Impeachment
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I was just noting that the Senate Chamber has been rearranged because tomorrow we commence the impeachment trial, the second impeachment of Donald Trump.
In the center of the well is a podium and microphone where the attorneys representing the House managers who voted the impeachment resolution will stand to make their case a few hours after we commence the trial. The President's defenders will have the same opportunity.
They will be standing in a spot that is literally 4 or 5 feet away from a location still fresh in my mind. It was there right in the center of the aisle between the majority and minority leader of the Senate, on January 6, when two men appeared whom I had never seen before in plain clothes and stood in the center of the well holding automatic weapons.
It was just minutes after the Vice President had been removed from the chair where you are sitting, whisked off the floor of the Senate by the Secret Service, I imagine. He was pulled off the floor. It wasn't a ``follow me, Mr. Vice President''; they pulled him off the floor. That was at 2:15. Within a few minutes, the mob which had invaded the U.S. Capitol was on the march, on its way toward this Chamber where most of us were sitting, having dealt with our constitutional responsibility of counting the electoral votes.
I remember when they interrupted the quorum call that they were conducting for one of the Capitol policemen to stand before us and say: Everyone stay in your seats. We are going to bring all the staffers. They are going to line the walls. We are going to lock all the doors. This will be the safe room in the Capitol.
It couldn't have been more than 10 or 15 minutes later when the same policeman said: Everybody out now.
The mob had come through the Capitol, through the Rotunda, and was now on the Senate side of the building within easy reach of 100 Senators. So we filed out the back door and down a staircase, over to the tunnels, and down to the Hart Building, hoping to escape them. I watched through the window as I went down the steps and saw all the flags coming up toward the Capitol--American flags, Trump flags, flags I didn't recognize--all the people coming up here.
We know what happened later that same day. The mob crashed through the doors into this Chamber, posed for pictures at our desks, and scrawled messages to us, went through our desks and looked at them, literally interrupted the business of the U.S. Senate counting all the electoral votes.
Was that just an accident, that thousands of people were in Washington on January 6? Was that just an accident, that they gathered at the Ellipse for the President of the United States, Donald Trump, to speak to them? Was it just an accident that within 40 minutes or 45 minutes after the President sent them off to the Capitol, they were here breaking windows and breaking down doors to come inside? No, it was by design.
We are now learning who designed that strategy and that attack on the Capitol, and tomorrow we are going to start a trial to determine whether the former President of the United States of America bears responsibility for inciting that mob or inspiring that insurrection.
When you read the history of the writing of the Constitution, it is almost impossible--maybe it is impossible to put yourself in the moment. These men, all men, gathered in Philadelphia. They had just fought a bloody, long war, a Revolutionary War against one of the most powerful nations in the world, and they were setting up a government on this side of the ocean with the hopes that it would survive. And they were worried. They were worried about the enemy from without and the enemy from within. They talked about our responsibility to maintain this democracy and the challenges we might face.
At the time, they were wary because of what they lived through. As we read about it now, we wonder, what was the concern? What was behind all that concern?
If you are honest, you know that in 1861, our Nation went to war with itself in a Civil War with over half a million lives lost. So it was a fragile democracy, as they thought. But we never dreamed--at least, I never dreamed that in the 21st century, there would be a concern over an insurrection to overthrow the Government of the United States with violence. No, not in America. Not in 2021. That is exactly what happened on January 6. That is why we will be meeting tomorrow for the accountability of Donald Trump for that event.
Now, there are people who have told us we should get over it. Get over it. He is gone. Why do you keep talking about Donald Trump? Let him ride off into the sunset, as one fellow shouted at me at the airport a few weeks ago. Why would you want to keep reminding us of our differences in visions
Well, I think the answer is pretty obvious. We can't reach real unity in America until we deal with the reality of America as Donald Trump left it, and January 6 was a classic illustration.
There is one other image I share in my thinking about this trial when I hear former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, the former Governor of South Carolina, say ``Get over it'' to the Democrats. I think of that solemn scene in the Capitol Rotunda last week as we honored Capitol Hill Policeman Brian Sicknick, who was murdered by that mob--murdered by that mob.
I spoke to his mom and dad afterwards. He always wanted to be a police officer. He served in the Air Force, but he wanted to be a police officer. His mom said: ``We thought of all places for him to be a police officer, the safest had to be the United States Capitol building.'' And she lost her son to that murderous mob. I can't get over that. I am sure his family will never get over it.
If we can't give an honest answer to the American people for what happened and who was responsible for it, shame on us.
America came close to losing this democracy on January 6. This President's design was to make sure an election didn't count, that November 3 was ignored. What happened on January 6 was an attempted coup, make no mistake. As others have pointed out, an attempted coup that is not punished is a trial run for the next time.
Over the 4 years of his Presidency, someone decided to take account of the many times that the President lied to the American people. They were in the thousands. Many of his lies were an attempt to discredit anyone or any institution that stood in his way. It is an old trick straight out of the authoritarian handbook: Tell so many lies that people can no longer tell fact from fiction.
His last and most damaging lie was, over and over he repeated to the American people: They stole the election. They rigged the election.
Donald Trump's apologists will come to the floor of the Senate in the next few days and say that he had a First Amendment right to say whatever he wanted, whether it was the truth or not. But no one, not even the President, has a First Amendment right to incite an insurrection against this government. That is not a right; it is a crime, a high crime.
When he first ran for President in 2016, Donald Trump said the only way he could lose is if the election were stolen. Four years later, he tweeted the lie of a stolen election so many times at his rallies.
When he lost, he tried to convince the courts. He went to 60 different courts pleading that the election had been rigged and stolen. They laughed him out of the court every time.
He tried to bully officials in swing States and members of his own administration. On January 2, as Americans were dying of COVID-19, Donald Trump was on the telephone to the Republican secretary of state of the State of Georgia, spending more than an hour pleading and threatening him to somehow ``find the votes'' to overturn that State's votes in the Presidential election. Trump failed. The Republican secretary of state refused his request. He was not intimidated by his threats and had the foresight to tape record the conversation so there could be no denial.
For weeks before January 6, Donald Trump exhorted his followers to come to Washington on the day that Congress would assemble to certify State electoral votes. He knew that his extremist followers were waiting for their signals and their orders.
Over the summer, when armed extremists stormed and occupied State capitals, demanding an end to COVID safety instructions, Donald Trump cheered them on.
On January 6, he whipped them into a frenzy just a few short moments from here. He spoke for more than an hour at that rally at the Ellipse. This is some of what he said--and I quote Donald Trump--to the mob on its way to the Capitol.
``We will never give up,'' he said. ``We will never concede. It doesn't happen.''
Then he said, ``We won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election.''
Then he spoke of his Vice President, and he said, ``I hope Mike is doing the right thing. I hope so. I hope so. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. . . . All [the Vice President] has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people.''
Then he said, ``We have to fight like hell,'' Donald Trump said to that crowd before they made it up to the Capitol. ``If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore,'' Donald Trump said. ``Our boldest endeavors have not yet begun. . . . We're going to the Capitol. We're going to try and give [the Republicans] the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.''
Donald Trump wasn't shocked at what happened next. The crowd followed orders. He was excited. According to reports, he ignored police pleas from the White House, who begged him--people around him begged him to do something to calm the mob before they got to the Capitol.
At 2:11 p.m., the mob smashed through the doors and windows and began pouring into this building.
Thirteen minutes later, while the mob chanted ``Hang Mike Pence,'' Donald Trump tweeted ``Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country . . . giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts . . . USA demands the truth!''
At 6:01 p.m., Donald Trump again tweeted to the mob 4 hours after they had broken into this building. Here is what he said: ``These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace.''
And he closed, ``Remember this day forever!''
I will. And those of us in this building at the moment will. Brian Sicknick's family will.
Now nearly all of our Republican colleagues tell us it is time to move on. Forget about it. Forget the authoritarian President and his contempt for democracy that summoned this mob. Forget the failed coup without accountability. Just move on.
Polls show that the majority of Republican voters in America believe Donald Trump's lie. They still believe him, even after it has been rejected by local and State election officials of both parties. That is why the Senate is proceeding to the second impeachment trial tomorrow.
Donald Trump is gone from elected office, but the poison he injected into the national bloodstream remains, and it grows even more toxic.
On the inauguration of President Joe Biden, it was different from any I have seen, and it was the tenth one that I witnessed. The crowd was contained in a very small garden area. There were many more National Guardsmen in the streets of Washington as he was sworn in on January 20 than the crowd that assembled on the Mall.
I used to go to Central America and visited countries like El Salvador. I can remember being at the capitol of El Salvador. I was struck, at the time, by soldiers standing on the street corners with automatic weapons, and I thought: What kind of country can this be that soldiers will stand up just like a normal cop on the beat with automatic weapons?
We have reached that point here in Washington. We have reached that point in the Senate Chamber. It is a reminder of the fragility and vulnerability of our democracy.
There is a great cost to what we have just been through, and we continue to incur it to keep the people in this Capitol safe and those who visit. But there is a deeper cost. Brian Sicknick is part of the cost of January 6. He was proud to protect this Capitol. He gave his life for doing it.
Last Wednesday, Officer Sicknick's ashes were carried in a wooden box into the Rotunda of the Capitol, where we honored him. The silence of his return was made more painful by remembering how an angry mob had desecrated this building that he loved. Brian Sicknick paid for that hushed peace with his life. He is one of a long line of patriots who have given their lives over more than 240 years to protect this country.
For his sake, for all of those wounded on January 6, and for the safety of our democracy, we have to put an end to Donald Trump's big lie, once and for all, and look honestly at the culpability of the man who incited this mob to attack Congress, to attack the Constitution, and to attack our way of life.
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