for personal political gain.
The House must follow the facts where they lead and continue the investigation until all the facts come out. When and if there is a potential trial in the Senate, it will be our job to impartially look at all the evidence and come to our own independent judgment.
I remind my colleagues of this fact because in recent days a few of my colleagues seem to be jumping to conclusions. We all know about our colleagues in the House Republican caucus who have made a show of storming classified hearings, even though many of them could participate in those hearings, who have shifted their defenses of the President on a nearly daily basis, who only weeks ago made the idea of no quid pro quo the linchpin of their argument in support of the President but now admit that the President might have engaged in a quid pro quo, but there is nothing wrong with that.
In the House, the shifting sands of argument to embrace, to almost kneel at the feet of the President is appalling. They contradict themselves. They turn themselves into pretzels before all of the facts come out because they just blindly want to say that the President is right. That is not how the Constitution asks us to conduct ourselves as legislators.
In the Senate, we are beginning to get that germ of coming to conclusions before we hear all the facts, before a trial occurs. That nasty germ is spreading. Senior Members said yesterday that they will refuse to read any transcript from the House investigation because they have written the whole process off as a bunch of BS. If they were using taxpayer dollars, much needed foreign aid--an important part of our foreign policy tool--to gain an advantage on a political rival, if that is true, that is BS? Our Senate Judiciary chairman knows better, but his blind loyalties, his abject following of whatever President Trump wants, it seems, make him say things like that.
Yesterday, Leader McConnell stepped over the line, in my judgment, when he said that if an impeachment vote were held today, the President would be acquitted. Instead of speculating about the hypothetical trial or writing off the entire process before it has even concluded, how about we all wait for the facts to come out? That is our job.
Facts can be stubborn things. Just yesterday we learned that a key figure provided supplementary testimony that he told a top Ukraine official that U.S. military assistance was conditioned on an announcement by Ukraine that it was opening the investigations President Trump requested. Instead of leaping to the President's defense to declare no quid pro quo as many House Republicans did--a claim now contradicted by several witnesses--everyone should wait for the facts to come out. Fairness demands that of us.
Before I move on to another topic, there is another troubling development in this area--efforts by the White House and a Member of this Chamber to disclose the identity of the whistleblower. Let me repeat that. The White House and even a Member of this Chamber are openly advocating that Federal whistleblower protections be violated, that laws be broken, and the health and safety of the whistleblower and their family be put at risk. Shame, shame--it is just outrageous.
We are in an extraordinary moment of history when Republicans over only a few weeks have shifted from saying that no laws were broken to saying that laws were broken but it is not impeachable to outright advocating that laws be broken. This is wrong. This is against democracy. This is against the grain of this country that we have been so proud of for 200-some-odd years. Whistleblowers who stand up for the Constitution should not be targeted by the President or powerful Members of the legislative branch, for sure. And even if you don't agree with that, you have to agree that it is the law and you shouldn't break it. We are a nation of laws. President Trump should hear that. So should the junior Senator from Kentucky--please.
On a good note, I was pleased to hear that several of my Republican colleagues stood up yesterday and did the right thing. They defended the whistleblower's legal protections, including a Member of the Republican Senate leadership. Later today, I hope these Senators--and, indeed, all Senators--join Democrats in approving a resolution offered by my colleague Senator Hirono that supports the whistleblower protections. Senator Hirono will be asking unanimous consent to pass it, and we should, for the sake of the safety of this whistleblower, whether you like what he or she did or you don't, for the sake of rule of law, and for the sake of what balance of power is all about. Judicial Nominations
Mr. President, later today President Trump will give remarks from the White House on the Judiciary, presumably to give himself one big pat on the back for the Federal bench. He is good at that. He likes doing that. He does that almost more than governing.
As a Senator, I have now worked with four separate administrations, Democrat and Republican, on the appointment of Federal judges. I can say with perfect confidence that over the last 3 years, President Trump has nominated and Senate Republicans have approved the most unqualified and radical nominees in my time in this body.
The list of unqualified nominees is so long that for the sake of time, let's only consider nominees for the past 3 weeks. Justin Walker, confirmed last week to the Western District of Kentucky, has never tried a case and was deemed ``unqualified'' to serve as a judge by the American Bar Association. Sarah Pitlyk, under consideration for a seat in the Eastern District of Missouri, has never tried a case, examined a witness, or picked a jury. Lawrence VanDyke is up after that. The ABA found that their interviewees with experience with Mr. VanDyke said he was ``arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking knowledge of the day- to-day practice including procedural rules.''
How the heck do we put these people on the bench? Forget ideology for a moment. I understand that the President is not going to nominate people who might ideologically agree with me, but these people are abjectly unqualified based on their persons--who they are, how they behave in the courtroom, their knowledge, their experience. This is a lifetime appointment and one of the most important appointments we have, and when the ABA finds that a nominee was ``arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules'' and we go ahead and nominate him, what is the matter here?
Even more damaging, President Trump has nominated judges who are way out on the very extremes of jurisprudence. They are rightwing ideologues with views cut against the majority of Americans on nearly every issue. The judges he is nominating disagree with the vast majority of Americans on issue after issue after issue. Whether it is women's health and the right of a woman to make her own medical decisions, whether it is legal protections for LGBTQ Americans, whether it is the right of workers and collective bargaining, whether it is fair access to the ballot box and voting rights, whether it is the most commonsense gun laws and environmental protections, these nominees have views way to the right of even the average Republican, let alone the average American.
President Trump has nominated several judges who have been so extreme and overtly racist that my Republican colleagues who are loathe to oppose President Trump on anything have actually opposed him so that those few nominees didn't get on the bench. The nominations of these hard-right people are way over--hurting the average American, siding with big special interests over working Americans over and over again, finding every excuse to side with the rich and the powerful over the working class people. This is what President Trump calls an accomplishment?
I understand why the President and Leader McConnell try to celebrate judicial nominees. They hardly have a legislative accomplishment to name. The truth is, when it comes to judicial picks, the President and Senate Republicans should be downright ashamed of their record.
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