February 3, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 22 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session

[Pages S805-S807]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ORDER FOR ADJOURNMENT

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come 
before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned 
under the

[[Page S806]]

previous order, following the remarks of Senators Murkowski and Cortez 
Masto.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise this evening to address the 
trial of Donald John Trump. The Founders gave this body the sole power 
to try all impeachments, and exercising that power--we all know--is a 
weighty, weighty responsibility. This was only the third time in the 
history of our country that the Senate convened to handle a 
Presidential impeachment and only the second in the past 150 years.
  I was part of a small group that worked to secure a fair, an honest, 
and a transparent structure for the trial, and we based it on how this 
Chamber handled the trial of President Clinton some 20 years ago. So 
there were 24 hours of arguments for each side, 16 hours of questions 
from Members, with the full House record admitted as evidence.
  That should have been more than enough to answer the questions: Do we 
need to hear more? Should there be additional process? Mr. President, 
the structure we built should have been sufficient, but the foundation 
upon which it rested was rotten. The House rushed through what should 
have been one of the most serious, consequential undertakings of the 
legislative branch, simply to meet an artificial, self-imposed 
deadline.
  Prior Presidential impeachments resulted from years of investigation, 
where subpoenas were issued and they were litigated, where there were 
massive amounts of documents that were produced and witnesses deposed, 
where resistance from the Executive was overcome through court 
proceedings and through accommodations.
  The House failed in its responsibilities. The House failed in its 
responsibilities. The Senate should be ashamed by the rank partisanship 
that has been on display here. We cannot be the greatest deliberative 
body when we kick things off by issuing letters to the media instead of 
coming together to set the parameters of the trial and negotiate in 
good faith on how we should proceed.
  For all the talk of impartiality, it is clear to me that few in this 
Chamber approached this with a genuinely open mind. Some have been 
calling for the President to be impeached for years. Indeed, we saw 
just today clips that indicate headlines 19 minutes after the President 
was sworn into office calling for his impeachment. Others in this 
Chamber saw little need to even consider the arguments from the House 
before stating their intentions to acquit.
  Over the course of the past few weeks, we have all seen the videos 
from 20 years ago where Members who were present during the Clinton 
trial took the exact opposite stance than they take today. That level 
of hypocrisy is astounding, even for a place like Washington, DC.
  The President's behavior was shameful and wrong. His personal 
interests do not take precedence over those of this great Nation. The 
President has the responsibility to uphold the integrity and the honor 
of the office, not just for himself but for all future Presidents. 
Degrading the office by actions or even name-calling weakens it for 
future Presidents, and it weakens our country.
  All of this rotted foundation of the process--all of this--led to the 
conclusion that I reached several days ago that there would be no fair 
trial. While this trial was held here in this Senate, it was really 
litigated in the court of public opinion. For half the country, they 
had already decided there had been far too much process; they 
considered the entire impeachment inquiry to be baseless, and they 
thought that the Senate should have just dismissed the case as soon as 
it reached us.
  Then, for the other half, no matter how many witnesses were summoned 
or deposed, no matter how many documents were produced, the only way--
the only way--the trial could have been considered fair was if it 
resulted in the President's removal from office.
  During the month that the House declined to transmit the articles to 
the Senate, the demon of faction extended his scepter, the outcome 
became clear, and a careless media cheerfully tried to put out the 
fires with gasoline. We debated witnesses instead of the case before 
the Senate. Rather than the President's conduct, the focus turned to 
how a lack of additional witnesses could be used to undermine any final 
conclusion. What started with political initiatives that degraded the 
Office of the President and left the Congress wallowing in partisan mud 
threatened to drag the last remaining branch of government down along 
with us.
  Mr. President, I have taken tough votes before to uphold the 
integrity of our courts, and when it became clear that a tie vote here 
in the Senate would simply be used to burn down our third branch of 
government for partisan political purposes, I said ``enough''--just 
``enough.''
  The response to the President's behavior is not to disenfranchise 
nearly 63 million Americans and remove him from the ballot. The House 
could have pursued censure and not immediately jumped to the remedy of 
last resort. I cannot vote to convict. The Constitution provides for 
impeachment but does not demand it in all instances. An incremental 
first step: to remind the President that, as Montesquieu said, 
``Political virtue is a renunciation of oneself,'' and this requires 
``a continuous preference of the public interest over one's own.''
  Removal from office and being barred from ever holding another office 
of honor, trust, or profit under the United States is the political 
death penalty. The President's name is on ballots that have already 
been cast. The voters will pronounce a verdict in 9 months, and we must 
trust their judgment.
  This process has been the apotheosis of the problem of congressional 
abdication. Through the refusal to exercise war powers or relinquishing 
the power of the purse, selective oversight, and an unwillingness to 
check emergency declarations designed to skirt Congress, we have 
failed. We have failed time and again. We, as a legislative branch, 
cannot continue to cede authority to the Executive.
  The question that we must answer, given the intense polarization in 
our country, is, Where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? I 
wish that I had that magic wand. Sadly, I have no definitive answers, 
but I do have hope because we must have hope.
  As I tried to build consensus over the past few weeks, I had many 
private conversations with colleagues, and so many--so many--in this 
Chamber share my sadness for the present state of our institutions. It 
is my hope that we have finally found bottom here, that both sides can 
look inward and reflect on the apparent willingness that each has to 
destroy not just each other but all of the institutions of our 
government. And for what? Because it may help win an election? At some 
point, Mr. President--at some point--for our country, winning has to be 
about more than just winning, or we will all lose.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, as a U.S. Senator, I swore an oath to 
uphold the Constitution, and, while sitting in this High Court of 
Impeachment, I have fulfilled my duty to serve as an impartial juror.
  After hearing all counsel arguments and reviewing all evidence in the 
voluminous record, including 17 witnesses, 192 witness video clips, and 
28,578 pages of evidence, procedural rules, and constitutional 
concerns, I will vote to acquit the President, preventing his immediate 
removal from office and disqualification from the ballot.
  A fair and accurate reading of this chapter in our Nation's history 
will conclude that, on the issues of fact and law presented to this 
High Court of Impeachment, reasonable and public-spirited Senators can 
disagree. This lends further support to the notion that the American 
people should be afforded the opportunity to register their opinions by 
participating in the coming national election.
  While the Senate worked to remain impartial and open-minded 
throughout this trial, it must be acknowledged

[[Page S807]]

that a political fever permeated this process from the beginning, 
dating back not just to the start of the House of Representatives' 
impeachment efforts, but all the way back to November 2016. As a 
result, the House improperly impeached. Now, the Senate should exercise 
restraint. Here is why.
  First and foremost, a fair legal process is fundamental to our 
democracy. The House managers have repeatedly emphasized that no 
Americans are above the law. I could not agree more: No private 
citizen, President, or assembled majority of Congress can violate the 
rights guaranteed to other Americans under the Constitution. 
Accordingly, the President is entitled to basic due process rights, and 
the House failed to afford him these rights. Due process includes the 
right to legal counsel, the right to review evidence, and the ability 
to confront your accusers--rights denied by the House majority. House 
Managers breathlessly insist that ``overwhelming'' evidence already in 
the record proves ``beyond any doubt'' the President's continued 
service constitutes an imminent threat to the American people. The 
House's flawed and rushed process led to unfair proceedings and 
resulted in superficial, unspecific charges supported by a one-sided, 
improperly curated factual foundation.
  Second, Separation of Powers is a cornerstone of our constitutional 
republic, and its preservation is essential to prevent abuse of power 
by one branch over another. A majority of the House should exercise 
extreme caution when it bases impeachment upon the President's exercise 
of his foreign relations prerogatives, which are expressly granted to 
him by the Constitution. Additionally, in developing its Articles of 
Impeachment, the House majority chose to circumvent the judicial branch 
of government in order to clarify an issue of unsettled law pertaining 
to Executive Privilege. Instead, the House simply arrogated to itself a 
novel and dangerous new legal authority: absolute power to define 
Executive Privilege, even when the President is exercising his foreign 
relations powers granted by the Constitution.
  As with prior impeachment inquiries, following a formal request by 
the House, the Federal courts could have compelled the executive branch 
to provide sensitive documents and witnesses. The House chose to ignore 
this longstanding precedent because it conflicted with its political 
timeline. Astonishingly, Speaker Pelosi rushed the mismanaged process 
forward only to delay it, again for political purposes, before finally 
sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate. Now the House, 
having failed to fully develop its evidentiary record, invites the 
Senate to act as an accomplice to its ramrod impeachment and create a 
dangerous new 51-vote Senate threshold to override executive branch 
claims of Executive Privilege.
  To accept this invitation would be a violation of a long-established 
separation of powers.
  Senators might be tempted by a burning curiosity or crass political 
calculation to further develop the House's vague and tainted articles, 
but the constitutional separation of powers dictates that our legal 
charge must be more narrowly confined. To act otherwise would violate 
our oaths and dangerously incentivize calculating and intemperate House 
majorities to promiscuously impeach rival Presidents. We must set aside 
our personal preference because, under the Constitution, we are duty-
bound by the ``sole power to try'' the infirm articles before us.
  Lastly, Americans should stand against any Senate action which abets 
the creation of a constitutional crisis through the politicization of 
impeachment. The House majority's misguided process created a precedent 
to weaponize impeachment, a new precedent that will lead to serial 
impeachments in a polarized America. If the House majority had its way 
and the Senate accepted its invitation to fix their broken articles, 
either political party would be tempted to impeach and potentially 
remove their political opponents from office by initiating slapdash 
impeachment investigations. This new precedent would reduce impeachment 
to a mere vote of no confidence, similar to that in the U.K. 
Parliament. During President Nixon's impeachment, then Democratic 
Chairman Peter Rodino of the House Judiciary Committee urged that, for 
the American people to accept an impeachment, it must be powerfully 
bipartisan. This has been dubbed the Rodino rule, and I embrace the 
standard.
  A decent respect for the law and the opinions of fellow citizens and 
a concern for future precedent requires that I pointedly emphasize what 
I am not arguing, that a President can lawfully do ``whatever he 
wants,'' that inviting foreign election interference is appropriate, 
that absolute immunity attaches to Executive Privilege, or that a 
statutory offense must be committed to impeach.
  In summation, I have ineluctably arrived at a conclusion after 
impartially applying the law to all facts presented: House managers 
delivered tainted articles and failed to present requisite evidence to 
support their exceedingly high burden of proof. Therefore, I am duty 
bound to join my colleagues who would have the Senate resume the 
ordinary business of the American people.
  The Founding Fathers, who warned of the political nature of 
impeachment, also provided us a means to address dissatisfaction with 
our Presidents: frequent elections. This week, Americans began the 
Presidential election process. For the sake of our Constitution and our 
Nation, the Court of the American People should render its verdict 
through an election to address its support of or opposition to the 
current administration.

                          ____________________