Impeachment

Floor Speech

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Mr. TILLIS. Madam President, during the impeachment trial, this Chamber considered the evidence and heard the arguments presented by the House managers and White House Counsel. During the 12 days of the impeachment trial, the Senate heard from the House managers for nearly 22 hours, and we heard from the White House Counsel for nearly 12 hours. This was followed by 180 questions asked and answered over 2 days, concluding with closing arguments by the House managers and White House Counsel.

Ultimately, there were two questions the Senate had to answer when considering the Articles of Impeachment.

The first question, for the near-term, is should the President be removed from office?

The second question, for the long-term health of our Nation, is whether we should allow the impeachment process to be weaponized and used by a majority in the House to settle partisan political scores?

My answers to both questions are a resounding no.

That is why I voted against both Articles of Impeachment.

While my Democratic colleagues operated under the presumption of guilt, even if one is to assume the worst, the reality is the allegations against President Trump were neither criminal nor impeachable. They did not come close to meeting the standard of treason, bribery, or high crimes or misdemeanors set by our Founding Fathers.

It is remarkable to read the Federalist Papers and appreciate their clairvoyance. Federalist 65, written by Alexander Hamilton, was frequently quoted throughout these proceedings, and for good reason. Hamilton's warnings to this body of using impeachment as a partisan device were borne out. Hamilton wrote that impeachment:

[W]ill seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions . . . and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.

By placing the impeachment power within the House and Senate, Hamilton acknowledged that power may wind up in the hands of ``the leaders or tools of the most cunning or the most numerous faction,'' which may ``hardly be expected to possess the requisite neutrality towards those whose conduct may be the subject of scrutiny.'' It is because of this remarkable power that Hamilton argued the Senate had been granted the power to try impeachments because the Senate is more likely to preserve ``the necessary impartiality between the INDIVIDUAL accused, and the REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE, HIS ACCUSERS?''

It is important to note that the Speaker of the House previously warned about the dangers of a politically motivated impeachment effort, stating in March 2019 that ``impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don't think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.''

History has proven that warning to be true. One only needs to compare the dramatically different outcomes between the Nixon impeachment inquiry, which resulted in resignation, and the Clinton impeachment process, which resulted in acquittal.

The Speaker's warning rings as true today as it did when she said it nearly 1 year ago. Unfortunately, the House majority ignored this warning, electing to lead a distinctly partisan process from beginning to end, based on a political timeline.

It began when the House majority refused to provide the President with basic due process rights for 71 of the 78 days of the formal House impeachment inquiry. The House majority also refused to provide proper rights to the minority, whose requests for an equal number of witnesses was denied.

It is no wonder why House Resolution 660, which permitted an impeachment inquiry, and House Resolution 755, the Articles of Impeachment against President Trump, failed to receive a single vote from the minority. In fact, the only thing that was bipartisan was the opposition to the articles.

The House majority presented a weak and completely partisan case for impeachment to the Senate. This is why the House managers attempted to convince the Senate to endorse its particular views of separation of powers, essentially asking the Senate to do the House's job where it failed: to make a compelling case for the President's removal.

This is yet another area Hamilton addressed. In Federalist 66, Hamilton outlined the differing roles and responsibilities between the House and Senate on impeachment, casting the House as the accusers and the Senate as the judges:

The division of them between the two branches of the legislature, assigning to one the right of accusing, to the other the right of judging, avoids the inconvenience of making the same persons both accusers and judges; and guards against the danger of persecution, from the prevalency of a factious spirit in either of those branches. As the concurrence of two thirds of the Senate will be requisite to a condemnation, the security to innocence, from this additional circumstance, will be as complete as itself can desire.

By dividing the power to accuse and the power to judge, the Founding Founders further recognized the procedural nature of this process. Appropriate procedure would serve to protect the Executive from the designs of a partisan faction in the House and would ensure that removal was not just desirable, but truly necessary.

In this instance, removal was absolutely unnecessary, even if it was desirable to the whims of some in the House majority since the day the President was inaugurated in 2017.

This addresses the answer to the second question I posed on whether the Senate will allow the impeachment process to become the new normal.

It would create a dangerous precedent in which the House actively seeks opportunities to open impeachment inquires to politically weaken and potentially remove the President of the opposing party.

Impeachment is the most powerful tool the Founding Fathers gave to us to defend against Executive misconduct, but it should never be abused. It should never be used to settle political scores, and it should never be used as an effort to deny the American people the right to decide the President's fate at the ballot box.

To transform impeachment into a partisan political weapon is to diminish and undermine its critical constitutional role.

Despite the factions which formed during this impeachment trial, I remain optimistic about the direction of our Nation. For all the bitter partisan emotions this impeachment process has enflamed, this Congress now has the opportunity to move on and focus on forging consensus to conduct the business of the American people. Congress has recently demonstrated this ability--enacting historic criminal justice reform, agreeing on reforms to improve the delivery of healthcare to our brave veterans, and approving a fair and free trade deal with America's two largest economic partners, producing a win for American workers and consumers.

I hope, when the record is written of this impeachment, that history will say that the Senate ultimately retained the high bar which must be met to remove a President, that the Senate rejected the temptation to normalize the impeachment process for partisan political gain, and that Congress turned the page following the President's acquittal to prioritize the needs of the American people and, in turn, solve the most pressing challenges facing our great Nation.

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