Impeachment

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, in the meantime, at this dangerous time, House Democrats continue to play political games with their partisan impeachment of the Commander in Chief. Last year, House Democrats conducted the least thorough, most rushed, most unfair impeachment inquiry in history. For weeks, Democrats said they could not wait for due process, could not conduct a normal or fair inquiry because removing the President from office was so incredibly urgent-- incredibly urgent.

Well, the unseriousness was obvious then and should be even more obvious now because Speaker Pelosi is now sitting on the articles she claimed were so very urgent. She has delayed this indefinitely so the architects of the failed House process can look for ways to reach over here into the Senate and dictate our process as well.

Democrats have tried to insist that the Senate deviate from the unanimous bipartisan precedent set in the 1999 trial of President Clinton and write new rules for President Trump. They have tried to precommit the Senate to redoing House Democrats' slapdash work for them and pursuing avenues Chairman Schiff himself didn't bother to pursue.

The Senate has a unanimous bipartisan precedent for when to handle midtrial questions such as witnesses: in the middle of the trial. That is when that was done the last time, and that is the way it should be done this time.

In 1999, every single U.S. Senator agreed to establish basic parameters for the start of the trial upfront and reserve midtrial questions, such as witnesses, until later. The vote was 100 to 0. That was good enough for President Clinton, so it ought to be good enough for President Trump. Fair is fair.

House Democrats' hunger to break our Senate precedents, just like they broke their own House precedents, could not be more telling, but the Senate does not just bob along on the currents of every news cycle. The House may have been content to scrap their own norms to hurt President Trump, but that is not the Senate. Even with a process this constitutionally serious, even with tensions rising in the Middle East, House Democrats are treating impeachment like a political toy--like a political toy--treating their own effort to remove our Commander in Chief like some frivolous game.

These bizarre stunts do not serve our Constitution or our national security. They erode both. My Democratic colleagues should not plow away American unity in some bizarre intramural competition to see who dislikes the President more.

They should not disdain our Constitution by rushing through a purely partisan impeachment process and then toying around with it. Governing is serious business. The American people deserve better, a lot better than this.

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