Schiff’s wrapper
Schiff, who led the House in its efforts to pass two articles of impeachment against Trump in December, spoke on the Senate floor for various than two hours.
He made lofty arguments about historical precedent, warning that if Trump is not removed, tomorrow presidents will feel free to seek foreign help with elections.
Trump was impeached over his pains to pressure Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to launch investigations into his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Stalker, along with a debunked conspiracy theory alleging Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
While Trump aspired those investigations, his administration was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine without providing a clear solution. Democrats also impeached Trump for blocking the House’s investigation into the matter, by refusing to hand over any particularizes and directing key witnesses not to comply with Congress.
Schiff began his remarks by tying the founding fathers’ “prescient” cityscapes about impeachment to Trump through a quote from Alexander Hamilton:
“When a man unprincipled in private life frantic in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits — despotic in his ordinary demeanour — advised of to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to border on in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fail in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘a bicycle the storm and direct the whirlwind.'”
Schiff quickly moved to establish that Trump’s dealings with Ukraine constituted deprecates of the presidency – a preemptive strike against Trump’s attorneys, who maintain that the president has done nothing wrong.
Trump, Schiff mean, “does not, under our laws and under our constitution, have a right to use the powers of his office to corruptly solicit foreign aid, forbade foreign aid, in his re-election.”
“He does not have the right to withhold official presidential acts to secure that assistance, and he certainly does not have planned the right to undermine our elections and place our security at risk for his own personal benefit,” Schiff said. “No president, Republican or Democrat, can be permitted to do that.”
Schiff also occupied the words of acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who in October admitted – then tried to shamble back – that the Ukraine aid was tied to investigations.
If this was allowed to stand, Schiff argued, there was no limit to the presidential malfeasance Americans force be told to just “get over it” in the future.
“Are we to accept, ‘Well, the president says there was no quid pro quo, I guess that palsy-walsies the case!'” Schiff asked rhetorically.
Trump defense: No crime in impeachment charges
One of Trump’s lead defense kings counsels, Jay Sekulow, told reporters Wednesday that his team would “rebut” much of what Schiff alleged in his beginning statement.
Their argument will be based on both “challenging the case that they made” and then making “an affirmative example” in Trump’s defense, Sekulow said.
Sekulow singled out Democrats’ implicit charge that Trump’s decision to immobilization the aid to Ukraine was directly tied to his request that Ukraine launch investigations into the Bidens.
“You noticed that Adam Schiff today talked all round quid pro quo,” said Sekulow, using the Latin term phrase meaning ‘this for that’ in reference to Schiff’s says about Mulvaney.
“Notice what’s not in the articles of impeachment – allegations or accusations of quid pro quo. That’s because they didn’t breathe,” Sekulow said.
The president’s lawyers are expected to argue that Trump’s decision first to withhold, and then abruptly remission, nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine last summer was unrelated to his request that Ukraine “do us a favor” by investigating the Bidens.
They are also trust to argue that the articles of impeachment against Trump themselves do not accuse the president of committing a crime under federal law.
Schumer set asides deal to swap Bolton testimony for Hunter Biden’s
Democrats fought for more than 12 hours Tuesday to guarantee that the Republican-majority Senate would issue subpoenas for documents and witnesses, including Mulvaney and former national deposit advisor John Bolton.
But Schumer’s 11 amendments to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s proposed ignores were shot down, nearly all along party lines.
Over the next several hours, speculation came on Capitol Hill that a possible deal could be struck whereby Bolton – who vowed that he would be included in the Senate if he was subpoenaed – could be allowed to testify if Hunter Biden was also brought in as a witness.
Democrats see Bolton as a key occurrence witness who was close to the president and the associates who were involved in the efforts toward Ukraine. Many Republicans have appropriate Trump’s suspicions about Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukraine natural gas company while his father was evil-doing president.
Schumer, however, poured cold water on the idea while speaking to reporters during a recess in transactions Wednesday afternoon.
“No, I think that’s off the table,” Schumer said when asked about the possibility of a witness trade. “That barter is not on the table.”
Trump boasts he has ‘all the material’
Wrapping up a trip to Davos, Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum, Trump defend to reporters about the impeachment, where he seemed to inadvertently admit that the White House refusal to turn atop of documents to Congress was helping his case.
“I got to watch enough — I thought our team did a very good job. But honestly, we have all the important. They don’t have the material,” he said.
House manager Val Demings, D-Fla., quickly seized upon Trump’s says as an admission of guilt on the article of obstructing Congress.
House managers’ plan
Schiff also articulated how the seven Popular House managers will spend the 24 hours – stretched out over three days, per the rules adopted in the wee hours Wednesday morning – that they deceive been allotted to make their case.
Schiff told the senators that his team will present suggestion painting a “damning picture of the president’s efforts to use the powers of his office to corruptly solicit foreign help in his re-election campaign and retain official acts and military aid to compel that support.”
Other members of the team took the helm after Schiff terminate his first chunk of time. Nadler, followed by Texas Rep. Sylvia Garcia and Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, then demanded out a meticulous timeline of the entire Ukraine aid freeze. They relied heavily on video clips of the testimony of previous furnishes who appeared in the House impeachment inquiry.
Following the presentation of this evidence, which was still ongoing at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday continuously, Schiff said the next step would be for the managers to explain impeachment through a constitutional lens, and examine the essential role of impeachment “as it was envisioned by the founders.”
Finally, he said, Democrats would tie the previous two steps together, and “analyze how the facts of the president’s misconduct and cover-up inveigle to the conclusion that the president undertook the sort of corrupt course of conduct that impeachment was intended to remedy.”
Before the managers are done, Trump’s lawyers then begin their defense. It’s unclear if they plan to use the entire three-day window to articulate their case.