Impeachment
Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. For the past 2 weeks, the President's defense team has spun bizarre legal arguments, conspiracy theories, and flatout lies that are unbecoming of the Office of the President of the United States.
The country knows the facts. The President pursued his personal and political interests in a way that harmed the national security of America. He smeared our own Ambassador to the Ukraine. He promoted Kremlin propaganda on 2016 election interference. He sent his personal lawyer and willing members of his administration to trade official acts in exchange for fabricated dirt on a political rival. He stopped $391 million dollars in aid from going to the Ukraine, and when the Ukrainians made clear they were desperate for that aid to come through, he made his demands--come up with dirt on the Bidens, find or invent the server.
Donald Trump's defense team has claimed the President wanted to fight corruption in Ukraine, but they have produced zero hard evidence to support that claim.
Never in the history of our government has the President pursued a policy end without generating what usually is mountains of paper, and yet here there are no memos, no meeting records, no communiques on anticorruption--nothing. This defense is fiction.
It is fiction because the President was not fighting corruption in Ukraine. He was causing it.
We also know the President was telling the people around him to do what he wanted with respect to the Ukraine. He was telling them to talk to his personal lawyer--talk to Rudy. Because the President had forgotten what is good for the American people, he ignored the needs of our allies and forgiven the attacks on American democracy.
What the American Government under this President was after--the only thing it was after--was a corrupt favor for the personal benefit of Donald Trump. This favor was to get a foreign government to target an American citizen when our own intelligence services were legally prohibited from doing so--an action that even Trump's own Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, once admitted is illegal. Mike Pompeo said: ``It is not lawful to outsource that which we cannot do.'' Yet that is what the President was seeking.
And that was not the only illegal action. The GAO has said that holding up the Ukraine aid was a violation of the Impoundment Control Act. And when the aid eventually went through in September of last year, it wasn't because they suddenly had a whole lot of new respect for the constitutional powers of the Congress; it was because they got caught.
When this abuse came to light, Donald Trump's response was: I pretty much can do what I want. I am above the law.
On the south lawn of the White House, he confirmed that he wanted Ukraine to smear the Bidens, smear them by announcing investigations. He said he wanted the same thing from China.
In a White House press briefing, Mick Mulvaney, the Chief of Staff, confirmed that the scheme had been politically motivated. A reporter who was clearly stunned at the Mulvaney admission asked for some clarification, and Mulvaney said: ``I have news for everybody: Get over it.''
And that, I would submit, is what this trial is all about, whether the Senate and the country have to simply get over it. I know some Senators are apparently prepared to do exactly that, but let's consider the precedent that just ``getting over it'' sends.
If this ends in an acquittal, it will signal that politicians can get away with selling out American interests to foreign coconspirators to rig an election. What is to stop the Russians from approaching a future President with their own proposition: Dial back your support for the Baltic States, and we will take down your opponent. What would prevent the Chinese Government from approaching a Senator and offering fabricated dirt on Senators of the other party in order to smooth the way for a sweetheart trade deal? What if the President hands the Saudis an enemies list of political opponents to hack in exchange for military tech and a few regiments of American soldiers in Yemen?
Ending in acquittal without hearing from any witnesses or getting any new evidence will say that the President can rig impeachment trials as well. Every impeachment trial--every one--included witness testimony. That is just good government 101. It is what Americans expect. It is what I heard in open-to-all townhall meetings in Oregon from counties Donald Trump won and from counties Hillary Clinton won. The Republican Senate majority is apparently ready to acquit the Republican President without even going through the motions, ignoring what the American people expect.
How will we sustain a functioning democracy when our leaders are allowed to rig an election and there are no consequences? The Congress is going to struggle to unwind that precedent. It could outlive all of us.
After these long days of arguments and questioning, in my view, this comes down to two simple questions.
First, the President swears an oath, just like we do, to protect and defend our revered Constitution. Does the President's oath of office mean anything? When a President puts his own interests first, when he extorts fabricated dirt from a foreign government for his political gain, he is obviously in violation of his oath. He is not protecting the constitutional right of Americans to choose their own leaders in free and fair elections. What he is doing is protecting himself and his own power.
What does the President's oath of office mean if violating it carries no consequences? If his oath means nothing and he cannot be charged with a crime, then he is bound by nothing. And if we will not hold him to his oath, are we not surrendering our own oath--our own oath to protect and defend the Constitution?
The second question is, Do we believe that this is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people? Because the President's lawyers stood on the floor right over there and said, in short, it is not.
Alan Dershowitz argued that nothing the President does to get reelected can be impeachable as long as he believes his reelection is in the public interest. The President's counsel continued to build on that argument even after they claimed it was misunderstood--this from the same administration that holds that the President cannot be charged with a crime, that he exists on a plane--literally a plane above the law, as it applies to everyone else.
If the President may commit crimes in office and cheat in an election to stay in power, then it is no longer a government of, by, and for the people. This is a government of, by, and for Donald Trump. The proposition of free and fair elections in America is gone, replaced by elections that happen on terms set by Donald Trump or on terms set by a future President with the same sort of boost from a foreign power.
Putting aside whatever political fallout there may be in the days and weeks ahead, we have to ask, how can the Senate accept this degradation of the sanctity and security of free elections? Isn't this institution supposed to protect our elections and defend our Constitution?
The President's attempt to cheat in the election and the extreme lengths he has gone to cover it up are obviously dangerously wrong. What he did is a violation of his oath. It is a betrayal of the system of democratic government left for us by the Founders. And we have no choice. He is guilty. He must be convicted.
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