February 25, 2020 - Issue: Vol. 166, No. 37 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 2nd Session
REFLECTIONS ON SENATE JUDGMENT NOT TO CONVICT AND REMOVE THE IMPEACHED PRESIDENT FOR ABUSE OF POWER AND OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS; Congressional Record Vol. 166, No. 37
(Extensions of Remarks - February 25, 2020)
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[Extensions of Remarks] [Pages E209-E212] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] REFLECTIONS ON SENATE JUDGMENT NOT TO CONVICT AND REMOVE THE IMPEACHED PRESIDENT FOR ABUSE OF POWER AND OBSTRUCTION OF CONGRESS _____ HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE of texas in the house of representatives Tuesday, February 25, 2020 Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, on Wednesday, February 5, 2020, the United States Senate determined not to convict and remove from office Donald John Trump, President of the United States, who was impeached by the House for high crimes and misdemeanors, a decision I firmly believe will be judged harshly by history for all time. I voted for the two articles of impeachment contained in H. Res. 755, the resolution of the House of Representatives and I rise to discuss in detail the overwhelming evidence assembled by the Committee on the Judiciary and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which clearly warranted the conclusion that the President abused the powers placed in him in trust by the Constitution and the American people by endeavoring to coerce a foreign government to announce a phony corruption investigation of his perceived chief election rival so he could remain in office and continue his misconduct. The President clearly abused his power by putting his personal interests above the national interest and jeopardizing the national security of the United States and, making it a perfect trifecta, enlisting the aid of a foreign power to sabotage the 2020 presidential election. When this scheme was discovered and made public, the President launched an all-out campaign to impede the ability of Congress to learn all the facts and hold the persons responsible accountable by dishonoring lawful subpoenas, refusing to provide requested information, and directing his subordinates in the Executive Branch not to testify or cooperate with Congress. The House impeachment managers proved these actions to the country and the world beyond dispute and clearly showed how the evidence warranted the President's conviction and removal by the Senate. Madam Speaker, it is beneficial to the public and for history to review the material facts that have led to where we are. In February 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, a stunning display of military aggression unseen since the end of World War II when the maps of post-war Europe were drawn. Five months later, on July 17, 2014, the Russia-backed Donbass People's Militia (DPM), an organization consisting of pro-Russian separatists who have taken up arms against the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the [[Page E210]] Government of Ukraine, shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, killing all 298 persons on board, including 80 children and 15 crew members. Presidential candidate Donald Trump would later dispute Russia's incursion into Ukraine in a nationally televised interview on July 31, 2016, when he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: He's not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He's not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want. In contrast, the United States, the European Union, and the international community, standing in solidarity with Ukraine, strongly condemned Russia's act of aggression and expelled it from membership in the G-8, the organization of the nation's eight richest, industrialized countries. In June 2016, at the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio to nominate Donald Trump as its presidential candidate, the Platform Committee of the Republican Party made but a single change in the party's 2016 platform and that was to water down the platform to make the Republican Party more amenable and sympathetic to Russia and its interests in reestablishing dominance over Ukraine. In November 2016, Donald Trump was narrowly elected the 45th President of the United States, surprisingly winning the Electoral College 306-224, despite losing the national popular vote by a record 2,833,220 votes to the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former U.S. Secretary of State and U.S. Senator from New York. On January 6, 2017, President-elect Donald John Trump was provided the unanimous assessment of the United States that concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election in which Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, the determined and resolute foe of Vladimir Putin, and facilitate the election of Vladimir Putin's preferred candidate, Donald John Trump. Russia's interference in the election processes of democratic countries is not new but a continuation of the ``Translator Project,'' an ongoing information warfare effort launched by Vladimir Putin in 2014 to use social media to manipulate public opinion and voters in western democracies. Instead of supporting the unanimous assessment of the United States Intelligence Community, the President consistently attacked and sought to discredit and undermine the agencies and officials responsible for detecting and assessing Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election as well as those responsible for investigating and bringing to justice the conspirators who committed crimes against the United States. Between March 23, 2018 and February 15, 2019, the Congress appropriated $391 million in security assistance and foreign military financing support to Ukraine as follows: $26.5 million FMF funding on March 23, 2018; $250 million on September 28, 2018; and $115 million on February 15, 2019. As documented in the March 2019 Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election submitted by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the Trump presidential campaign benefited from Russia's ``sweeping and systematic'' interference in the 2016 election through a sophisticated social media campaign coordinated by Russian intelligence officers and by releasing documents stolen from Democratic National Committee computers and the Clinton campaign. While the Special Counsel's report could not conclusively find evidence of a criminal conspiracy between entities or persons aligned with Russia and the Trump campaign, the report noted that the Special Counsel identified ten instances of unlawful conduct by the President that could constitute obstruction of justice but as an employee of the Justice Department the Special Counsel was bound to abide by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel 1974 Memorandum which prohibits charging a President with a crime while he is in office. On April 21, 2019, presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky was elected President of Ukraine, winning nearly 70 percent of the vote in the runoff election. On April 25, 2019, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., a distinguished former U.S. Senator and Vice-President of the United States under President Barack Obama, announced his candidacy for President of the United States. On May 6, 2019, the United States Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Louise Yovanovitch, was removed from her duty station and recalled to the United States, culminating a months-long smear campaign conceived and coordinated by Rudolph Giuliani, the former mayor of the City of New York, acting in his capacity as the current President's personal attorney. On May 9, 2019, the New York Times reported that Rudy Giuliani was planning to travel to Ukraine to prevail upon the new president of that country to launch an investigation into alleged corruption by former Vice-President Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and to ignore the widely debunked and discredited conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election in ``sweeping and systematic fashion.'' Four days later, on May 13, 2019, U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr announced that the U.S. Department of Justice was undertaking an investigation into the origins of interference in the 2016 election. Madam Speaker, it should be noted that the Trump Administration decision to shift responsibility for 2016 election interference from Russia to Ukraine is contrary to the assessment rendered unanimously by the U.S. Intelligence Community and furthers the `active measures' conspiracy theory hatched in Moscow by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the oligarchic regime governing the Russia Federation. In fact, a story published December 19, 2019 in the Washington Post, reports that senior advisors to the President believe he was influenced to perpetuate this crackpot conspiracy theory by Vladimir Putin. On May 20, 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was inaugurated as only the sixth democratically elected President of Ukraine but it was noteworthy that the American delegation attending the inauguration was not headed by Vice-President Mike Pence as originally scheduled but by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who replaced the Vice-President at the President's direction and included lower-level functionaries Kurt Volker, Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations; Gordon Sondland, Ambassador to the European Union and a large donor to the Trump Inauguration Committee; and Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Director of European Affairs at the National Security Council. Two weeks later, in a nationally televised interview broadcast June 13, 2019 on ABC News, the President stated that he would accept damaging information against an electoral rival from a foreign government, a position disowned in a public statement issued later that day by the Chair of the U.S. Federal Elections Commission, which reemphasized to all candidates and voters that accepting political help from a foreign government would be illegal and a violation of federal election law. On July 24, 2019, in testimony before the Committee on the Judiciary, on which I sit as the third senior member of the majority, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III affirmed the findings and conclusions in his voluminous report, including that the ``Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.'' The very next day, on July 25, 2019, the President spoke with President Zelensky by telephone in a much-anticipated telephone conversation. In that call, President Zelensky advised the President that Ukraine was ready to purchase needed Javelin missiles from the United States to defend itself from ongoing armed aggression by Russia. In his immediate response to President Zelensky's request for military assistance, the President replied: ``I would like for you to do us a favor, though'' and announce the launch of a corruption investigation against his most feared and formidable electoral rival, former Vice-President Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and the alleged involvement of Ukraine in the 2016 election for President of the United States. The `favor' the President wished of the Ukraine President was to be performed not to further United States national security policy since the national security community was unanimous in its collective support of Ukraine in its struggle against Russian military encroachment but to benefit the President personally and politically in his capacity as a candidate for reelection to the office he currently occupies. On August 12, 2019, a whistleblower complaint was filed with the Inspector General of the Intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, who after receiving the complaint followed applicable procedure and notified in writing the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee that the whistleblower's complaint was `deemed credible' and ``related to one of the most important and significant of the [Director of National Intelligence]'s responsibilities to the American people.'' On September 11, 2019, after many months, the White House's hold on needed military aid desperately needed by Ukraine was lifted as inexplicably and as swiftly as it was imposed. Indeed, the only material change in circumstances that had occurred between the imposition and lifting of the hold was the fact that the President and his Administration was now aware that Congress and the public had learned that congressionally appropriated security assistance to an ally under attack by our [[Page E211]] adversary was being withheld by the President for no apparent national security reason and that Congress had not been notified of the withholding by the Administration. In September 2019, Members of the House of Representatives were alerted to a complaint filed by a whistleblower within the Intelligence Community. The complaint alleged that on a July 25, 2019 call with the President of Ukraine, the President of the United States sought to withhold $391 million in desperately needed foreign military aid to Ukraine unless and until it--either through procurement or manufacture--produced political dirt against former Vice-President Biden, who was perceived to pose the greatest threat to the current President's reelection in 2020. On September 24, 2019, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the commencement of an impeachment inquiry. A key witness was Ambassador William Taylor, one of West Point's most distinguished alumna, a Vietnam combat veteran, and the former Ambassador and then charge d'affaires of the United States Embassy in Ukraine, who testified under oath that he told Gordon Sondland, our Ambassador to the European Union that it was ``crazy'' to withhold security assistance to Ukraine for a political campaign. Ambassador Taylor also testified that one of his staff members in the Embassy in Ukraine advised him on July 26, 2019, the day after the President's telephone call with President Zelensky, that he clearly overheard a conversation that day between Ambassador Sondland and the President in which the latter asked Ambassador Sondland whether President Zelensky was ``going to do the investigation.'' That staffer, David Holmes, affirmed the correctness of Ambassador Taylor's account and went on to testify that in response to the President's question, Ambassador Sondland replied to the President that ``[Zelensky] is going to do it'' and that President Zelensky ``will do anything you ask him to.'' When Mr. Holmes asked Ambassador Sondland about the President's commitment to Ukraine, he testified that Ambassador Sondland replied that the President ``does not give a [expletive] about Ukraine and that the President only cares about big stuff . . . that benefits the President, like the Biden investigation, that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.'' Indispensable to carrying out the plan to announce the launch of a phony corruption investigation into former Vice-President Biden was the removal of the then United States Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, the longest serving female member of the diplomatic corps, and an American diplomat with a demonstrated expertise and distinguished record of fighting corruption and leading Ukraine away from its notorious past when it was a satellite of the Soviet Union. So, led by Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal lawyer, a smear campaign was conducted against Ambassador Yovanovitch, accusing her falsely of impugning the President and allegedly abetting corruption in Ukraine. This led directly to the Ambassador being recalled from her duty station and referenced in the July 25, 2019 telephone call where the President stated to President Zelensky that ``[Ambassador Yovanovitch] from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news'' and that ``she's going to go through some things.'' David Hale, who as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs was the third ranking official in the State Department, testified that he witnessed the smear campaign against Ambassador Yovanovitch and urged his departmental superiors to place a full-page advertisement in local Ukrainian press in support of Ambassador Yovanovitch, but this suggestion was refused. In her appearance before the Intelligence Committee, Ambassador Yovanovitch testified that she was aghast that she was personally mentioned in a telephone call between the President and the President of Ukraine and stated that she felt threatened and intimidated when she heard the President remark that she was ``going to go through some things.'' Ambassador Yovanovitch relived this fear in real time when she learned the President was live tweeting disparaging things about her as she testified, implying, for example, that she was somehow in part responsible for the 1993 situation in Mogadishu, Somalia. Three Administration officials with direct knowledge of the July 25, 2019 telephone called testified under oath before the Intelligence Committee: Jennifer Williams, a State Department foreign service officer to the Office of Vice-President Mike Pence; and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, NSC Director of European Affairs, who was born in the Ukraine on the anniversary of D-Day, immigrated to the United States with his father and twin brother when he was three years old, was later commissioned an officer in the United States Army and deployed overseas to South Korea, Germany, and Iraq, where he was wounded in combat operations and awarded the Purple Heart. Ms. Williams characterized the President's conduct on the telephone call as ``unusual,'' inappropriate, and partisan in nature. Lt. Col. Vindman was gravely concerned because the President of the United States was requesting a foreign country to investigate an American citizen, an act so contrary to national policy and interest that he immediately reported the matter to a senior counsel lawyer on the National Security Council. The third person witnessing the call was Tim Morrison, who at the time of the July 25, 2019 telephone call was Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council and a former Republican congressional professional staff member, who testified that the President's behavior on the telephone call gave him a ``sinking feeling'' because it could easily be characterized as pursuing partisan political interests. Mr. Morrison testified that he contacted NSC counsel and sought to have the record of the telephone call hidden on a secure server to avoid discovery by official Washington. The testimony of Gordon Sondland, appointed by the President as the Ambassador to the European Union and a million-dollar Trump donor, was chilling, especially his testimony that ``everyone was in the loop.'' Ambassador Sondland testified that he communicated directly with the President who directed him to work on the Ukraine matter with Rudy Giuliani, who had no official role with the U.S. government. Ambassador Sondland stated under oath that Rudy Giuliani pressured the Ukraine government to investigate Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that had Hunter Biden, the former vice-president's son as one of its board members. Further, Ambassador Sondland testified that the President conditioned a White House meeting with President Zelensky and the release of security assistance on his announcement of an investigation designed to blame any 2016 presidential election interference on Ukraine and thus undermine the unanimous assessment of the American Intelligence Community that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit candidate Trump and harm candidate Clinton. In addition, according to Ambassador Sondland, the highly sought and desired White House visit and security assistance was conditioned on the announcement by President Zelensky of an investigation into his perceived chief domestic political rival, former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden. It takes no great leap in logic to divine that the President's intent and purpose here was to replicate his 2016 campaign formula from 2016: invite foreign meddling, point to an investigation, and exploit it by rumor and innuendo on social media. Ambassador Sondland asked rhetorically, ``Was there a quid pro quo?'' and then said: ``As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.'' And according to Ambassador Sondland, ``[e]veryone was in the loop,'' including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney; Mulvaney's senior adviser, Rob Blair; Secretary Pompeo's counselor, Ulrich Brechbuehl; Lisa Kenna, the State Department executive secretary; National Security Advisor John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser at the time; Bolton's Deputy National Security Advisor Fiona Hill; and NRC senior official Timothy Morrison, and even Vice President Mike Pence who Ambassador Sondland testified he told in September 2019 that the Ukraine aid appeared to be stalled because of the demand for investigations. Finally, Dr. Fiona Hill, who preceded Tim Morrison in the Trump Administration as National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia testified that after speaking with and listening to Ambassador Sondland she came to understand that United States policy for Ukraine had diverged into one track pursuing standard United States policy objectives of promoting democracy and the rule of law, fighting corruption, and protecting Ukraine from Russia; and another track solely concerned with achieving the more narrow personal and political goal of the President to prevail upon the new Ukrainian president to commit publicly to announcing an investigation of supposed interference by Ukraine in the 2016 presidential election as well as a manufactured wrongdoing by former Vice-President Joseph Biden. Dr. Hill testified that her direct supervisor, NSA Advisor John Bolton, characterized this second track as a ``drug deal'' which she stated to Ambassador Sondland that ``I do think this is all going to blow up. And here we are.'' Madam Speaker, I will further discuss what message this evidence sends to us loud and clear. [[Page E212]] ____________________