so, we've talked to a dozen senators as they made their way to the u.s. capitol. here's kind of the baseline of things talking to senators of both parties. the underlying resolution offered by senator mitch mcconnell is it will split along party lines. we heard from senator romney, we heard last night from senator lamar alexander, a retired representative, and they both said they are okay with the way the rules turned out. mcconnell was clueing in his members throughout this entire process, ensuring they knew what was coming, ensuring they knew what was in the resolution and not moving forward, i'm told, with anything until he was sure all 53 republican senators would be behind him on that front. we've seen him repeatedly in public over the last couple hours express their outrage over how this is all happening. they are now meeting privately, 47 democratic members in the

caucus talking about how they'll handle the debate and amendment process later today. you heard from schumer, the democratic leader, say his first amendment will be to subpoena documents related to withholding ukraine security assistance -- >> phil, i just want to listen in. >> keep us from dishonor only by walking in your precepts can our lawmakers remain in the circle of your protection and blessings. lord, turn their ears to listen to your admonition as you infuse them with the courage to obey your commands. we have trusted you since the birth of this land we love.

that is why we will declare your glory as long as we have breath. lord, as our senators prepare to gather for today's impeachment trial, we declare that you alone are our hope. we pray in your mighty name, amen. >> i pledge allegiance to the flag under the united states of america, through the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with letter and justice for all.

>> sorry, phil, i was sorry to interrupt. i just wanted to hear the invocation and the pledge of allegiance. please continue. >> as i was saying before the chaplain gave the opening prayer. if you go back to 1999, it caught a lot of senators' attention when he gave the opening prayer each day of the trial, and reverend black will likely be doing this same thing here. in a short moment, you'll hear from senate majority leader mitch mcconnell who will give opening remarks before the trial actually begins. >> i'm sorry, let's listen in. >> there are thresholds that exist in our system of government. we began just the third presidential impeachment trial in american history. this is a unique responsibility when the founders of our

constitution knew the senate, and only the senate, could handle. they allowed the senate to rise above short-term panels and fatulism. they saw what actually was proven and the outcome that served serves the nation. that's a pretty high bar, mr. president, and you might say later today this body will take our entrance exam. today we will consider and pass an organizing resolution that will structure the first phase of the trial. this initial step will offer an early signal to our country. can the senate still serve our founding purpose? can we still put fairness, evenheadedness and historical precedent ahead of the partisan passions of the day? today's vote will contain some

answers. the organizing resolution put forward already has the support of a majority of the senate. that's because it sets up a structure that is fair, evenhanded and tracks closely with past presidents that were established unanimously. after pretrial business, the resolution establishes the four things that need to happen next. first, the senate will hear an opening presentation from the house managers. second, we will hear from the president's counsel. third, senators will be able to seek further information about posing written questions to either side through the chief justice. and fourth, with all that information in hand, the senate will consider whether we feel any additional evidence or

witnesses are necessary to evaluate whether the house case has cleared or failed to clear the high bar of overcoming the presumption of innocence and undoing a democratic election. the senate's fair process will draw a sharp contrast with the unfair and precedent-breaking inquiry that was carried on by the house of representatives. the house broke with precedent by denying members of the republican minority the same rights that democrats had received when they were in the minority back in 1998. here in the senate, every single senator will have exactly the same rights and exactly the same ability to ask questions. the house broke with fairness by cutting president trump's counsel out of their inquiry to an unprecedented degree. here in the senate, the

president's lawyers will finally receive a level playing field with the house democrats, and will finally be able to present the president's case. finally, some fairness. on every point, our straightforward resolution will bring the clarity and fairness that everyone deserves. the president of the united states, the house of representatives, and the american people. this is a fair road map for our trial. we need it in place before we can move forward. so the senate should prepare to remain in session today until we complete this resolution. this basic four-party structure alliaigns with the first steps the clinton impeachment trial in 1999. 21 years ago, 100 senators

agreed unanimously that this road map was the right way to begin the trial. all 100 senators agreed the proper time to consider the question of potential witnesses was after -- after opening arguments and senators' questions. some outside voices have been urging the senator to break from this question. loud voices, including the leadership of the house mass jort, and seeking our senate to seek specific witnesses and documents before senators had even heard opening arguments or even asked questions. the house managers themselves declined to hear from the house

i itself, declined to pursue the legal system for its own inquiry. the house wasn't facing any deadline. they were free to run whatever investigation they wanted to run. if they wanted witnesses who would trigger legal battles over presidential privilege, they could have had those. but the chairman of the house intelligence committee and the chairman of the house judiciary committee decided not to. they decided their inquiry was finished and moved right ahead. the house chose not to pursue the same witnesses they apparently would now like, would now like the senate to precommit to pursuing ourselves. as i've been saying for weeks, nobody -- nobody -- will dictate senate procedure to united states senators. a majority of us are committed to upholding the unanimous bipartisan clinton president against outside influences with

respect to the proper timing of these trial questions. so if any amendments come up, i will move to table such amendments and protect a bipartisan presence. if any motion asks for witnesses or documents, i will table that and move it to later just like we did in 1999. today presents a curious situation. we may hear house managers themselves agitate for such amendments. we may hear a team of.

the senate must pre commit themselvesly. it would be curious to hear these two how shermthey are doi. they have a case they themselves recently described as overwhelming and beyond any reasonable doubt. so mr. president, these midtrial questions could potentially take us even deeper and into more complex constitutional waters. for example, many senators, including me, have serious concerns about blurring the traditional role between the house and the senate within the impeachment process. the constitution divides the power to impeach from the power

it try. the first belongs solely to the house, and with the power to impeach comes the responsibility to investigate. the senator agreeing to pick up the house investigation would set a new precedent that would incentivize hasty and swift impeachments in the future. they should agree on both the trial and the impeachment. what's more, some of the witnesses include executive branch officials whose communications with the president and other executive branch officials lie at the very core of the president's constitutional privilege. pursuing those witnesses could

delay the senate trial and draw us into a complex and legal fight over professional privilege. it could have permanent repercussions for the substance of powers and the institution of the presidency that senators would need to consider very, very carefully. so, mr. president, the senator is not about to rush into these weighty questions without discussion and without deliberation without even hearing opening arguments first. there are good reasons why 100 out of 100 senators agreed two decades ago to cross these bridges when we came to them. that is what we will do this time as well. fair is fair. the process was good enough for president clinton, and history

dictates it ought to be good enough for this president as well. so the eyes are on the senate. the country is watching to see if we can rise to the occasion. 21 years ago, 100 senators, including a number of us who sit in the chamber today, did just that. the body approved a fair, commonsense process to guide the beginning of a presidential impeachment trial. today, two decades later, this senate will retake that entrance exam. the basic structure we're proposing is just as imminently fair and evenhanded as it was back then. the question is whether senators themselves are ready to be as fair and as evenhanded.

the senate made a statement 21 years ago. we said the parties deserved a fair process. a challenging moment like today does not make such statements less necessary, but all the more necessary, in fact. so i would say to my colleagues across the aisle, there is no reason why the vote on this resolution ought to be remotely partisan. there's no reason other than base partisanship to say this particular president deserves a radically different rule book than what was good enough for a past president of your own party. so i would urge every single senator support our resolution. i urge that everyone vote to uphold the bipartisan precedent of a fair process.

>> democratic leader. >> now, before i begin, there has been well-founded concern that the additional security measures required for access to the galleries during the trial could cause reporters to miss some of the events on the senate floor. i want to assure everyone in the press that i will vociferously oppose any attempt to begin the trial unless the reporters trying to enter the gallery are seated. the press is here to inform the american public about these pivotal events in our nation's history. we must make sure they are able to. some may not want what happens here to be public. we do. now, mr. president, after the conclusion of my remarks, the

senate will proceed to the impeachment trial of president donald john trump for committing high crimes and misdemeanors. president trump is accused of coercing a foreign leader into interfering in our elections to benefit himself and then doing everything in his power to cover it up. if proved, the president's actions are crimes against democracy itself. it's hard to imagine a greater subversion of our democracy than for powers outside our borders to determine the elections from within. for a foreign country to attempt such a thing on its own is bad enough. for an american president to deliberately solicit such a thing, to blackmail a foreign country with military assistance to help him win an election is unimaginably worse. i can't imagine any other president doing this.

beyond that, for then the president to deny the right of congress to conduct oversight, deny the right to investigate any of his activities, to say article 2 of the constitution gives him the right to, quote, do whatever he wants, we are staring down an erosion of the sacred democratic principles for which our founders fought a bloody war of independence. such is the gravity of this historic moment. now, one senator was sworn in at 1:00 p.m., the ceremonial functions of the trial will be kble complete. the senate then must decide the rules of the trial. the senate must outline his plan for the rules of the trial. it is completely partisan.

it was kept secret until the very eve of the trial. and now that it's public, it's very easy to see why. the mcconnell rules seem to be designed by president trump for president trump. it asks the senate to rush through as fast as possible and makes getting evidence as hard as possible. he can force presentations to take place at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning so the american people won't see them. in short, the mcconnell resolution will result in a rush trial with little evidence in the dark of night, literally the dark of night. if the president is so confident in his case, if leader mcconnell is so confident the president did nothing wrong, why don't they want the case to be presented in broad daylight?

on something as important as impeachment, the mcconnell resolution is nothing short of a national disgrace. this resolution will go down as one of the darker moments in senate history, perhaps even the darkest. now, leader mcconnell has just said he wants to go by the clinton rules. then why did he change them in four important ways at minimum to all make the trial less transparent, less clear and with less evidence? he said he wanted to get started in exactly the same way. it turns out, contrary to what the leader said -- i'm amazed he can say it with a straight face that the rules are close to the clinton rules. the rules are not even close to the clinton rules. unlike the clinton rules, the mcconnell resolution does not

admit the record of the house impeachment proceedings into evidence. so leader mcconnell wants a trial with no existing evidence and no new evidence. a trial without evidence is not a trial. it's a cover-up. second, unlike the clinton rules, the mcconnell resolution limits presentation by the parties to 24 hours per side over only two days. we start at 1:00. 12 hours a day we're at 1:00 a.m., and that's without breaks. it will be later. leader mcconnell wants to force the managers to make important parts of their case in the dark of night. number three. unlike the clinton rules, the mcconnell resolution places an additional hurdle to get witnesses and documents by requiring a vote on whether such motions are even in order. if that vote fails, then no motions to subpoena witnesses and documents will be in order. i don't want anyone on the other

side to say, i'm going to vote no first on witnesses, but then later on determine if they vote for mcconnell's resolution, they're making it far more difficult to vote in the future, later on in the trial. and finally, unlike the clinton rules, the mcconnell resolution allows a motion to dismiss at any time -- any time -- in the trial. so in short, contrary to what the leader said, the mcconnell rules are not at all like the clinton rules. the republican leader's resolution is based neither in precedent nor in principle. it is driven bipartisy partisand the politics of the moment. today i'll be offering the many flaws in mcconnell's resolution and see the documents and witnesses we've selected,

beginning with an amendment to subpoena white house documents. let me be clear. these amendments are not dilatory. they only seek one thing, the truth. that means relevant documents, relevant witnesses. that's the only way to get a fair trial and everyone in this body knows it. all 15 that were brought to completion feature witnesses, every single one. the witnesses we request are not democrats. they're the president's own men. the documents are not democratic documents. they're documents, period. we don't know if the evidence of the witnesses or the documents will be exculpatory to the president or incriminating, but we have an obligation, a solemn obligation, particularly now during this most deep and solemn part of our constitution to seek the truth and then let the chips fall where they may.

my republican colleagues have offered several explanations for opposing witnesses and documents at the start of the trial. none of them has much merit. republicans have said we should deal with the question of witnesses later in the trial. of course, it makes no sense to hear both sides present their case first, and then afterward, decide if the senate should hear arguments. the decisions should come before arguments. some have said they shouldn't go beyond the house record in calling witnesses, but the constitution gives the sole power to try impeachments. not the sole power to review, not the sole power to rehash, but to try. republicans have called our request for witnesses and documents political. if seeking the truth is political, then the republican party is in serious trouble. the white house has said that the articles of impeachment are

brazen and wrong. well, if the president believes his impeachment is so brazen and wrong, why won't he show us why? why is the president so insistent that no one come forward, that no documents be released? if the president's case is so weak that none of the president's men can defend him under oath, shame on him and those who allow it to happen. what is the president hiding? what are our republican colleagues hiding? because if they weren't afraid of the truth, they would say go right ahead, get at the truth. get witnesses, get documents. in fact, at no point over the last few months have i heard a single, solitary argument on the merits of why witnesses and documents should not be part of the trial. no republicans explained why less evidence is better than more evidence.

nevertheless, leader mcconnell is poised to ask the senate to begin the first impeachment trial in history without witnesses, that brushes through the arguments as quickly as possible, that in ways both shameless and subtle will conceal the truth, the truth from the american people. mcconnell claimed the house has run the less than thorough and most unfair impeachment in history. in fact, leader mcconnell is running the most unfair impeachment trial in modern history, and it begins today. the senate has before it a very straightforward question. the president is accused of coercing a foreign power to interfere in our elections to help himself. it's the job of the senate to determine if these very serious charges are true. the very least we can do is examine the facts, review the

documents, hear the witnesses, try the case. not run from it, not hide it, try it. because if the president commits high crimes and misdemeanors and congress refuses to act, refuses even to conduct a fair trial of its conduct, then presidents, this president and future presidents, can commit impeachable crimes with impunity and the order and rigor of our democracy will dramatically decline. the final failsafe of our democracy will be rendered hoot. the most powerful check on our democracy. in short time, my colleagues, each of us will face a choice about whether to begin this trial in search of the truth or in service of the president's

desire to cover it up. whether the senate will conduct a fair trial or rush to a political outcome. my colleagues, the eyes of the nation, the eyes of history, the eyes of the founding fathers are upon us. history will be our final judge. will senators rise to the occasion? i yield the floor. >> under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. morning business is closed. under the previous order, the senate stands in recess subject to the call of the chair. >> so there you have the stage now being set for the start of this truly historic trial in the united states senate. and we heard two very, very different arguments from the

senate republican leader, the majority leader mitch mcconnell and the minority leader, chuck schumer. very different arguments about the initial proposal for the rules of this trial that the republican leader is about to put forward. and there's going to be, jake, a very serious debate over the next couple hours on these rules. the question is who has the votes to stop these rules from going forward? the democrats seem to be in trouble right now. >> that's right, republicans have 53 votes. you need 51 to pass the rules. you just heard, as you say, two very different interpretations of those rules. the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell pointing out what with he sees in the demonstration the republicans and the house have brought over to the senate, and you heard chuck schumer calling this a disgrace, the rules that mcconnell is proposing, because they allow, in his view, a cover-up. it should be noted that when mcconnell talks about how these rules follow the precedent of

the clinton impeachment, he's right in some respects and wrong in others. the ways that he's wrong that senator schumer is pointing out have to do with mainly the evidence from the house impeachment trial being presented as evidence in the senate trial without a vote, and the democrats are upset they'll have to vote on that issue because who knows how the vote will go. there is also the matter that later on in the impeachment of bill clinton, witnesses were allowed. although we should point out in this stage of the impeachment trial of bill clinton, they had not made an agreement on witnesses. but what's significant, and this is not in the rules and this has not been stated blatantly, but the real difference is there is no trust between mitch mcconnell and chuck schumer, none. and there was trust 21 years ago between the democratic leader clint dashel and andrew luck.

even if he says, trust us, we'll ultimately have a vote on this, you will ultimately get to make a decision on whether or not there are witnesses, schumer doesn't believe him, and that's really the problem and it may be difficult for people to understand why these two gentlemen are presenting such blatantly different views of the rules that are being presented. you can go back and look at -- i hate to bring it up because it's not directly relevant, but merrick garland, who was going to be nominated by president obama to the supreme court, and ultimately because of a power play by mitch mcconnell didn't even get a hearing. that shadow is over everything here, because democrats think mitch mcconnell is capable of doing anything -- anything -- for power. >> dana bash is on capitol hill watching all of this unfold. dana, i want to set the scene. the chief justice will preside

over this trial. senator inhofe from oklahoma could not be there because of a family illness. he'll be sworn in. then they will discuss their rule of proposal and there will be a two-hour debate? >> that's right. we'll see the beginning of what you just heard both leaders, democratic and republican, the opening salvos of that debate. what jake is saying is so key, and maybe it's underscoring. maybe it's obvious to people at home how bitterly partisan things are here, and the fact is it hasn't been like that in the past. there was a very different situation 21 years ago -- there's diane feinstein going in. you see the senators actually file in for jury duty, effectively, but it was a very different situation for a lot of

reasons p. his fellow democrats were really mad at him because he lied to them. ly it will. the past couple months, that was hangi hanging out there, they were lying and it was very blurred, if you want to be blunt about it, on the republican side. what the president did is being defended, is being sidestepped and is going to be in short order on the senate floor defended by his very own counsel as just the way it is, as the power he's supposed to have. in the short term we'll see a big fight on rules and a big fight on how this is going to be. democrats are doing everything they can to frame it as fairness, and republicans are saying, give me a break.

if you wanted fairness, you should have done it in the house. but again, keep in mind what mitt romney told manu raju. don't overstep. don't go to an 11 right now because we might not with you down the road when we consider witnesses. >> i want to bring in a former senate parliamentarian. who is going to be debating this? republican senators and democratic senators? >> under the vote, they will be considered arguments and arguments will be made between counsel of the president. unless the president votes by majority rules to close the doors, you should not hear voices at all in arg oox of this notion that senator schumer wants to show up. >> you're actually hearing from different people, and i think

the key here is the issue of witnesses. you heard mitch mcconnell talk about it. sort of an aside, you know, the house declined. if they wanted witnesses, they could have had those fights, but they decided their inquiry was finished so they moved ahead. the president told people, i don't really want you to testify. the people who did testify before the house intelligence committee testified under subpoena from the house intelligence committee, and that the white house stonewalled witnesses and said, you should not testify. yes, the house made a decision they didn't want to drag this out over months and months and months in an election, so they did truncate what they were going to do, but this notion that the house could have heard from witnesses like john bolton, et cetera, is not accurate.

>> i think the question is, you could hear mitch mcconnell talking to the senators we're focusing on, those four senators whether or not they're in a vote with democrats. in some ways it will be interesting to see if they pick up the arguments he's making now, this argument about the house has its process and it's not a senate role to overstep that process, and he talked about executive privilege covering these witnesses. you're a democrat, you obviously want to be talking to mitt romney, too. mitt romney's reputation, in 2012, wanted donald trump, and then in 2016 he denounced him as sort of a fraud. i think democrats obviously want a message to these folks, but for these gop senators they really have to decide how isolated do they want to be? you talked about mitt romney

being somewhat isolated, but i think going forward, this is one of the biggest votes they'll be making as a republican. do they want to remain in good standing with trump and the republican party? >> john, it's clear that mitch mcconnell seems to be very confident that he will have enough votes to defeat schumer and the democrats. >> we're at this great moment in history. we mentioned before only the third time in history for a president to be impeached or a senate trial to begin. no president has been removed. and yet mcconnell is doing this as though this is bringing legislation to the floor. sometimes when i came to washington, there were things that were in question on the floor. you could watch a debate. they don't do that anymore. he's bringing this to the floor now because he has the votes. so we're going to have a big debate today. it is not going to change anything today. we should just know that going in.

today's debate will not change today. the question is can the democrats do this in a way that changes things when you do get to the next round. at the i understand of the question if, will the democrats convince mitt romney, convince cory gardner. can they plant the seeds there and plant the seeds out there to get them watching. public opinion has stayed pretty locked in. our poll today said 77% of americans want witnesses. 51% say convict and remove from office, 47% say no. those basic numbers have been locked. if they don't move, the senators don't have it. >> voters in battleground states

also being more split than the nation at large. >> very important point, because mcconnell is not looking at national numbers. he's thinking about his majority and he also knows it's a presidential election year. his majority will rise and fall with the power of the united states, not necessarily how make am kanlt. what plump does in your state depends on whether or not he's elected. >> i couldn't agree more that mcconnell is looking at protecting his majority, which means, in fact, protecting donald trump's presidency. but to try to look at this in a broader way, this president has been impeached by the house of representatives. and the united states senate is staging a sham of a trial right now with no witnesses, no documents and late night, you know, viewing so that most people won't see it. and the fact that the senate is

treating this process, it seems, based on the likely outcome, with such incredible disdain for the facts of the case and the constitutional role that the senate is supposed to play is, i think, a disgrace today and will be seen as a disgrace historically. >> i remember when house intelligence republicans were complaining that the democrats were meeting in the basement because it was a secure location, but they were complaining, oh, they're meeting in the basement. and now you have a senate that's going to have an impeachment trial that could go on into the middle of the night, dare i say. there is a lot of hypocrisy here, and i think mitch mcconnell is thinking about his senate. he also made the point that -- john and i were talking about this -- this aligns with the clinton impeachment rules. these are not the clinton

impeachment rules. they're different from the clinton impeachment rules, but he said, i can do whatever i want. nobody will dictate procedure to u.s. senators. so mitch mcconnell is doing everything he can to protect his senate majority, and, oh, by the way, protect the president of the united states. >> we're standing by for the start of the rules. that will go on for several hours. tomorrow we're told the actual opening arguments by the house managers. the democrats will begin their 24 hours. 12 hours one day, 12 hours the next day. the white house counsel will then have 24 hours if they want to take all that time to rebut, make the case on behalf of the president. this is going to be a dramatic few days here in washington. we're waiting for the senate to come back into session. we're waiting for the chief justice of the united states. our special live cnn coverage of the senate impeachment trial of

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a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! manu raju on capitol hill, what are they saying? >> this is the back and forth of the legal filings that have been going from the house democrats to the president's team. the president's team had filed its own legal brief just a couple days ago, or yesterday, i should say, calling the democrats' case flimsy, calling

it a charade, so this was a response to that. what the house democrats now are saying, they're saying it's clear from the president's response that he would rather discuss anything other than what he actually did, and no amount of legal rhetoric can hide the fact that president trump exemplified the framers' resolution. they will start to put amendments to that resolution that will determine how the trial will go forward, and then starting tomorrow we'll hear the actual merits of the case that democrats plan to lay out beginning tomorrow. this latest filing just the latest in the back and forth between the president's team, democrats contending the president did everything the framers were concerned about after the president says there is nothing impeachable in there. that is a sign of exactly how this argument will shape up after senate doors open here in just a matter of minutes, guys. >> they keep saying what the

republican majority wants is a cover-up, not a fair trial at all. manu, stand by, i want to bring back dana bash who is also on capitol hill watching all of this unfold. dana, they're about to resume this trial, and we will hear some bitter arguments on both sides. >> reporter: that's right, and the challenge democrats will have in the short term, and ultimately in the long term, is that what manu just red, which is the crux and the core of the case that house democrats are prosecuting in this trial against president trump are going to go by the wayside in this first important day of history because the focus is going to be on process. and that's what we've heard, really, all morning long from the democratic leader, from the republican leader, a back and forth over whether the process of this trial is there. >> hold on, dana, the chief justice of the united states. >> i'm aware of one senator

present who was unable to take the impeachment oath last thursday. will he please rise and raise his right hand and be sworn? do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of donald john trump, president of the united states, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the constitution and laws, so help you god? >> i do. >> the secretary will note the name of the senator who has just taken the oath and will present the oath book to him for signature. the sergeant in arms will make the proclamation.

>> hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. all people are to stay silent on imprisonment while the senator is sitting for the trial of the impeachment against donald john trump, president of the united states. >> the majority leader is recognized. >> i'd like to state that for the information of all senators, the trial briefs filed yesterday by the parties have been printed and are now at each senator's desk. >> the following documents will be submitted to the senate for printing in the senate journal. the precept, issued january 16, 2020, the writ of summons issued on january 16, 2020 and the receipt of summons dated january 16, 2020. the following documents which were received by the secretary of the senate will be submitted to the senate for printing in the senate journal pursuant to

the order of january 16, 2020. the answer of donald john trump, president of the united states, to the articles of impeachment exhibited by the house of representatives against him on january 16, 2020 received by the secretary of the senate on january 18, 2020, the trial brief filed by the house of representatives received by the secretary of the senate on january 18, 2020. the trial brief filed by the president received by the secretary of the senate on january 20, 2020. the republic replication by the representatives received on january 20, 2020. and the rebuttal by the house of representatives received on january 1, 2020. without objection, the four documents will be printed in the congressional record. i note the presence in the house

of the senate in the senate chamber of managers of the house of representatives and counsel for the president of the united states. >> thank you, chief justice. >> the senator majority leader is recognized. >> they have been agreed to on both sides. i ask that they be put in the record with unanimous consent. >> without objection? >> i'm about to send a resolution to the desk providing for the outline of the next steps in these proceedings. it will be debatable by parties for two hours, equally divided. senator schumer will then send an amendment to the resolution of the desk. once that amendment has been authored and reported, we'll have a brief recess. when we reconvene, senator schumer's amendment will be debatable by the parties for two hours upon the use or yielding back of time. i intend to move to table senator schumer's amendment.

so, mr. chief justice, i send a resolution to the desk and ask that it be read. >> the clerk will read the resolution. >> senate resolution 483, to provide for related procedures concerning the articles of impeachment against donald john trump, president of the united states, resolved that the house of representatives shall file its record with secretary of the senate which will consist of those publicly available materials that have been submitted to or produced by the house judiciary committee, including transcripts of public hearings or mark-ups in any materials printed by the house of representatives or the house judiciary committee pursuant to house resolution 660. materials in this record will be admitted into evidence subject to any hearsay, evidenciary or other objections the president

may make after opening statements are concluded. all materials filed pursuant to this paragraph shall be printed and made available to all parties. the president and the house of representatives shall have until 9:00 a.m. on wednesday, january 22nd, 2020 to file any motions permitted under the rules of impeachment with the exception of motions to subpoena witnesses or documents where aor any othe evidenciary motions. responses to such motions shall be filed no later than 11:00 a.m. on wednesday, january 22, 2020. files pursuant to this paragraph shall be filed by the secretary and printed and made available to all parties. arguments of such a motion shall begin at 1:00 p.m. on wednesday, january 22nd, 2020, and each side shall determine the number of persons to make its presentation, following which the senate will deliberate if so

ordered under the impeachment rules and vote on any such motions. following the disposition of such motions or if no motions are made, then the house of representatives shall make its presentation in support of the articles of impeachment for a period of time not to exceed 24 hours over up to three session days. following the house of representatives' presentation, the president shall make his presentation for a period not to exceed 24 hours over up to three session days. each side may determine the number of persons to make the presentation. upon the conclusion of the president's presentation, senators may question the parties for a period of time not to exceed 16 hours. upon the conclusion of questioning by the senate, there shall be four hours of argument by the parties equally divided followed by the deliberation by the senate if so ordered under the impeachment rules on the question of whether it shall be an order to consider and debate

under the impeachment rules any motion to subpoena witnesses or documents. the senate, without any intervening action, motion or amendment, shall then decide by y yeas and nays whether it shall vote for any subpoena of witnesses or documents. any motions provided by the impeachment rules shall be in order. if the senate agrees to allow either the house of represent tif representativ e srs decides to allow witnesses or documents, thes they shall be done under the impeachment rules. the parties shall have the opportunity to depose such witnesses. at the conclusion, the senate shall vote on each article of impeachment. >> the resolution is arguable by the parties for two hours

equally divided. mr. manager schiff, are you a proponent or opponent of this motion? >> i'm in opposition of this resolution. >> thank you. mr. cipollone, are you a proponent or opponent of the motion? >> chief justice, i am a proponent of the motion. >> then, mr. cipollone, your side will preside first and may have rebuttal time if you wish. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. majority leader mcconnell, democratic leader schumer, senators. my name is pat cipollone. i'm here as counsel to the president of the united states. our team is proud to be here representing president trump. we support this resolution. it is a fair way to proceed with

this trial. it is modelled on the clinton resolution which had 100 senators supporting it the last time this body considered an impeachment. it requires the house managers to stand up and make their opening statement and make their case. they have delayed bringing this impeachment to this house for 33 days, 33 days to this body. and it's time to start with this trial. it's a fair process. they will have the opportunity to stand up and make their opening statement. they will get 24 hours to do that. then the president's attorneys will have a chance to respond. after that, all of you will have 16 hours to ask whatever questions you have of either

side. once that's finished and you have all of that information, we will proceed to the question of witnesses and some of the more difficult questions that will come before this body. we are in favor of this. we believe that once you hear those initial presentations, the only conclusion will be that the president has done absolutely nothing wrong, and that these articles of impeachment do not begin to approach the standard required by the constitution, and, in fact, they themselves will establish nothing beyond those articles. you look at those articles alone and you will determine that there is absolutely no case. so we respectfully ask you to adopt this resolution so that we can begin with this process.

it is long past time to start this proceeding, and we are here today to do it. and we hope that the house managers will agree with us and begin this proceeding today. we reserve the remainder of our time for rebuttal. >> chief justice, senators and counsel for the president, house managers on behalf of the house of representatives rise in opposition to leader mcconnell's resolution. let me begin by summarizing why. last week we came before you to present the articles of impeachment against the president of the united states for only the third time in our history. those articles charge president donald john trump with abuse of power and obstruction of congress. the misconduct set out in those articles is the most serious ever charged against a

president. the first article, abuse of power, charges the president with soliciting a foreign power to help him cheat in the next election. moreover, it alleges, and we will prove that he sought to coerce ukraine into helping him cheat by withholding official acts, two official acts, a meeting that the new president of ukraine desperately sought with president trump at the white house to show the world and the russians in particular that the ukranian president had a good relationship with his most important patron, the president of the united states. and even more perniciously, president trump illegally withheld almost $400 million in taxpayer-assisted funding to ukraine, at war with a russian adversary, to ask ukraine to help cheat in the election.

a trial brief filed yesterday contends that even if this is proved, there is nothing the house or this senate may do about it. it is the president's apparent belief that under article 2, he can do anything he wants, no matter how corrupt, outfitted in gaudy legal clothing. and yet, when the founders wrote this clause, they had this type of conduct in mind, conduct that abuses the power of office for his personal benefit, that undermines our national security, that invites foreign interference in our democratic process of an election. it is the trifecta of conduct justifying our impeachment. in article 2, he is charged with other misconduct that likely would have alarmed the founders, the full, complete and absolute obstruction of a co-equal branch of government, the congress. during the course of its

impeachment investigation into the president's own misconduct. this is every bit as destructive of our constitutional order as the misconduct charged in the first article. if a president can obstruct his own investigation, if he can effectively nullify a power, the constitution gives solely to congress indeed the ultimate power, the ultimate power the constitution gives to prevent constitutional misconduct. the president faces himself beyond accountability, above the law. he cannot be indicted, he cannot be impeached. it makes him a monarch, the very evil in which our constitution and the balance of powers it carefully laid out was designed to guard against. shortly, the trial of these charges will begin. and when it has concluded, you will be asked to make several determinations. did the house prove that the president abused his power by seeking to coerce a foreign nation to help him cheat in the

next election? and did he obstruct the congress in its investigation into his own misconduct by ordering his agencies and officers to cooperate -- refuse to cooperate in any way, to refuse to answer subpoenas or documents and through any other means. if the house has proved its case and we believe the evidence will not be seriously contested, you'll have to answer at least one other critical question. does the commission of these high crimes and misdemeanors require the conviction and removal of the president? we believe that it does, and that the constitution requires that it be so or the power of impeachment must be deemed a relic or a casualty to partisan times and the american people left unprotected against a president who would abuse his power for the very purpose of corrupting the only other method of accountability, our elections

themselves. so you will vote to find the president guilty or not guilty, to find his conduct impeachable or not impeachable. but i would submit to you these are not the most important decisions you will make. how can that be? how can any decision you will make be more important in guilt or innocence than removing the president or not removing the president? i believe the most important decision in this case is the one you will make today. the most important question is the question you must answer today. will the president and the american people get a fair trial? will there be a fair trial? i submit that this is an even more important question than how you vote on guilt or innocence because whether we have a fair trial will determine whether you have a basis to render a fair and impartial verdict.

it is foundational. the structure upon which every other decision you will make must rest. if you only get to see part of the evidence, if you only allow one side or the other a chance to present their full case, your verdict will be predetermined by the bias in the proceeding. if the defendant is not allowed to introduce evidence of his innocence, it's not a fair trial. so, too, for the prosecution. if the house cannot call witnesses or introduce documents and evidence, it's not a fair trial. it's not really a trial at all. americans all over the country are watching us right now. and imagine they're on jury duty. imagine that the judge walks into that courtroom and says that she's been talking to the defendant, and that the -- that at the judge's request, the

judge has not allowed the prosecution to call any witnesses or look at any documents. the prosecutor may only read to the jury the dry transcripts of the jury proceedings. that's it. has anyone on jury duty in this country ever heard a judge describe such a proceeding and call it a fair trial? of course not. that's not a fair trial. it's a mockery of a trial. under the constitution, this proceeding, the one we are in right now is the trial. this is not the appeal from a trial, you are not appellate court judges -- one of you is -- and unless this trial is going to be different from every other impeachment trial or any other kind of trial for that matter, you must allow the prosecution and defense, the house manager and the president's lawyers to call relevant witnesses. you must subpoena documents that the president has blocked but

which bear on his guilt or innocence. you must impartially do justice as your oath requires. so what does a fair trial look like in the context of impeachment? the short answer is it looks like every other trial. first the resolution should allow the house managers to obtain documents that have been withheld. first, not last. because the documents will form the decision about which witnesses are most important to call. and when the witnesses are called, the documentary evidence will be available and must be available to question them with. any other order makes no sense. next, the resolution should allow the house managers to call their witnesses. and then the president should be allowed to do the same and any rebuttal witnesses. and when the evidenciary portion of the trial ends, the parties argue the case. you deliberate and render a

verdict. if there is a dispute as to whether a particular witness is relevant or material to the charges brought, under the senate rules the chief justice would rule on the issue of materiality. why should this trial be different than any other trial? the short answer is it shouldn't. but leader mcconnell's resolution would turn the trial process on its head. his resolution required the house to prove its case without witnesses, without documents, and only after its done will such questions be entertained with no guarantee that any witnesses or any documents will be allowed even then. that process makes no sense. so what is the harm of waiting until the end of the trial, of kicking the can down the road on the question of documents and witnesses? besides the fact it's completely backwards, trial first, then evidence, besides the fact that documents would inform the decision on which witnesses and help in their questioning, the

harm is this. you will not have any of the evidence the president continues to conceal throughout most or all of the trial. and although the evidence against the president is already overwhelming, you may never know the fullsco scope of the president's misconductor those around hi around him and neither will the american people. it is a threat to american security at home and abroad and a threat to the integrity of the next election. if there are steps that need to be taken after the president's conviction, the american people must know about it. but if, as the public already jaded by experience has come to suspect, this resolution is merely the first step of an effort orchestrated by the white house to rush the trial, hide the evidence and render a fast verdict, or worse, a fast

dismissal, to make the president go away as quickly as possible to cover up his misdeeds, then the american people will be deprived of a fair trial and may never learn just how deep the corruption of this administration goes or what other risk to our security and elections remain hidden. the harm will also endure for this body. if the senate allows the president to get away with such extensive obstruction, it will affect the senate's power of subpoena and oversight just as much as the house. the senate's ability to conduct oversight will be beholdien to the desire of this president and future presidents, whether he or she decides they want to cooperate with a senate investigation or another impeachment trial. our checks and balances will be broken. presidents will be accountable to no one. now, it has been reported that leader mcconnell has already got the votes to pass the

resolution, the text of whichwee did not see until last night and has been changed moments ago. and they say leader mcconnell is a very good counter. nevertheless, i hope he's wrong, and not just because i think the process of this resolution is backwards and designed with a result in mind and that the result is not a fair trial, i hope that he's wrong because whatever senators may have said or pledged or committed has been superceded by an event of constitutional dimension. you have all now sworn an oath. not to each other, not to your legislative leadership, not to the managers or even to the chief justice, you have sworn an oath to do impartial justice. that oath binds you.

that oath supercedes all else. any of you in the senate, and many of us in the house have made statements about the president's conduct, or this trial or this motion or expectations. none of that matters now. that is all in the past. nothing matters now but the oath to do impartial justice. and that oath requires a fair trial. fair to the president and fair to the american people. but is that really possible? or as the founders feared, has factualism or excessive partisanship not made that possible? one way to ask if this is a fair

trial is to ask yourself, how would you faction the trial? wouldn't it be fair to have witnesses and evidence first and then make a decision? let me be blunt. let me be very blunt. right now a very great many, perhaps most americans, do not believe there will be a fair trial. they don't believe that the senate will be impartial. they believe that the result is precooked. the president will be acquitted, not because he is innocent. he is not. but because the senators will vote by party and he has the votes. the votes to prevent the evidence from coming out, the votes to make sure the public never sees it. the american people want a fair

trial. they want to believe their system of government is still capable of rising to the occasion. they want to believe we can rise above party and do what's best for the country, but a great many americans don't believe that will happen. let's prove them wrong. let's prove them wrong. how? by convicting the president? no. not by conviction alone. by convicting him if the house proves its case and only if the house proves its case. but by letting the house prove its case. by letting the house call witnesses. by letting the house obtain documents. by letting the house decide how to present its own case and not deciding it for us, in sum, by agreeing to a fair trial. now let's turn to the precise terms of the resolution, the

history of impeachment trials and what fair and impartiality require. although we have many concerns about the resolution, i will begin with its single biggest flaw. the resolution does not ensure that subpoenas will, in fact, be issued for additional evidence, that the senate and the american people should have, and that the president continues to block to fairly decide the president's guilt or innocence. moreover, it guarantees that subpoenas will not be issued now, when they would be most valuable to the senate, the parties and the american people. according to the regs lusolutioe leader has introduced first the senate introduces parties.

then they produce opening statements. let's not kid ourselves. that is the trial. the opening statements are the trial. they'll either be most of the trial or they'll be all of the trial. if the senate votes to deprive himself of witnesses and documents, the opening statements will be the end of the trial. so to say let's just have the opening statements and then we'll see, means, let's have the trial and maybe we can just sweep this all under the rug. so you'll hear these lengthy presentations from the house, there will be a question and answer period for the senators, and then, and only then, after essentially the trial is over, after the briefs have been filed, after the arguments have been made, after the snats enat exhausts all their questions, only then will the senate decidual subpoena witnesses and

documen documents. documents and witness testimony that unlike in the clinton trial has not been seen or heard. it is true the record already compels the victim of the president in the face that the house has presented a powerful case, evidence of the president's high crimes and misdemeanors that includes direct testimony that officials were unwilling and unwitting in this scheme and saw it for what it was. yet there is still more evidence, relative and probative evidence, that the president continues to block that would flesh out the full extent of the president's misconduct and those around him. we have seen that over the past few weeks, new evidence has continued to come to light as the nonpartisan government's bui accountability office has held that the inquiry into ukraine

was illegal and broke the law. as one of the president's agents, lev parnas, has produced clarity of rudy giuliani's activities on behalf of president and corroborates gordon sondland's testimony that everyone was in the loop. as documents released under the information act documented an alarm while the president illegally held military support for ukraine, an ally at war with russia, without explanation. as a senior head of management and budget, on july 25th, 90 minutes after president trump spoke by phone with president zelensky, the defense department should pause all obligation of ukraine military assistance under its purview 90 minutes after that call.

duffey added, quote, given the sensitive nature of the request, i appreciate your keeping that information closely held. to those who need to know to execute the direction. although the there is simply no rational basis for the senate to deprive itself of all relevant information in making such a hugely consequential judgment. moreover, as the president's answer to his summons and his trial brief make clear, the president now attempts to contest the facts albeit in false and misleading ways. but the president should not have it both ways. he should not be permitted to claim that the facts are wrong while also concealing mountains of evidence that bear precisely on those facts. if this body seeks impartial justice, it should ensure that subpoenas are issued and that they are issued now before the senate begins extended proceedings based on a record that every person in this room

and every american watching at home knows does not include documents and witness testimony it should because the president would not allow it to be so. complying with these subpoenas would not impose a burden. the subpoenas cover narrowly tailored and targeted documents and witnesses that the president has concealed. the senate deserves to see the documents from the white house. the state department, the office of management and budget, the department of defense. these agencies already should have collected and at least preserved these documents in response to house subpoenas. indeed, in some cases agencies have already produced documents in lawsuits, albeit in heavily redacted form, and witnesses with direct knowledge or involvement should be heard. that includes the president's acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney, his former national security adviser john bolton, who has publicly offered to

testify, two senior officials integral to implementing the president's freeze on ukraine's military aid also have very relevant testimony. why not hear it? robert blair who serves as mulvaney's senior adviser, michael duffey, a senior official at omb and other witnesses with direct knowledge that we reserve the right to call later. but these witnesses with whom we wish to begin the trial. last month president trump made clear that he supported having senior officials testify before the senate during his trial, declaring that he would love to have secretary pompeo, mr. mulvaney now former secretary perry, and quote, many other people testify in the senate trial. >> the senate, i would love to have mike pompeo. i'd love to have mitch. i'd love to have rick perry, and many other people testify.

>> the senate has an opportunity to take the president up on his offer, to make his senior aides available including mr. mulvaney and secretaries perry and pompeo, but now the president is changing his tune. the bluster of wanting these witnesses to testify is over notwithstanding the fact that he has never assert add claim a cl, he threat ps to invoke one now in a last ditch effort to keep the rest of the truth from coming out. the president sends his lawyers here to breathlessly claim that these witnesses or others cannot possibly testify because it involves national security. never mind that it was the president's actions in withholding military aid from an ally at war that threatened our national security in the first place. never mind that the most impeachable serious offenses will always involve national security because they will involve other nations and that

misconduct based on foreign entanglement was what the framers feared most. the president's absurdest argument amounts to this. we must endanger national security to protect national security. we must make a president's conduct threatening our security beyond the reach of impeachment power if we are to save the presidency. this is dangerous nonsense. as justices of the supreme court have underscored, the constitution is not a suicide pact. but let us turn from the abstract to the very concrete, and let me show you just one example of what the president is hiding in the name of national security. there is a document which the president has refused to turn over in which his top diplomat in ukraine says to two other appointees of the president as i said on the phone, i think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.

the administration refuses to turn over that document and so many more. we only know about its existence. we have only seen its contents because it was turned over by a cooperating witness. this is what the president would hide from you and from the american people. in the name of national security, he would hide graphic evidence of his dangerous misconduct. the only question is -- and it is the question raised by this resolution -- will you let him? last year president trump said that article ii of the constitution will allow him to do anything he wanted, and evidently believing that article ii empowered him to denigrate and defy a coequal branch of government, he also declared he will fight off subpoenas. let's hear the president's own words. >> then i have an article ii where i have the right to do whatever i want as president.

we're fighting all the subpoenas. >> true to his pledge to obstruct congress when president trump faced an impeachment inquiry in the house of representatives, he ordered the executive branch to defy every single request on every single subpoena. he issued this order through his white house counsel pat cipollone on october 8, the same counsel that stood before you a moment ago to defend the president's misconduct. he then affirmed it again at a rally on october 10. following president trump's categorical order we never received key documents and communications. it is important to note in refusing to respond to congress the president did not make any, any formal claim of privilege ever. instead, mr. cipollone's letter stated in effect that the

president would withhold all evidence in the executive branch unless the house surrendered to demands that would effectively place president trump in charge of the inquiry into his own misconduct. needless to say, that was a nonstarter and designed to be so. the president was determined to obstruct congress no matter what we did, and his conduct since, his attacks on the impeachment inquiry, his attacks on witnesses have affirmed that the president never had any intention to cooperate under any circumstance, and why? because the evidence and testimony he conceals would only further prove his guilt. the innocent do not act this way. simply stated, this trial should not reward the president's obstruction by allowing him to control what evidence is seen and when it is seen and what evidence will remain hidden. the documents the president seeks to conceal include white house records including records about the president's unlawful hold on military aid, state

department records including text messages and whatsapp messages exchanged by the state department and ukrainian officials and notes to file written by career professionals as they saw the president's scheme unfold in realtime. omb records demonstrating efforts to fabricate an after the fact rationale for the president's orders and showing internal objections that the president's orders violated the law. defense department records reflecting bafflement and alarm that the president suspended military aid to a key security partner without explanation. many of the president's aides have also followed his orders and refused to testify. these include central figures in the impeachment inquiry including white house chief of staff mick mulvaney, former national security adviser john bolton, and many others with relevant testimony like robert blair and michael duffey. mr. blair who serves as a senior adviser to acting chief of staff mulvaney worked directly with mr. duffey a political appointee

in the office of management and budget to carry out the president's order to freeze vital military and security assistance to ukraine. the trump administration has refused to disclose their communications, even though we know from written testimony, public reporting and even freedom of information act lawsuits that they were instrumental in implementing the hold and extending it at the president's express direction, even -- even as career officials warned accurately that doing so would violate the law. the president has also made the insupportable claim that the house should have enforced its subpoenas in court and allowed the president to delay his impeachment for years. if we had done so, we would have abdicated our constitutional duty to act on the overwhelming facts before us and the evidence the president was seeking to cheat in the next election. we could not engage in a

deliberately protracted court process while the president continued to threaten the sanctity of our elections. resorting to the courts is also inconsistent with a constitution that gives the house the sole power of impeachment. if the house were compelled to exhaust all legal remedies before impeaching the president, it would interpose the courts or the decision of a single judge between the house and the power to impeach. moreover, it would invite the president to prevent his own impeachment by endlessly litigating the matter in court appealing every judgment, engaging every frivolous motion or device. indeed, in the case of don mcgahn, the president's lawyer who was ordered to fire the special counsel and lie about it, he was subpoenaed by the house in april last year, and there is still no final judgment. a president may not defeat impeachment or accountability by engaging in endless litigation. instead, it's been the long

practice of the house to compile core evidence necessary to reach a reasoned decision about whether to impeach and then to bring the case here to the senate for a full trial. that is exactly what we did here with an understanding that the senate has its own power to compel documents and testimony. it would be one thing if the house had shown no interest in documents or witnesses during its investigation, although even there the has the sole right to determine its proceedings as long as it makes the full case to the house as it did. but it is quite another when the president is the cause of his own complaint, when the president withholds witnesses and documents, and then attempts to rely on his own noncompliance to justify further concealment. president trump made it crystal clear we would never see a single document or a single witness when he declared, as we just watched, that he would fight all subpoenas. as a matter of history and

precedent, it would be wrong to assert that the senate is unable to obtain and review new evidence during a senate trial regardless of why evidence was not produced in the house. you can and should insist on receiving all the evidence so you can render impartial justice and can earn the confidence of the public in the senate's willingness to hold a fair trial. under the constitution the senate does not just vote on impeachments. it does not just debate them. instead, it is commanded by the constitution to try all cases of impeachment. if the founders intended for the house to try the matter and the senate to consider an appeal based on the cold record from the other chamber, they would have said so, but they did not. instead, they gave us the power to charge and you the power to try all impeachments. the framers chose their language

and the structure for a reason. as alexander hamilton said, the senate is given awful discretion in matters of impeachment. the constitution speaks to senators in their judicial character as a court for the trial of impeachments. it requires them to aim at real demonstrations of innocence or guilt, and it requires them to do so by holding a trial. the senate has repeatedly subpoenaed and received new documents, often many of them while adjudicating cases of impeachment. moreover, the senate has heard witness testimony in every one of the 15 senate trials, full senate trials in the history of this republic including those for presidents andrew johnson and bill clinton. indeed, in president andrew johnson's senate impeachment trial the house managers were permitted to begin presenting documentary evidence to the senate on the very first day of

the trial. the house managers' initial presentation of documents in president johnson's case carried on for the first two days of trial, immediately after which witnesses were called to appear in the senate. this has been the standard practice in prior impeachment trials. indeed, in most trials this body has heard from many witnesses ranging from three in president clinton's case to 40 in president johnson's and well over 60 in other impeachments. as these numbers make clear, the senate has always heard from key witnesses when trying an impeachment the notion that only evidence that was taken before the house should be considered is squarely and unequivocally contrary to senate precedent. nothing in law or history supports it. to start, consider leader mcconnell's own description of his work in a prior senate impeachment proceeding. after serving on the senate trial committee in the case of

judge claiborne, leader mcconnell described how the senate committee labored intensively for more than two months amassing the necessary evidence and testimony. in the same essay, leader mcconnell recognized the full body's responsible for amassing and digesting evidence. there was certainly a lot of evidence for the senate to amass and digest in that proceeding, which involved charges against a district court judge the senate heard testimony from 19 witnesses, and it allowed for over 2,000 pages of documents to be entered into the record over the course of that trial. at no point did the senate limit evidence to what was before the house. it did the opposite, consistent with unbroken senate practice in every single impeachment trial, every single one. for example, of the 40 witnesses who testified during president johnson's senate trial, only three provided testimony to the house during its impeachment

inquiry, only three. the remaining 37 witnesses in that presidential impeachment trial testified before the senate. similarly, the senate's full first impeachment trial, which involved charges against judge pickering involved testimony are from 11 witnesses, all of whom were new to the impeachment proceedings and had not testified before the house. there are many other examples of this point, including the senate's most recent impeachment trial of judge porteous in 2010. it is one that many of you and some of us know well. it too is consistent with this long standing practice. there the senate heard testimony from 26 witnesses, 17 of whom had not testified before the house during its impeachment inquiry. thus, there is a definitive tradition of the senate hearing from new witnesses when trying articles of impeachment. there has never been a rule

witnesses to those who appeared in the house or limiting evidence before the senate to that which the house itself considered. and that is because as senator hyrum johnson explained in 1934, the integrity of senate impeachment trials depend heavily upon the witnesses who are called. their appearance on the stand, their motive giving testimony. there is thus, an unbroken history of witness testimony in senate impeachment trials. presidential and judicial, i would argue in the case of a president it is even more important to hear the witnesses and see the documents. any conceivable doubt on this score, and there should be none left, is dispelled by the senate's own rules for trial of impeachment. obtaining documents and hearing live witness testimony is so fundamental that the rules of procedure and practice in the senate when sitting on impeachment trials which date back to the 19th century devote more attention to the gathering,

handling and admission of new evidence than any other single subject. these rules expressly contemplate that the senate will hear evidence and conduct a thorough trial when sitting as a court of impeachment. at every turn, they reject the notion that the senate would take the house's evidentiary record, blind itself to everything else and vote to acquit or convict. for example, rule 6 says the senate shall have the power to compel the attendance of witnesses and enforce obedience to its orders. rule 7, authorizes the presiding officer to rule on all questions of evidence including but not limited to questions of relevan relevancy, materiality, and redundancy. this rule too presumes that the senate trial will have testimony giving rise to such questions. rule 11 authorize the full senate to dedicate a committee of senate at such times and places as the committee may determine. as rule 11 makes clear, the committee's report must be

transmitted to the full senate for final adjudication, but nothing here in the rule states shall prevent the senate from sending for any witness and hearing his testimony in open senate or by order of the senate involving the entire trial in the open senate. hereto, the senate's operative impeachment rules expressly contemplate and provide for subpoenaing witnesses and hearing their testimony as part of the senate trial, and the list goes on. these rules plainly contemplate a roe bbust role for the senate gathering and considering evidence. they reflect centuries of practice of accepting and requiring new evidence in senate trials. this senate should honor that practice today, by rejecting this resolution. what about the clinton trial?

what about the clinton trial will be argued, even if we are departing from every other impeachment trial in history including the president -- impeachment of president andrew johnson, what about the clinton trial? aren't we following the same processes as in the carolilinto trial? the answer is no. first, the process for the clinton trial was worked out by mutual consent among the parties. that is not true here where the process is sought to be imposed by one party on the other. second, all of the documents in the clinton trial were turned over prior to the trial. all 90,000 pages of them so they could be used in the house's case. none of the documents have been turned over by the president in this case and under leader mcconnell's proposal, none may ever be. they certainly won't be available to you or to us during most or all of the trial.

if we are really going to follow the clinton precedent, the senate must insist on the documents now before the trial begins. third, the issue in the clinton trial was not one of calling witnesses but of recalling witnesses. all the key witnesses in the clinton trial had testified before the grand jury or been interviewed by the fbi, one of them dozens of times, and their testimony was already known. president clinton himself testified on camera and under oath before the senate trial. he allowed mumt ltiple chiefs o staff and other key officials to testify, again, before the senate trial took place. here none of the witnesses we seek to call, none of them, have testified or been interviewed by the house. and as i said, the president cannot complain that we did not call these witnesses before the

house when they're unavailability was caused by the president hilmself. and last, as you will remember, those of you that were here, the testimony in the clinton trial involved decorum issues that are not present here. you may rest assured whatever else the case may be such issues will not be present here. in sum, the clinton precedent if you're serious about it, if we're really serious about modeling this proceeding after the clinton trial, the clinton precedent is one where all the documents had been provided upfront, where all the witnesses had testified upfront prior to the trial. that is not being replicated by the mcconnell resolution, not in any way, not in any shape, not in any form, far from it. the traditional model followed in president johnson's case and

all of the others is really the one that's most appropriate to the circumstances. the senate should address all the documentary issues, and most of the witnesses now, not later. the need to subpoena documents and testimony now has only increased due to the president's obstruction for several reasons. first, his obstruction has made him uniquely and personally responsible for the absences of the witnesses before the house having ordered them not to appear, he may not be here to complain now that they followed his orders and refused to testify. to do otherwise only rewards the president's obstruction and encourages further future presidents to defy lawful process in impeachment investigations. second, if the president wishes to contest the facts and his answer in trial brief indicates that he will try, he must not continue to deny the senate access to the relevant witnesses

and documents that shed light on the very factual matters he wishes to challenge. the senate trial is not analogous to an appeal where the parties must argue the facts on the basis of the record below, there is no record below. there is no below. this is the trial. third, the president must not be allowed to mislead the senate by selectively introducing documents while withholding the vast body of documents that may contradict him. this is very important. the president must not be allowed to mislead you by introducing documents selectively and withholding all of the rest. all of the relevant documents should be produced so there is full disclosure of the truth. oerz otherwise there is a clear risk that the president will continue to hide all evidence harmful to his position while selectively producing documents without any context or

opportunity to examine their creato creators. and finally, you may infer the president's guilt from his continuing efforts to obstruct production of documents and witnesses. the president has said he wants witnesses like mulvaney and pompeo and others to testify, and that his interactions with ukraine have been perfect. counsel has affirmed today, that will be the president's defense. his can you be tonduct was perf. perfectly fine to get help cheating in the next election. that will be part of the president's defense, albeit not word instead that way. now he has changed course and does not want these witnesses to testify. the logical inference in any court of law will be that the party's continued obstruction of lawful subpoenas may be const e construed as evidence of guilt. let me conclude, the facts will come out in the end. the documents which the president is hiding, will be

released through the freedom of information act or through other means over time. witnesses will tell their stories in books and film. the truth will come out. the question is will it come out in time. and what answer shall we give if we did not pursue the truth now and let it remain hidden until it was too late to consider on the profound issue of the president's guilt or innocence. there are many overlapping reasons for voting against this resolution. they all converge on a single idea. fa fairness. the trial should be fair to the house, which has been wrongly deprived of evidence by a president who wishes to conceal it. it should be fair to the president who will not benefit from an acquittal or dismissal

if the trial is not viewed as fair, if it is not viewed as impartial, and fair to you senators who are tasked with the grave responsibility of determinining whether to convic or acquit and should do so with the benefit of all of the facts, and fair to the american people who deserve the full truth and who deserve representatives who will seek it on their behalf. and with that, mr. chief justice, i yield back. >> mr. cipollone mr. sekulow, you have 57 minutes available. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. members of the senate, leader mcconnell, democratic leader schumer. it's also my privilege to represent the president of the united states before this

chamber. senator schumer said earlier today that the eyes of the founders are on these proceedings. indeed that's true, but is the heart of the constitution that governs these proceedings, and what we just heard from manager schiff, courts have no role. pr privileges don't apply. what happened in the past, we should just ignore. in fact, manager schiff just said try to summarize my colleague's defense of the president. he said not in those words, of course, which is not the first time mr. schiff has put words into transcripts that did not exist. mr. schiff also talked about a trifecta. i'll give you a trifecta, during the proceedings that took place before the judiciary committee,

the president was denied the right to cross-examine witnesses. the president was denied the right to access evidence. and the president was denied the right to have counsel present at hearings. that's a trifecta. a trifecta that violates the constitution of the united states. mr. schiff did say the courts really don't have a role in this. executive privilege, why would that matter? it matters because it's based in the constitution of the united states. one manager said that it is you that are on trial, the senate. he also said that -- and others did -- that you're not capable of abiding by your oath, and then we had the invocation of the ghost of the mueller report. i know something about that report. it came up empty on the issue of collusion with russia. there was no obstruction.

in fact, the mueller report to the contrary what these managers say today came to the exact opposite conclusions of what they say. let me quote from the house impeachment report at page 16. although president trump has in times invoked the notion of due process, an impeachment trial, an impeachment inquiry is not a criminal trial and should not be confused with it. and believe me, what has taken place in these proceedings is not to be confused with due process because due process demands and the constitution requires that fundamental fairness and due process -- we're hearing a lot about due process -- due process is designed to protect the person accused. when the russia investigation

failed, it devolved into the ukraine, a quid pro quo. when that didn't prove out, it was then bribery or maybe extorks, somebody said -- one of the members of the house said treason. but instead we get two articles of impeachment, two articles of impeachment that have a vague allegation about a non-crime allegation of abuse of power and obstruction of congress. members, managers right here before you today who have said that executive privilege and constitutional privileges have no place in these proceedings, on june 28th, 2012, attorney general eric holder became the first united states attorney general to be held in both civil and criminal contempt.

why? because president obama asserted executive privilege. with respect to the contempt proceedings, mr. manager schiff wrote the white house assertion of privilege is backed by decades of precedent that has recognized the need for the president and his senior advisers to receive candid advice and information from their top aides. indeed that's correct, not because manager schiff said it, but because the constitution requires it. mr. manager nadler said that the effort to hold eric holder, attorney general holder in contempt for refusing to comply with various subpoenas was, quote, politically motivated and speaker pelosi called the hold a matter and i quote a little more than a witch hunt. what are we dealing with here? why are we here?

are we here because of a phone call, or are we here before this great body because since the president was sworn into office, there was a desire to see him removed. you remember in the mueller report there were discussions about insurance policies. the insurance policy didn't work out so well, so then we moved to other investigations. i guess you would call it reinsurance or an umbrella policy, and that didn't work out so well, and here we are today. manager schiff quoted the supreme court, and i'd like to make reference to the supreme court as well. it was then justice rehnquist later to be chief justice rehnquist, who wrote from the

majority in united states versus russell in 1973, these are the words, we may someday be presented with a situation which the conduct of law enforcement agents is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial process to obtain a conviction. that day is today. that day was a year ago. that day was in july when special counsel mueller testified. i am not today going to take the time to review. i will do it later, the pattern and practices of irregularities that have gone on in these investigations from the outset, but to say that the courts have no role, the rush to impeachment to not wait for a decision from a court on an issue as important as executive privilege, as if

executive privilege hasn't been utilized by presidents since our founding, this is not some new concept. we don't wave executive privilege, and there's a reason we keep executive privilege and we assert it when necessary, and that is to protect -- to protect the constitution and the separation of powers. the president's opponents in their rush to impeach have refused to wait for complete judicial review. that was their choice. speaker pelosi clearly expressed her impatience and contempt for judicial proceedings when she said we cannot be at the mercy of the courts. think about that for a moment. we cannot be at the mercy of the cour courts. so take article iii of the united states constitution and

remove it? we're acting as if the courts are an improper venue to determine constitutional issues of this magnitude? that is why we have courts. that is why we have a federal judiciary. it was interesting when professor turley testified before the house judiciary committee in front of mr. nadler's committee, he said if you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to courts an abuse of power, it's your abuse of power. it's more than that, a lot more than that. there's a lot more than an abuse of power if you say the courts don't apply. constitutional principles don't apply. lets start with a clean slate as if nothing happened. a lot has happened. as we proceed, we will lay out our case. we're going to put forward to the american people, but more

important for the constitution's sake of what's taken place here. that this idea that we should ignore what has taken place over the last three years is outrageous. we believe that what senator mcconnell has put forward provides due process, allows the proceedings to move forward in an orderly fashion. 33 days, 33 days they held on to those impeachment articles. 33 days. it was such a rush of national security to impeach this president before christmas that they then held them for 33 days, to do what? to act as if they negotiate the house of representatives should negotiate the rules of the united states senate. they didn't hide this. this was the express purpose. this was the reason they did it.

we're prepared to proceed. majority leader, democratic majority leader, we're prepared to proceed. in our view, these proceedings should begin. i give the rest of my time to my colleague, white house counsel. >> mr. cipollone. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. i just want to make a couple of additional points. it's very difficult to sit there and listen to mr. shchiff tell the tale that he just told. lets remember how we all got here. they made false allegations about a telephone call. the president of the united states declassified that telephone call and released it to the public. how's that for transparency? when mr. schiff found out that there was nothing to his

allegations, he focused on the second telephone call. he made false and his colleagues made false allegations about that second telephone call that occurred before the one he had demanded. so the president of the united states declassified and released that telephone call. still nothing. again, complete transparency in way that, frankly, i'm unfamiliar with any precedent of any president of the united states releasing a classified telephone call with a foreign leader. when mr. schiff saw that his allegations were false and he knew it anyway, what did he do? he went to the house, and he manufactured a fraudulent version of that call.

he manufactured a false version of that call. he read it to the american people, and he didn't tell them it was a complete fake. do you want to know about due process? i'll tell you about due process. never before in the history of our country has a president been confronted with this kind of impeachment proceeding in the house. it wasn't conducted by the judiciary committee. now, mr. nadler when he applied for that job told his colleagues when they took over the house that he was really good at impeachment. but what happened was the proceedings took place in a basement of the house of representatives. the president was forbidden from attending. the president was not allowed to have a lawyer present. in every other impeachment proceeding the president has been given a minimal due

process, nothing here. not even mr. schiff's republican colleagues were allowed into the scif. information was selectively leaked out. witnesses were threatened. good public servant servants we that they would be held in contempt. they were told that they were obstructing. what does mr. schiff mean by obstructing? he means that unless you do exactly what he says regardless of your constitutional rights, then you're obstructing. the president was not allowed to call witnesses. by the way, there's still evidence in the scif that we haven't been allowed to see. i wonder why.

no witnesses. lets think about something else for a second. let's think about something else. they held these articles for 33 days. we hear all this talk about an overwhelming case, an overwhelming case that they're not even prepared today to stand up and make an opening argument about. that's because they have no case. frankly, they have no charge. when you look at these articles of impeachment, they're not only ridiculous, they are dangerous to our republic. and why? first of all, the notion that invoking your constitutional rights to protect the executive branch that's been done by just about every president since since george washington, that that is obstruction. that is our patriotic duty, mr.

schiff, particularly when confronted with a wholesale trampling of constitutional rights that i'm unfamiliar with in this country. frankly, it's the kind of thing that our state department would criticize if we see it in foreign countries. we've never seen anything like it, and mr. schiff said have i got a deal for you. abandon all your constitutional rights. forget about your lawyers, and come in and do exactly what i say. no thank you. no thank you. and then he says -- he has the temerity to come into the senate and say we have no use for courts. it's outrageous. now, let me tell you another story. there's a man named charlie kupperman. he is the deputy national security adviser. he is the number two to john bolton because you have to

remember, mr. schiff wants you to forget, but you have to remember how we got here. they threatened him. they sent him a subpoena. mr. kupperman did what any american should be allowed to do, used to be allowed to do. he was forced to get a lawyer. he was forced to pay for that lawyer, and he went to court. mr. schiff doesn't like courts. he went to court, and he said, judge, tell me what to do. i have obligations that frankly rise to the -- what the supreme court has called the apex of executive privilege in the area of national security, and then i have a subpoena from mr. schiff. what do i do?

you know what mr. schiff did? mr. kupperman went to the judge and the house said never mind, we withdraw the subpoena. we promise not to issue it again, and then they come here and they ask you to do the work that they refused to do for themselves. they ask you to trample on executive privilege. now, would they ever suggest that the executive determine on its own what the speech of debate clause means? of course not. would they ever suggest that the house could invade the discussions that the supreme court has behind closed doors? i hope not. but they come here, and they ask you to do what they refused to do for themselves.

they had a court date, and they withdrew the subpoena. they evaded a decision, and they're asking you to become complicit in that evasion of the courts. it's ridiculous, and we should call it out for what it is. obstruction for going to court? it's an act of patriotism to defend the constitutional rights of the president because if they can do it to the president, they could do it to any of you, and they could do it to any american citizen, that's wrong. and lawrence who's been advising them, i guess they didn't tell you in the clinton impeachment he said it's dangerous to suggest that invoking constitutional rights is impeachable. it's dangerous. and you know what? it is dangerous, mr. schiff.

so what are we doing here? we have the house that completely concocted a process that we've never seen before. they locked the president out. oh, and by the way, will mr. schiff give documents? we asked him for documents. we asked them for documents when contrary to his prior statements, it turned out that his staff was working with the whistle-blower. we said let us see the documents. release them to the public. we're still waiting. so the idea that they would come here and lecture the senate -- by the way, i was surprised to hear that did you realize you're on trial? mr. nadler's putting you on trial. everybody's on trial except for them. it's ridiculous. it's ridiculous.

they said in their brief, we have overwhelming evidence and they're afraid to make their case. think about it. think about it. it's common sense. overwhelming evidence to impeach the president of the united states, and then they come here on the first day and they say, you know what? we need some more evidence. now, let me tell you something, if i showed up in any court in this country and i said, judge, my case is overwhelming, but i'm not ready to go yet. i need more evidence before i can make my case, i would get thrown out in two seconds, and that's exactly what should happen here. that's exactly what should happen here. it's too much to listen to almost, the hypocrisy of the whole thing, and what are the stakes? what are the stakes? there's an

election in almost nine months. months from now there's going to be an election. senators in this body the last time had very wise words. they echoed the words of our founders, a partisan impeachment is like stealing an election, and that's exactly what we have. we have -- talk about the framers' worst nightmare. it's a partisan impeachment that they've delivered to your door step. in an election year, some of you are upset because you should be in iowa right now, but instead we're here, and they're not ready to go, and it's outrageous. it's outrageous. and the american people won't stand for it, i'll tell you that right now. they're not here to steal one election. they're here to steal two

elections. it's buried in the small print of their ridiculous articles of impeachment. they want to remove the president trump from the ballot. they won't tell you that. they don't have the guts to say it directly, but that's exactly what they're here to do. they're asking the senate to attack one of the most sacred rights we have as american -- americans, the right to choose our president in an election year. it's never been done before. it shouldn't be done now. the reason it's never been done is because no one ever thought that it would be a good idea for our country, for our children, for our grandchildren to try to remove a president from a

ballot, to deny the american people the right to vote based on a fraudulent investigation conducted in secret with no rights. well, i could go on and on, but my point is very simple. it's long past time that we start this so we can end this ridiculous charade and go have an election. thank you very much, mr. chief justice. >> does the president's counsel yield back the remainder of their time? >> we do. >> thank you. the democratic leader is recognized. >> mr. chief justice, i send an amendment to the desk to subpoena certain documents and records from the white house, and i ask that it be read.

>> the clerk will read the document. >> the senator from new york, mr. schumer proposes an amendment no. 1284. at the appropriate place and the resolving clause insert the following, section notwithstanding any other provision of this resolution pursuant to rules 5 and 6 of the rules in procedure and practice in the senate when sitting on impeachment trials, one, the chief justice of the united states through the secretary of the senate shall issue a subpoena to the acting chief of staff of the white house commanding him to produce for the time period from january 11s 1st, 2019 to the present all documents, communications and other records within the possession, custody or control of the white house including the

national security counsel referring or relating to a, all meetings and calls between president trump and the president of ukraine, including documents, communications, and other records related to the scheduling of, preparation for, and follow-up from the president's april 21st and july 25th, 2019 telephone calls as well as the president's september 25th, 2019, meeting with the president of ukraine in new york. b, all investigations, inquiries, or other probes relating to ukraine including any that relate in any way to, 1, former vice president joseph biden, 2, hunter biden and any of his associates, 3, burisma holdings limited, also known as burisma, 4, interference or involvement by ukraine in the 2016 united states election 5, the democratic national

committee or 6, crowd strike. c, the actual or potential suspension withholding delaying, freezing, or releasing of united states foreign assistance, military assistance or security assistance of any kind to ukraine including but not limited to the ukraine security assistance initiative usai and foreign military financing fmf. d, all documents, communications, notes and other records created or received by acting chief of staff mick mulvaney, then national security adviser john r. bolton, senior adviser to the chief of staff robert d. blair and other white house officials relating to efforts to, 1, solicit, request, demand, induce, persuade, or coerce ukraine to conduct or announce investigations, 2, offers, scheduled, canceled or withhold a white house meeting for ukraine's president, or 3,

hold and then release military and other security assistance to ukrai ukraine. e., meetings at or involving the white house that related to ukraine including but not limited to 1, president zelensky's inauguration on may 20th, 2019 in kiev, ukraine, including but not limited to president trump's decision not to attend, to ask vice president pence to lead the delegation directing vice president pence not to attend and subsequent decision about the composition of the delegation of the united states. 2, a meeting at the white house on or around may 23rd, 2019, involving, among others, president trump, then special representative for ukraine negotiations, ambassador kurt volk volker, then energy secretary rick perry, and united states ambassador to the european union gordon sondland. as well as any private meetings

or conversations with those individuals before or after the larger meeting. 3, meetings at the white house on or about july 10th, 2019, involving ukrainian officials andriy yermak and alexander dan ewe luck and united states government officials including but not limited to then national security adviser john bolton, secretary perry, ambassador volker, ambassador sondland to include at least a meeting in ambassador bolton's office and subsequent meeting in the ward room. 4, a meeting at the white house on or around august 30th, 2019, involving president trump, secretary of state mike pompeo, and secretary of defense mark esper. 5, a planned meeting later canceled in warsaw, poland, on or around september # 1st, 2019 between president trump and president zelensky subsequently attended by vice president

pence, and 6, a meatieting at t white house on or around september 11th, 2019, involving president trump, vice president pence, and mr. mulvaney concerning the lifting of the hold on security assistance for ukraine. f, meetings telephone calls or conversations related to any occasions in which the national security council officials reported concerns to national security council lawyers including but not limited to national security council legal adviser john eisenberg regarding matters elt arelated to ukraine including but not limited to, 1, the decision to delay military assistance to ukraine, 2, the july 10th, 2019 meetings at the white house with ukrainian officials, 3, the president's july 25th, 2019 call with the president of ukraine. 4, a september 1st, 2019,

meeting between ambassador so sondland and a ukrainian official, and 5, the president's september 7th, 2019, call with ambassador sondland. g, any internal review or assessment within the white house regarding ukraine matters following the september 9th, 2019, request for documents from the house permanent select committee on intelligence, the house committee on oversight and reform, and the house committee on foreign affairs including but not limited to documents collected that pertain to the hold on military and other security assistance to ukraine, the scheduling of a white house meeting for the president of ukraine, and any requests for investigations by ukraine. h, the complaint submitted by a whistle-blower within the intelligence community on or around august 12th, 2019, to the inspector general of the intelligence community. i, all meetings or calls including requests for or recordings of meetings or

telephone calls scheduling items, calendar entries, white house visitor records, and e mail or text messages using personal or work-related devices between or among 1, current or former white house officials or employees including but not limited to president trump and, 2, rudolph w. giuliani, ambassador sondland, victoria tongseng and former united states ambassador to ukraine marie masha yovanovitch, including but not limited to the decision to end her tour or recall her from the united states embassy in kiev and, 2, the sergeant at arms is authorized to utilize the services of the deputy sergeant at arms or any other employee of the united states senate in serving the subpoena authorized to be issued by this section. >> chief justice. >> the majority leader is

recognized. >> i'd ask for a brief 15-minute recess before the parties are recognized to debate the schumer amendment. therefore, i ask consent the senate stand in recess subject to the call of the chair. >> without objection, so ordered. >> all right, so now there's a 15-minute recess for the 100 u.s. senators. the house democratic managers, the white house consults, they're going to get ready for part two today as they take up this amendment that chuck schumer, the minority leader in the senate has put forward. it's interesting that it follows what is considered to be a fairly significant change on the part of the senate majority leader, mr. mcconnell from his proposed rules, resolution that was released last night, as to what fwactually was released during this trial. >> it's surprising given how strongly mitch mcconnell rules the senate.

one would think he wouldn't introduce the package he did if he didn't know for a fact there was 51 votes. i wonder if he was in danger of losing the vote if he did not change the package. what the bill does now -- the two big sticking points for some republicans and for every democrat was that each side, the house managers and the trump side, were going to be given 24 hours to make their case, but they had to do that over two days. that meant 12-hour days starting at earliest with no breaks 1:00 p.m., meaning that it would not end until at the very earliest 1:00 a.m. that's one issue, and then the other issue, of course, was whether or not the evidence compiled by the house would be automatically included or would it have to be up for a vote to the point that maybe this evidence wouldn't even have been included. let's bring back dana bash to tell us what mitch mcconnell has done to change these issues that republican senators and every democratic senator were having with these rules, dana.

>> reporter: it is a very remarkable situation as you were both discussing given how every single move that the majority leader makes has been and he knows would be scrutinized by all parties, especially his fellow republicans who he has been so clearly understandably trying to protect because a lot of these republicans including susan collins of maine, if they don't win re-election and if four of them don't win re-election, he will not be the majority leader anymore. that is first and foremost in his mind. he talks about the institution of the senate, but that is the reality. so our phil mattingly has been doing some excellent reporting on this. i'll let him give some of the details, but broadly, our understanding and my understanding in talking to a source familiar with the discussions is that while the public discussion has been about

whether or not these key republicans will allow witnesses, privately the discussion had been about other issues like making the house democrats information, their whole case admissible and on the front end and even broader things like you were saying like how long each day will go. but more importantly admitting the evidence on the front end. that was something that some of these key republicans went to mitch mcconnell on and said, whoa, what you're doing, you're taking it too far. you should change this, and so he agreed to do it. it happened so quickly that i believe we have a photo of it. there's handwritten changes. it didn't even have time to go back to the clerk for a formal change. it was done by hand before being formally introduced just a short while ago. that just shows you how quickly the changes were and how, you know, even mitch mcconnell who says he -- you know, who

understands his caucus has to try to bend to their will while he's obviously trying to bend to the will of the white house, which wants this done quickly, ask there's also a school of thought that giving people like susan collins a win early on in this, a political win isn't such a bad thing for susan collins and other republicans. >> wolf, just to be clear, this has now changed from instead of the 24 hours over two days, it's going to be 24 hours over three days. >> for each side. >> for each side, which means eight-hour days theoretically, which is much more manageable and also will not run into the early hours of the morning. and then in addition, it will be automatically the evidence, automatically will be included in the record in the senate, although members could vote later to take stuff out if they want to strike it from the record. it's an opt-in situation. so those are two very significant changes. >> you know, i want to bring in kaitlan collins and phil mattingly. kaitlan, over to you, you're over at the white house. give us a sense of what led to

this fairly dramatic change. >> reporter: so we're actually learning something interesting about the white house's role in all of this. we're being told that the white house had an initial role in that first language of this resolution where it wanted those two days for those arguments. that 24 hours to argue over a time period of two days, and we're told the reason the white house wanted that is because the defense here -- or excuse me, the house managers get to go first and make their case, and the white house was worried that they would get pushed given all the motions that you're likely to see today, that they could get pushed and their argument would be broken up over the weekend. so theoretically, if the house does start making its argument tomorrow, they could have wednesday and thursday s and then the white house was worried if there were a lot of motions they would be pushed to potentially saturday and on to monday, and their argument would therefore be broken up. they don't like that because, of course, it could potentially affect their coverage. they may not get as good of coverage if they had their argument broken up after the house is gone in a consecutive manner of days.

they played a role in pushing for that language in that initial resolution, wants that two-daytime period over the three-daytime period. a lot of that yoophad to do wite white house. the white house does use all of their time with this three-day change we saw mcconnell make, they would be presenting their arguments if they go up to the house on saturday, monday, and tuesday. that would break them up on sunday with that day that they will not be in session for this impeachment trial. so that actually had a lot to do with it. it's a good question of what their response is going to be, what the president's response is going to be. he just got back to his hotel in switzerland as his attorneys were on the floor making their opening arguments there as you saw them going after adam schiff, who had been speaking. the question is what is his response going to be? we should note he has plenty of time to watch this. it's 9:00 in davos, and the president does not have anything else on his schedule for right now for the rest of the day. >> i suspect he is watching. i suspect he's not going to be very happy it's going to be spread out over three days as

opposed to two days. you're getting some information on why the senate majority leader had no choice but to make this concession. >> wolf, let me walk you through some of the behind the scenes according to several people who were involved in the events that transpired a couple of hours before the trial actually began when these changes were actually made. something to keep in mind here, i think there's a theory of the case that the majority leader mitch mcconnell has had throughout the last couple of weeks preparing his members for this trial, and that is unity is r extremely important for the entirety of the conference, all 53 republicans keeping them together for as long as possible will only pay dividends the longer the trial goes. that's been what mcconnell has preached to his members. it's been what he's kept in mind as he's negotiated behind the scenes on the actual details of this resolution. what i am told is he was not in danger of losing the vote on this resolution, but he was in danger of losing some republicans, several republicans made clear earlier this morning that they had issues with those two specific changes that ended up being made. they had issues with compressing

the trial into two days. they had issues with the fact that they were going to have to vote to admit the house evidence later on in the trial. they felt like those were things that didn't need to be a part of this and things that should have been addressed upfront. susan collins said for one that she wanted the changes made. her spokeswoman saying her position has been that the trial should follow the clinton model as much as possible. she thinks these changes are a significant improvement. ohio senator rob portman was also involved in this process. mcconnell read his conference. his conference was making clear to stick together they needed changes. >> phil mattingly, and kaitlan collins, thanks so much. we're going to take a quick break. when we come back, more on the senate impeachment trial. stay with us. hi! we're glad you came in, what's on your mind? can you help keep these guys protected online? easy, connect to the xfi gateway.

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the senate has taken a very, very brief recess right now, and they're going to be resuming the discussion, the debate over the rules. there's been an amendment that's just been introduced by the minority leader chuck schumer, an amendment to call witnesses to get evidence dmadmitted. they're taking a break right now, they're going to move on to debate this one amendment chuck schumer has introduced. >> it seems very unlikely that the amendment will pass, especially now -- well, first of all democrats only have 47 votes in the senate, but then also

given the drama that we've been told of in the last 15, 20 minutes, which has to do with senator susan collins and some others forcing senate majority leader mitch mcconnell to make the rules more fair in their view going from two 12-hour days for each side to now three theoretically eight-hour days to make the case. going from the house democrats being able to just automatically introduce their evidence -- or i'm sorry, that is now the case. before it was that they were going to have to vote on it and it might not happen at all. now the evidence will automatically be included. >> these are both significant changes. as we can see, they were handwritten as opposed to the resolution that mitch mcconnell had released last night. dana bash is up on capitol hill, you got a special guest. >> reporter: that's right, senator jeff merkley thank you so much for coming out during the break. >> you're welcome. >> my first question is about the changes that senator

mcconnell made last minute to allow the documents to -- that the house gathered as part of their investigation to be included in the trial upfront and then to give the arguments a little bit more time so they won't be made in the dead of night as democrats have been saying leading into the changes being made. >> actually, the changes isn't very significant. what he did is he said that the house documents will still not be entered into evidence now. they'll only be entered into after the initial days of argument pro and con, which was the plan all along. the difference is between having a vote and saying that they can be entered unless there's an objection. so he'll still control what gets entered, and it's still not entered upfront the way it was in the clinton trial. so the other thing i want to ask you about is something that mitt romney said to my colleague manu raju, which is that democrats have to be careful not to make everything a crisis, that you know, i mean, he's somebody who you all are trying to persuade on a key issue like witnesses,

and coming into it today, you know, he was saying that if you make everything the worst thing in the world, then nothing is the worst thing in the world. is there a concern about overreaching here, especially when your audience are these persuadable republicans? >> well, i think the real concern is about whether or not the senate is going to fulfill its constitutional responsibility, and so the issue of whether or not you have witnesses and whether or not you have documents is core to that, and so i wouldn't say it's an exaggeration to say it's a crisis to have a situation where there is a trial that is not really a trial. as every american understands, a trial involves presenting your case with your witness and documents and the defense with witness and documents. that's a fair and full trial. these rules are the opposite. >> thank you, senator. thanks for coming out. appreciate it. jake, back to you. >> all right, dana bash, thanks so much. and let's talk about these changes because i'm interested in everybody's perspective.

let me start with you, john, king. you've covered capitol hill as i have. it is interesting, i don't know what the truth is, but it is interesting that right before this fierce debate on the rules, a, mitch mcconnell changes the rules to make them friendlier, b, susan collins who is facing a tough re-election race at the end of this year in november is able to emerge as one of the heroes of this process, forcing the senate majority leader to make them more fair. now maybe that's exactly what happened, but the skeptic in me wonders if this is a little bit for show. >> well, sometimes you give to get, right? so mitch mcconnell gave. that's interesting because he's trying to prove he's in charge. he's trying to prove he's strong. he's trying to prove everybody should follow the leader. the leader here publicly made concessions at the very beginning of a very important trial in which his control over his people is the biggest factor. he gave, you're right, he's smart enough. he's disciplined enough.

he should have known this this morning, why did he do it when he did it, i think that's a fair question. we'll see where the reporting takes us. it sends a message to the white house as kaitlan collins reported had a heavy hand, the president wants this over before the state of the union address, he wants it done as quickly as possible, this is a message to the white house from leader mcconnell, you're going to get what you want at the end, let me run the middle, let me take this over in the middle. i do think watch the next vote. a adam schiff made a persuasive case for witnesses. you can disagree with his position if you want, he made a very persuasive case. we should get our documents. mcconnell gave some ground to make republicans happy with this. he's counting on their votes to vote down the schumer resolution. >> right, i don't think mcconnell loses anything in doing this, so he can gi a little bit to susan collins. i don't think it was preplanned that way, so he would have to handwrite or his staffer would have to handwrite in on this

resolution, but when these moderates objected he realizes there's a larger goal here, machiavelli mitch maybe. he knew what he was after, and he's after this question about witnesses, and we know that, you know, we've just gotten this amendment from chuck schumer, which is asking for all the documents from the white house that the house was not able to get, and i think mcconnell's goal here is to keep all his republicans together. he wants to show unity. the president, don't forget, loved it when the house republicans were unified on impeachment. it was so important to the president. he wants to show the president they can be unified on knocking down an amendment from schumer. >> yeah, i think that's right in many ways, it was a ridiculous idea anyway that they were going to have 12 hours of testimony going into the -- >> and not letting the evidence

in without a vote. >> not letting the evidence in, going until 1:00 a.m. these people aren't spring chickens and neither are we, but the idea that they would go until 1:00 in the morning always just seemed untenable for a lot of those senators, if you're a republican is this something you really wanted to do. i imagine that the president is watching this, he's away, and they wanted him to be away, to not really be in the mix here, but seeing schiff's very persuasive, easy to understand narrative that he was laying out there, he was using the president's own words against him when he was talking about witnesses. he had the video clip of the president saying he'd love to have witnesses. he showed some text messages from taylor as well and said -- laid all the reasons this wasn't the clinton standard and why it should be, and then you obviously had the president's attorneys come forward. i'm sure the president watching liked that they were going after schiff in that way and bringing up the probably bad idea from schiff when he did do that parody in some of the hearings in the impeachment, but this is going to be fascinating.

we see the different sides laying out in mitch mcconnell sort of blinking, you know, with this changing of the rules with this resolution that they'll vote on. >> it was hard to miss that while cipollone did come out and say, you know, that this was the president did nothing wrong when he started, he said there was nothing wrong with the phone call, he immediately proceeded to talk about process, process. ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous as he said numerous times whereas schiff was really focused on substance, substance, substance of what actually occurred, and it wasn't just one phone call. it was a month's long process in which eventually this aid was held up to ukraine. so it was as if they were arguing past each other, except on the question of witnesses, and i think that is so key here because you can't say it enough. this is different from 1999. the witnesses in bill clinton's

impeachment trial had already testified under oath. they had videotaped depositions, but people knew what they were going to say. they had already testified under oath. these witnesses have never testified. >> jeffrey, what did you think of cipollone's arguments? >> well, i thought it was a -- it was a good television argument because it was slamming -- it was slamming the democrats and especially -- especially adam schiff. it will be satisfying to people who already don't like the democrats. it reminded me of the trump presidency, which was and is, you know, an endless and successful play to his base. you know, the base that thinks adam schiff is the devil incarnate will be very pleased by that. down, i think gloria's exactly right. he did not engage with the facts of this case. he did not, you know, engage in the subject of whether the president engaged -- behaved

properly with regard to ukraine. he said it was all fine, but he didn't talk about the facts and then he segued into what an outrageous unfair investigation thfs this was. i don't think he's going to lose any votes in the senate because of that. i don't think he's going to gain any votes, but certainly his boss will have liked to have heard it if he was there at davos, and you know, it will play well on fox news. >> everyone stick around, any moment now the senate trial will resume. they will begin debating senate minority leader chuck schumer's amendment. our special coverage continues after this quick break. we'll be right back. ns out there today, remember, you have the hilton app. can the hilton app help us win? hey, hey-we're all winners with the hilton price match guarantee, alright? man, you guys are adorable! alright, let's go find your coach, come on! book with the hilton app. expect better. expect hilton.

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(mom vo) we got a subaru to give him some ato reconnect and be together. and once we did that, we realized his greatest adventure is just beginning. (vo) welcome to the most adventurous outback ever. the all-new subaru outback. go where love takes you. we are waiting for the senate to resume its debate on the amendments proposed by the

senate minority leader, democratic chuck schumer on the rules of the impeachment trial. we are getting a little more color now, however, on the changes u made by senate majority leader mitch mcconnell, republican of kentucky to appease concerns from some republican senators we're told. cnn's manu raju has that. what can you tell us? what happened? >> reporter: well, there was a debate behind closed doors at the republican lunch just before they came in to session of the trial this afternoon. the republicans, a number of republicans voiced concerns about exactly how this would be laid out, concerns that the democrats' arguments could, you know, get some traction with the public, that the arguments could be pushed into the late of the night, into the wee hours. because initially, what mitch mcconnell proposed was a 24-hours split into two days, essentially 12 hours a day, starting at 1:00 p.m. doing the math that could stretch into the early morning hours overnight. that didn't go over well, not just with some moderates like susan collins of maine, but a number of republicans i'm told

did raise concerns internally. there were discussions, including a conservative republican senator roger wicker told me moments ago it just seems fairer the way they have now proposed to do it, which is to spread under tout the argume 24 hours over three days, eight hours apiece. there were concerns about the democrats' arguments here that the house evidence that had been accumulated during the impeachment inquiry would not automatically be submitted in the record. there had to be a vote to allow that to happen as a departure from the clinton rules. there were concerns from members who said, look, we said we were going to follow the clinton rules closely. mitch mcconnell listening to his conference agreed to make those changes in the aftermath of these concerns that were raised by democrats. looking at the schedule, talking to republican senators there's a belief that this could still move rather quickly if there is no agreement to subpoena witnesses and subpoena documents, it's possible we could move through this trial to get to a final vote to acquit

the president by the end of next week. so we'll see if that happens. that's clearly the goal of the white house, the goal of mitch mcconnell to wrap this up quickly. it's possible that that could happen even under this revised time friame that the president could be acquitted by the end of the week. we'll see how the senators ultimately come down about subpoenaing witnesses and documents, particularly swing votes saying they still want to listen to those opening arguments in the coming days. >> thanks. we're going to get back to you, you know, alan frumin, the former senator parliamentarian, the fact that we're not going to hear this debate over this chuck schumer amendment to subpoena certain white house documents and records -- i think we're going to go back. let's go back to the chief justice. >> mr. schiff, do you wish to be heard on the amendment in proponent or as an opponent? very well.

mr. cipollone. >> chief justice we are -- >> mr. schiff, you have an hour. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. in a moment, i will introduce house manager lofgren of california to respond on the amendment. i did want to take this opportunity before certain representations became congealed to respond to my colleagues' argument on the resolution at large. first, it's worth noting they said nothing about the resolution. they said nothing about the resolution. they made no effort to defend it. they made no effort to even claim that this was like the senate trial in the clinton proceeding. they made no argument that, well, this is different here because of this or that or they made no argument about that whatsoever. they made no argument that it

makes sense to try the case and then consider documents. they made no argument about why it makes sense to have a trial without witnesses and why? because it's indefensible. it's indefensible. no trial in america has ever been conducted like that, and so you heard nothing about it, and that should be the most telling thing about counsels' argument. they had no defense of the mcconnell resolution because there is none. they couldn't defend it on the basis of senate press dent. they couldn't defend it on the basis of senate history, tradition, they couldn't defend it on the basis of the constitution. they couldn't defend it at all. so what did they say? well, first they made the representation that the house is claiming there is no such thing as executive privilege. that's nonsense. no one here has ever suggested there's no such thing as executive privilege, but the interesting thing here is they've never claimed executive privilege, not once during the

house investigation did they ever say that a single document was privileged or a single witness had something privileged to say. and why didn't they invoke privilege? why only now and even now they haven't quite invoked it. why now? in order to claim privilege as they know because they're good lawyers, you have to specify which document, which line, which conversation, and they didn't want to do that because to do that, the president would have to reveal the evidence of his guilt. that's why they made no invocation of privilege. now, they make the further argument that the house should only be able to impeach after they exhaust all legal remedies, as if the constitution says the house shall have the sole power of impeachment asterisk, but only after it goes to court, in the district court, then the court of appeals, and then the supreme court and they go back

up the chain and it takes years. why didn't the founders require the exhaustion of legal remedies? because they didn't want to put the impeachment process in the courts, and you know what's interesting is that while these lawyers for the president are here before you today saying the house should have gone to court, they're in court saying the house may not go to court to enforce subpoenas. i kid you not. other lawyers, maybe not the ones at this table but other lawyers for the president are in the court saying the exact opposite of what they're telling you today. they're saying you cannot enforce congressional subpoenas. you can't do it. counsel brings up the case involving charles kupperman, who was a deputy to john bolton on the national security council and said he did what he should do. he went to court to fight us. well, the justice department took the position he can't do that. so these lawyers are saying he should, and those lawyers are

saying he shouldn't. they can't have it both ways. now, interestingly, while mr. kupperman, dr. kupperman went to court and they applaud him for doing that, his boss john bolton now says there's no necessity for him to go to court. he doesn't have to do it. he's willing to come and talk to you. he's willing to come and testify and tell you what he knows. the question is do you want to hear it? do you want to hear it? do you want to hear from someone who is in the meetings, someone who described what the president did, this deal between mulvaney and sondland as a drug deal. do you want to know why it was a drug deal? do you want to ask him why it was a drug deal? do you want to ask him why he repeatedly told people go talk to the lawyers? you should want to know. they don't want you to know. they don't want you to know. the president doesn't want you to know. can you really live up to the oath you've taken to be

impartial and not know? i don't think you can. now, they also made the argument that you'll hear more later on from apparently professor dershowitz that, well, abuse of power is not an impeachable offense. it's interesting that they had to go outside the realm of constitutional lawyers and scholars to a criminal defense lawyer to make that argument because no reputable constitutional law expert would do that. indeed, the one they called in the house, the republicans called in the house, jonathan turley said exactly the opposite. there's a reason jonathan turley is not sitting at the table much to his dismay, and that's because he doesn't support their argument. they're cite him for one thing but ignore him for the other. now, they say oh, the president is very transparent, he may have refused every subpoena, every document request but he released two documents, the document on the july 25th call and the document on the april 21st call. lets face it, he was forced to release the record of the july

25th call when he got caught, when a whistle-blower filed a complaint, when we opened an investigation. he was forced because he got caught. you don't get credit for transparency when you get caught, and what's more, what's revealed in that, of course, is damning. now, they point to the only other record he has apparently released, the april 21st call. that's interesting too, that's just a congratulatory call, but what's interesting about it is the president was urged on that call to bring up the issue of corruption, and indeed in the readout of that call, the white house misleadingly said he did, but now that we've seen the record, we see that he didn't, and notwithstanding counsel's claim in their trial brief that the president raised the issue of corruption in his phone call, the july 25th call, of course that word doesn't appear in either conversation and why? because the only corruption he cared about was the corruption that he could help bring about.

now, mr. cipollone made the representation that republicans were not even allowed in the depositions conducted in the house. now, i'm not going to suggest to you that mr. cipollone would distributely make a false statement. i will leaf ve it to mr. cipolle to make those allegations against others. i will tell you this, he's mistaken. he's mistaken. every republican on the three investigative committees was allowed to participate in the depositions, and more than that, they got the same time we did. you show me another proceeding, another presidential impeachment or other that had that kind of access for the opposite party. now, there were depositions in the clinton impeachment. there were depositions in the nixon impeachment, so what they would say is some secret process, well, they were the same private depositions in these other impeachments as

well. finally, a couple last points. they make the argument the president was not allowed on the judiciary committee chaired by my colleague chairman nadler to be present, to present evidence, to have his counsel present. that is also just plain wrong, just plain wrong. not going to suggest to you they're being deliberately misleading here, but it is just plain wrong. you've also heard my friends at the other table make attacks on me and chairman nadler. you'll hear more of that. i'm not going to do the dignity of responding to them, but i will say this, they make a very important point, although it's not the point i think they're trying to make. when you hear them attack the house managers, what you're really hearing is we don't want to talk about the president's guilt. we don't want to talk about the

mcconnell resolution and how patently unfair it is. we don't want to talk about how the pardon the educatixpression backwards it is to have a trial and then ask for witnesses. we'll talk the house managers, maybe we can distract you for a moment from what's before you. maybe if we attack the house managers you'll be thinking about them instead of thinking about the guilt of the president. you'll hear more of that, and every time you do, every time you hear them attacking house managers, i want you to ask yourselves away from what issue are they trying to distract me. what was the issue that came up just before this? what are they trying to deflect my attention from? why don't they have a better argument to make on the merits? finally, mr. sekulow asked why are we here? why are we here? well, i'll tell you why we're here, because the president used the power of his office to coerce an ally at war with an adversary at war with russia,

use the power of his office to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid that you appropriated and we appropriated to defend an ally and defend ourselves because it's our national security as well, and why? to fight corruption? that's nonsense, and you know it. he withheld that money and he wi withheld even meeting with him in the oval office, the president of ukraine because he wanted to coerce ukraine into these sham investigations of his opponent that he was terrified would beat him in the next election. that's what this is about. you want to say that's okay? on article ii, we heard the president, he can do whatever he wants. you want to say that's okay, then you've got to say that every future president can come into office and they can do the same thing. are we prepared to say that? well, that's why we're here. i now yield to representative

lofgren. >> mr. chief justice, senators, counsel for the president, the house managers strongly support senator schumer's amendment, which would ensure a fair legitimate trial based on a full evidentiary record. the senate can remedy president trump's unprecedented cover-up by taking a straightforward step. it can ask for the key evidence that the president has improperly blocked. senator schumer's amendment does just that. the amendment authorizes a subpoena for white house documents that are directly relevant to this case. these documents focus on the president's scheme to strong arm ukraine to announce an investigation into his political opponent to interfere with the

2020 election. the documents will reveal the extent of the white house's coordination with the president's agents, such as ambassador sondland and rudy giuliani, who pushed the president's so-called drug deal on ukrainian officials. the documents will also show us how key players inside the white house such as the president's acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney and his deputy robert blair helped set up the deal by executing the freeze on all military aid and withholding a promised visit to the white house. the documents include records of the people who may have objected to this scheme such as ambassador bottlton. this is an important impeachment case against the president. the most important documents are going to be at the white house. the documents senator schumer targets will provide more clarity and context about

president trump's scheme. the amendment prevents the president from hiding evidence, as he has previously tried to do. the house subpoenaed these documents as part of the impeachment inquiry, but the president completely rejected this and every document subpoena from the house. as powerful as our evidence is, and make no mistake, it overwhe overwhelmingly proves his guilt -- we did not receive a single document from the executive branch agency including the white house its. recent revelations from press reports, freedom of information act requests, and additional witnesses such as lev parnas underscore how relevant these documents and therefore why the president has been so desperate to hide them and his misconduct from congress and from the american people. a trial without all the relevant evidence is not a fair trial.

it would be wrong for you senators acting as judges to be deprived of relevant evidence of the president's offenses when you're judging these most serious charges. it would also be unfair to the american people who overwhelmingly believe the president should produce all relevant documents and evidence. now, documentary evidence is used in all trials for a simple reason. as the story goes, the documents don't lie. documents give objective realtime insight. evidence is especially important in senate impeachment trials, more than 200 years of senate practice make clear that documents are generally the first order of business. they presented -- been presented to the senate before witnesses take the stand in great volume to ensure the senate has the

evidence it needs to evaluate the case. now, documentary evidence in senate trials has never been limited to the documents sent by the house. the senate throughout its existence has exercised its authority pursuant to its clear rules of procedure to subpoena documents at the outset of a trial. we don't know with certainty what the documents will say. we simply want the truth, whatever that truth may be. so do the american people. they want to know the truth, and so should everybody in this chamber regard bless of our pary affiliati affiliation. there are key reasons why this amendment is necessary. we'll begin by walking through the history and precedent of senate impeachment trials. i'll let you know about the house's efforts to get the documents, which were met by the president and his administration's categorical commitment to hide all the --

specific need for these subpoenaed white house documents. i'll tell you why these documents are needed now, not at the end of the trial, in order to ensure a full, fair trial based on a complete evidentiary record. now, some have suggested incorrectly that the senate is limited only to evidence gathered before the house approved its articles of impeachment. others have suggested, also incorrectly, that it would somehow be strange for the senate to issue subpoenas. these claims are without any historical, precedent shl or legal support. the senate has always understood that its sole power under the constitution requires the senate to sit as a court of impeachment and hold a trial. in fact, the founders assigned sole authority only twice in the

constitution, first giving the house sole authority to impeach, and second, giving the senate sole authority to try to impeachment. if the founders had intended for the senate to serve as some kind of appellate body, you know, they would have said that, but no, instead they wrote this. article i section 3, the senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. the senate has always received the relevant documents in impeachment trials and, indeed, the senate's own rules of procedure and practice make clear that new evidence will be considered. precedent shows this, all 50 full senate impeachment trials considered new evidence. let's look at a few examples that show the senate takes new evidence in impeachment trials. the first ever presidential impeachment trial in 1868 against president andrew johnson allowed the house managers to

spend the first two days of the trial introducing new documentary evidence. it was the same in judge john pickering's trial in 1804, new documents were presented to the senate nearly a week before house managers made their opening statement and later throughout the trial. and has been mentioned earlier by mr. schiff, in modern times in 2010, george porteous's impeachment trial included seven months of pretrial discovery and 6,000 pages of documentary evidence admitted at trial after that evidence was admitted the senate held its trial. president clinton's case did not involve subpoenas for adultdocu, why was that? because president clinton had already produced a huge trove of documents. the independent counsel turned over to congress some 90,000 pages of relevant documents gathered during the course of

its years' long investigation, and i remember as a member of the judiciary committee going over to the ford building looking at the boxes of the documents, but even with all those documents, the clinton trial included the opportunity to present new evidence and the admission of additional documents and three witnesses. the clinton impeachment precedent also shows how president trump's refusal to produce any relevant documents in response to congressional subpoenas is different than past presidents, different from president clinton, different from president johnson, and less even than president nixon. in short, not a single president has categorically refused to cooperate with an impeachment investigation, not a single president has issued a blanket direction to his administration to produce no documents and no witnesses. these are the precedents the senate must rely on.

the senate should issue a subpoena for documents at the very outset of the proceedings so that this body, the house managers, the president can all account for those documents in their presentations and deliberations. it doesn't make sense to request and receive documents after the parties present their cases. the time is now to do that. so why is the amendment needed to prevent president trump from continuing his categorical commitment to hide the evidence? in this case the house sought white house documents. why don't we have them? it's not because we didn't try. it's because the white house refused to give them to us. the president's defense team seems to believe that the white house is permitted to completely refuse to provide any documents without regard to whether or not it is privileged. they apparently believe that congress's authority is subject

to the approval of the president, but that's not what the constitution says. our constitution sets forth a democracy with a system of checks and balances to ensure that no one and certainly not the president, is above the law. now, even president nixon prack produced more than 30 transcripts of white house recordings and notes from meetings with the president. here before the house even launched the investigation that led to this trial, president trump rejected congress's constitutional responsibility to use its lawful authority to investigate his actions. he asserted that his administration was fighting all the subpoenas, proclaiming i have an article ii where i have the right to do whatever i want as president. here is what he said. >> then i have an article ii where i have the right to do

whatever i want as president. >> even after the house formally announced its investigation of the president's conduct in ukraine, the president still continued his obstruction beginning on september 9th, 2019, the house investigative committees made two attempts to voluntarily obtain documents from the white house. the white house refused to engage with frankly, or even respond to the house committees. on october 4th, the house committee on oversight and reform sent a subpoena to white house acting chief of staff mick mulvaney. this time compelling the production of documents from the white house by october 18th. on october 8th before the white house documents were due, the white house counsel sent a letter to speaker pelosi stating the president's position that president trump and his administration cannot

participate in this partisan inquiry under these circumstances. the president simply declared that he will not participate in an investigation he didn't like. ten days later on october 18th the white house counsel sent a letter to the house confirming that it would continue to stonewall. the white house counsel again stated the president refused to participate. well, the constitution article i section 2 says that the house shall have the sole power of impeachment just as in article i, section 3, the senate has the sole power to try. par participation in a duly authorized congressional investigation isn't optional. it's not up to the president to decide whether to participate or not, the constitution gives the house the sole power of impeachment. it gives the senate the sole power to try all impeachments. the president may not like being impeached, but it's the

president, not -- if the president, not the congress decides when impeachment proceedings are appropriate, then the impeachment power is no power at all. and if you let him block from congress and from the american people the evidence to cover up his offenses, then the impeachment power truly will be meaningless. with all the back and forth about these documents we've heard the phrase executive privilege. the president and his lawyers keep saying it. they talk about vast legal rights to justify hiding the truth, withholding information, but that's a distraction. that's not what the constitution provides, and the truth is as has been mentioned by mr. schiff, in the course of the entire impeachment inquiry, president trump has not once asserted executive privilege, not a sing m tile time. it was not the reason provided by mr. cipollone for refusing to

comply with the house's subpoena. indeed, president trump didn't offer legal justification for withholding the evidence. here's the truth. presidents, members of congress, judges and the supreme court have recognized throughout our nation's history that congress's investigative power are at their absolute peak during impeachment proceedings. your powers, executive privileges cannot be a barrier to give absolute secrecy to cover up wrongdoing. if it did, the house and the senate would see their power disappear. when president nixon tried that argument by refusing to produce tape recordings to prosecutors and to congress, he was soundly rebuke bed by the other two branches of the government. the supreme court unanimously ruled against him. the house judiciary committee voted that he be impeached for

obstruction of congress. it would be remarkable for the united states senate to declare for the first time in our nation's history that the president has an absolute right to decide whether his own impeachment trial is legitimate. and it would be extraordinary for the senate to refuse to seek important documentary evidence, especially when the president has yet to assert any privilege to justify withholding documents. now, there's another reason this amendment is important. the documents sought are directly relevant to the president's misconduct. the white house is concealing documents involving officials who had direct knowledge of key events at the heart of this trial. this isn't just a guess. we know these documents exist from the witnesses who testified in the house and from other public release of documents. and let's walk through those specific documents that the

white house should send to the senate. they include among other documents relating to president trump's direct communications with president zelensky, president trump's request for political investigations including communications with rudy giuliani, ambassador sondland, and others, president trump's unlawful hold of the $391 million of military aid, concerns that white house officials reported to nsc legal counsel in realtime, the president another decision to recall ambassador marie yovanovitch from ukraine. the first set of documents the senate should get about president trump's communication with the president of ukraine would include the phone calls on april 21st and july 25th as well as the september 25th, 2019, meeting with president zelensky in new york. we know, for example, that nsc

officials prepared talking points for the president in preparation for both calls with the ukrainian president. the talking points were about american policy as reflected by the votes of congress as well as the trump administration itself. they didn't include any mention of the bidens or the 2016 election, interference or investigations that president trump requested on the july 25th call. here's a clip of lieutenant colonel vindman explaining how the president ignored the points about american policy reflect ing the views of both the congress and the trump administration. >> colonel vindman, if i could turn your attention to the april 21st call, that is the first call between president trump and president zelensky, did you prepare talking points for the

president to use during that call? >> yes, i did. >> and did those talking points include rooting out corruption in ukraine? >> yes. >> that was something the president was supposed to raise in the conversation with president zelensky? >> those were the recommended talking points that were cleared through the nsc staff for the president, yes. >> the materials provided for the july 25th call that lieutenant colonel vindman mentioned are highly relevant. they could help confirm that the president's actual statements to president zelensky were unrelated to the foreign policy objectives of his own administration, and show that they served his own personal interests at the expense of america's national security interests. these documents also include handwritten notes and other documents that white house officials generated during the calls and meetings. we know, for example, that

lieutenant colonel vindman, mr. morris morrison, jennifer williams all testified to taking contem contemporaneous handwritten notes during the july 25th call. ms. williams and lieutenant colonel vindman both testified that president zelensky made an explicit reference to burisma that was not included in the memorandum that the white house released to the public. here's a clip of their testimony. >> both of you recall president zelensky in that conversation raising the issue or mentioning burisma, do you not? >> that's correct. >> correct. >> and yet, the word burisma appears nowhere in the call record that's been released to the public, is that right? >> that's right. >> correct. >> why do you need documents generated after the calls and meetings? they would shed light on how these events were perceived in

the white house and what actions were taken moving forward. for example, national security adviser john bolton wasn't on the 25th call, but he was apparently informed about the contents of the call afterward. his reaction once he was informed would be helpful to understanding the extent to which president trump's action detecti deviated from american policy and american security interests. there's another set of documents that the senate should get, and they relate to the political investigations that president trump and his acts repeatedly asked ukrainian officials to announce. these documents about efforts to pressure ukraine to announce investigations and the decision to place a hold on military aid to ukraine, they would be very important for you to evaluate the president's conduct. for example, ambassador bolton is a

mr. bolton reported directly to the president and supervised the entire staff of the national security council and the public reports indicate that john bolton is a voracious notetaker from every meeting and from witnesses we know that ambassador bolton hosted the july 10th, 2019 meeting where the ambassador sondland told the ukrainian officials that the promised white house meeting would be scheduled if they announced the investigations. we know that bolton was briefed about the meeting immediately following it when ambassador sondland said that he had a deal with mick mulvaney to schedule the promised white house meeting if ukraine announced investigations into the bidens in the 2016 election. we also know that ambassador bolton was involved in briefing the president on the presidential decision memorandum in august reflecting the consensus interagency opinion

that ukrainian security assessment was vital to america's national security and something that the congress had approved, appropriated, and something that the president had signed. press reports indicate that he, too, was involved in a late august oval office meeting where he, secretary pompeo and secretary esper all tried to convince the president to release the aid. now, ambassador bolton has come forward to publicly confirm that he was a witness to important events, and also, that he has new evidence that no one has seen yet. if we know that there is evidence that is not yet come out, all of us should want to hear it. we should want to hear it now before ambassador bolton testifies, we should get documents and records relating to the testimony, including the notes which would provide contemporaneous evidence about what was discussed in meetings

related to ukraine which would help to evaluate his testimony. the evidence is not just restricted to ambassador bolton. during his public testimony am bas gor gordon sondland said that he has not had access to all of his phone record, and he also said that he and his lawyers had asked repeatedly for the materials and that it would help him to refresh his memory and we should look at that. and ambassador sondland testified that he expressed emails with top officials like mick mulvaney to announce the investigations that president trump demanded. here's his testimony. >> third, let me say precisely because we did not think that we were engaging in improper behavior, we made every effort to ensure that the relevant

decision-makers at the national security council and the state department knew the important details of our efforts. the suggestion that we were engaged in some irregular or rogue diplomacy is absolutely false. i have now identified certain state department emails and messages that provide contemporaneous support from my view. these emails show that the leadership of the state department, the national security council and the white house were all informed about the ukraine efforts from may 23rd, 2019, until the security aid was released on february 11th, 2019. >> these emails among others are in the possession of -- these

emails in the possession of the white house, the state department and even the department of energy since the officials from all three entities communicated together. you know, during his testimony, ambassador sondland described it this way. everyone was in the loop. it was no secret. these emails are therefore important to understanding the full scope of the scheme. the request for relevant ed is not confined to trump administration officials. the senate should also get white house records relating to the president's private agents who acted on his behalf in ukraine, including rudy giuliani, victoria ten victoria, t victoria, the oensing and jody jen no -- joe dijenova.

and they were there to press the white house for investigations that would personally and politically benefit the president. for example, the may 10th 20, 19 letter from mr. giuliani to president-elect zelensky zone on the slide states that he was acting, quote, as personal counsel to president trump with his knowledge and consent. he requested a meeting with the president-elect, and to be joined by ms. toensing who is familiar with the letter, and he was cooperating with ms., the toesing and mr. dijenova. and this is to press the

investigations that the president wanted. the records would also show how the president's political agenda became more important than policies to help america's national security interests. the president's counsel may consistent with the prior attempts to hide evidence assert that attorney/client privilege would cover the documents, but the president's personal attorney/client evidence cannot shield misconduct in office or that of the aides or the lawyer's participation in corrupt schemes. we are not asking for documents reflecting legitimate legal advice. you need documents about their actions to pressure ukraine and to announce the investigation into president trump's political opponent. there is a set of white house documents that relate directly to the president's unlawful decision to withhold $391

million appropriated bipartisan to help ukraine. the witnesses have testified that president trump directly put a hold on the assistance despite his aides saying that it should be released. more importantly, according to government accountability office, his actions violated the law. on january 26th, 2020, the gao and independent watchdog issued a legal opinion finding that president trump violated the law when he held up security assistance to ukraine, and the g gao said and i quote that faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that congress has enacted into law. omb withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the impoundment control

act. the withholding was not a programmatic delay. therefore, we conclude that omb violated the ica. the fact that the president's action to freeze the aid, which he used to pressure ukraine to announce the political investigations that he wanted was not only the official consensus of his own administration, and also against the law, and it is to help himself. that helps demonstrate these actions were taken for president trump's personal and political benefit. witness testimony and public reporting make clear that the white house has a significant body of documents that relate to these key aspects of the president's scheme. some of the documents outline the planning of the president's freeze. for example, "the new york times" reported that in june that mr. mulvaney emailed the senior adviser mr. blair, did we ever find out about the money from ukraine and whether we can

hold it back? this shows that mr. mulvaney was an email contact with the aides about theissues under investigation in this impeachment, and telling us that the white house is in possession of communications that go to the heart of the charges before you. the senate should also get materials prepared for summary notes from a late august meeting with president trump, secretary of defense mark esper and secretary of state mike pompeo when they tried to convince the president that freeing, and this is a quote, freeing up the money for ukraine was the right thing to do. according to "the new york times," ambassador bolton told the president, this is in america's interest. the senate should review that highly relevant document which reflects realtime assertions by president trump's own senior aides that ukrainian aide was in

the national security interest of the united states, and that there was no legitimate reason to hold up the aid. there are documents that include after the fact, justifications to try to overcome legal problems and the unanimous objections to freezing assistance to ukraine, and we know these documents exist. for example, on january 3rd, 2020, omb stated in a letter to "the new york times" that it had discovered 20 responsive documents consisting of 40 pages reflecting emails between white house official robert blair and omb official michael duffey that relate directly to the freezing of the ukraine security assistance, but omb would not release them in the freedom of information lawsuit and they have refused to produce the documents at the direction of the president in response to the house's lawful subpoena. the washington post has reported

that a confidential white house review of president trump's decision to hold hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification of the debate of whether or not the delay was legal and that is known as a cover-up actually and the white house lawyers had uncovered early august correspondent between mick mulvaney and the white house budget budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after the president had already ordered a hold in mid-july on the early $400 million in security assistance not only does the house have a right to see them, but so does the senate and they

have a right to compel the documents. indeed, as the news article explains white house lawyers are reportedly, worried about unflattering exchanges and facts that at a minimum could embarrass the president. perhaps they should be worried about that, but the risk of embarrassment cannot outweigh the constitutional interests in this impeachment proceeding. any evidence of guilt including further proof of the real reason that the president ordered the funds withhold or after the fact attempts to paper over knowing unlawful conduct, and they must be provided to ensure a full and fair trial. no privilege or national security rationale can be used as a shield from disclosing misconduct. there are key white house documents relating to multiple instances when the white house officials reported the concerns to white house lawyers about the

president's scheme to press ukraine to do the president a domestic political favor. for example, lieutenant colonel vindman and dr. hill both informed the nsc lawyers about the july 10th meeting in which ambassador sondland revealed that he had deal with mr. mulvaney. i'm going to go directly to the clip by dr. hill, because dr. hill, pardon me, at bolton's direction also reported that meeting to dr., to johnize enbee -- john eisenberg in her testimony. >> i had discussion with both mr. bolton in the office a brief one and one immediately after the subsequent meeting. >> so the subsequent meeting or the after both meetings when you spoke to him, and relayed to him what ambassador sondland said, what did ambassador bolton say

to you? >> well, i just wanted to highlight first of all that ambassador bolton wanted me to hold back in the room, a meeting after the meeting. again, i was sitting on the sofa with a colleague. >> right. but just in the second meeting what did he say? >> he was making a strong point that he wanted to know exactly what was said, and when i came back and related it to him, he had specific instruction for me. i am presuming that is -- >> what is that specific instruction? >> the specific instruction was that i had to go to the lawyers to john eisenberg and he said that you tell eisenberg that i am not part of this whatever drug deal that mulvaney and sondland are cooking up. >> what did you understand him to mean by the drug deal that mulvaney and sondland were cooking up? >> i took it to mean investigations or a meeting. >> did you go to speak to the lawyers?

>> i certainly did. >> you relayed everything that you told us? >> i relayed it precisely and the more details of how the meeting had unfolded as well which i gave a full description of in my october 14 deposition. >> there was something wrong going on here, and white house officials were told to go tell the lawyers about it this, dr. hill, and lieutenant colonel vindman and mr. eisenberger, and we need the notes of those meetings to know what was said and again the attorney/client privilege cannot shield evidence of misconduct of the impeachment of the president of the united states. now, it is interesting that this amendment is supported by 200 years of precedent. it is needed to prevent the president from continuing to hide the evidence, and that is

why the specific documents requested are so important for this case. it is faithful to the constitution's provision that the senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments, and the final point they will make today concerns urgency, and the senate should act upon this subpoena now at the outset of the trial. in 14 of the 15 senate's impeachment trials thresholds of evidentiary matters including the timing and the scope of the testimony and the gathering of all relevant documents were address at the very outset of the trial, and practical considerations as to why the subpoenas need to be issued now. and resolving whether a subpoena should be issued now would let us to immediately engage with the white house to resolve asserted privilege issues if any exist and ensure that you get the documents as soon as possible so they can be presented to the senators in

advance of witness testimony. waiting to resolve these threshold matters until after the parties have presented their case would undercut the process of a genuine credible trial. thus, commonsense, tradition and fairness all compel that the amendment should be adopted and it should be adopted now. members of the senate, for all of the reasons that i have walked through today, i urge you to support the amendment to issue the subpoena for white house documents, documents that are directly relevant to evaluating the president's scheme. the house did its job. in the face of the presence of obstruction and categorical commitment to hide the evidence, we still gathered direct evidence of the conduct and determined that his conduct required impeachment. the president complains about due process in the house investigation, but he was not only permitted to participate, he was actually required to

participa participate, and yet he refused to, and refused to provide the witnesses and documents to tell his side of the story, and so now it is up to you w. the backing of the subpoena authorized by the chief justice of the united states, you can end president trump's obstruction. if the senate fails to take this step, or you don't ask for this evidence, this trial and your verdict is questioned. congress and the american people deserve the full truth. there is no plausible reason why anyone wouldn't want to hear all of the available evidence about the president's conduct. it is up to this body to make sure that happens. it is up to you to decide if the senate is going to affirm the sole power and constitutional duty to try impeachments, whether and when it will get the evidence that it needs to render

a fair verdict. don't surrender to the president's stonewalling. it will allow the president to be above the law and deprive the american people of truth in the process. a fair trial is essential in every way. important for the president who hopes to be exonerated, not merely acquitted by a trial seen as unfair. important for the senate whose vital role is to continue to protect and defend the constitution of the united states which has preserved our american liberty for centuries. finally, important for the american people who expect a quest for truth, fairness and justice. history is watching and the house managers urge that you support the amendment. i reserve the balance of my time. >> thank you, counsel.

mr. cipollone. >> mr. chief justice -- >> very well. mr. phil ben. >> thank you. mr. chief justice, majority leader mcconnell, democratic leader schumer, senators, it is remarkable that after taking the action of the breathtaking gravity of voting to impeach the dually elected president of the united states, and after saying for weeks that they had overwhelming evidence to support the case, the first thing that the house managers have done upon arrivaling finally in the chamber after waiting for 33 days is to say, well, actually, we need more evidence. we are not ready to present our case. we need to have subpoenas, and we need to do more discovery, because we don't have the evidence that we need to support our case. this is stunning. it is stunning admission of the

inadequate and broken process that house democrats ran in this impeachment inquiry that failed to compile a record to support their charges. it is stunning that they don't have the evidence they need to present their case, and that they don't really have a case. if a litigant showed up in any court in this country on the day of trial and said to the judge, actually, your honor, we're not ready to go, and we need more discovery, and we need to do some more subpoenas, and we need to do some more work, they would be thrown out of court, and the lawyers would probably be sanctioned. this is not the sort of proceeding that this body should condone. now, we have just heard that this is so important, and let's consider what is really at issue in the resolution here and the amendment. it is a matter of timing. it is a matter of when this body will consider whether there should be witnesses or subpoenas for documents.

why is it that the managers, the house managers are so afraid to have to present their case, present, and remember, they have had weeks of a process that they entirely controlled. they had 17 witnesses who testified first in secret and then in public. they have compiled a record with thousands of pages of reports, and they are apparently afraid to just make a presentation based on the record that they have compiled and then have you decide whether there is any there there, whether there is anything worth trying to talk to more witnesses about. why can't they wait for a few days to make the presentation and then have the issue considered? it is because they don't believe there is any there there and they want to ram it through now. they want to ram it through now when it is something that they, themselves, failed to do. so i want to unpack a couple of

the aspects of what they are asking this body to do. part of it relates to the broken process in the house and how that process was inadequate and invalid and compiled in inadequate record, and part of it is in accepting their request to have this body do their job for them would do to this institution going forward, and how it would alter forever the relationship between the house and the senate in impeachment proceedings. so first as to the process in the house. what they are asking the house manager are asking this body to do now is to really do their job for them. because they didn't take the measures to pursue these documents in the house proceedings. and there have been a number of statements made about they tried to get the documents and no executive privilege was assert and things like that.

let's look at what actually happened. they issued a subpoena to the white house, and the white house explained, and we were told a few minutes ago that the white house provided no response or rationale, and that is not true n. a letter of october 18th, the white house counsel pat cipollone explained in three pages of legal argument why that subpoena was invalid. and that subpoena was invalid because it was issued without authorization. we have heard a lot today about how the constitution assigns the sole power of the impeachment to the house, and that is right, that is what article one, section two says, it assigns the sole power of impeachment to the house and no member of the house, and no committee of the house can exercise that authority to exercise subpoenas until it is delegated by a vote by the house. there was no vote from the house. instead, speaker pelosi held a press conference, and she

purported by holding a press conference on september 24th to delegate the authority of the house to manager schiff and several other committees and have them issue subpoenas. all of the subpoenas were invalid. and that was explained to the house to manager schiff and the other committee members at the time in the october 18th letter. did the house take any steps to remedy that? did they try to dispute that? did they go to court? did they do anything to resolve the problem? no. because as we know, all they wanted to do was to issue a subpoena and move on. they just wanted to get through the impeachment process as quick as possible and get it done before christmas. that was their goal. so, those subpoenas were unauthorized and now what about some of the other things they have brought up.

the witnesses. the witnesses who were directed not to testify. and in part on this, we have heard manager schiff say several times that the white house never exercised executive privilege, and let me be clear on that. that is a lawyer's trick, because it is technically true that the white house didn't assert executive privilege, because there is a particular situation in which you do that and there is a particular way in which you do that. but there is another doctrine of immunity of senior advisers to the president that is based on the same principles as executive privilege, and that has been asserted by presidents of both political parties since the 1970s at least. so that's, and this is what one attorney general explained about that. quote, the immunity of such advisers enjoy from the testimonial compulsion from a

congressional committee is absolute and it may not be overborne by competing congressional interests, end quote. that is attorney general janet reno in the clinton administration explaining that the senior advise force the president are immune from the congressional compulsion, and that doctrine, that immunity is rooted in the same principles of the executive privilege and asserted by all presidents since the 1970s and this is basis on which a number of the advisers whose pictures they put up were directed not the testify. did they try to challenge that in court? did they go to court on that one? did they try to go through the constitutionally-mandated accommodations process to see if there is a way to come up with some aspect of testimony to be provided? no. none of that. they just wanted to forge ahead, rush through the process and not have the evidence and then use that as another charge in their

charging sheet for the impeachment, calling it obstruction of congress. and what that is as professor turley explained is that this idea when there is a conflict between the executive branch and the house and in seeking information, and the president is asserting constitutionally-based privileges, that is part of the operation of separation of powers. that is the president's constitutional duty to defend the prerogatives of the office for the future okay pants o -- occupants of the office and not something to be charged as an impeachable offense as the house democrats have tried to say here. to do that is an abuse of power, and that is what professor turley explained, it is congress', democrats' abuse of power. which just heard manager lofgren refer to the executive privilege as a distraction and asserting

that the issues of executive privilege are a distraction and should not hold things up. this is what the supreme court has said about executive privilege in "nixon versus the united states" that constitutional of executive privilege are fundamental to the operation of government and inextricably rooted in the separation of powers. end quote. inextricably rooted in the separation of powers. that is why it is the president's duty to defend the branch executive powers and that is what the president is doing here. now, the process that they pursued in the house abandoned any effort beyond issuing the first subpoena that was invalid to work out an accommodation with the white house, and instead, just tried to rush ahead to have the impeachment done by christmas.

what does that lead to now? they are coming to this body after a process that was half-baked, and didn't compile a record sufficient to support their charges and asking this body to do their job for them. now, as leader mcconnell pointed out in some comments earlier today, to allow that, to accept the idea that the house can bring an impeachment here that is not adequately supported, that has not been investigated, that has not got a record to support it, and to turn this body into the investigatory body would permanently alter the relationship between the house and the senate in impeachment proceedings. it is not the role of the senate to have to do the house's job for them. it is not the role of the senate to be doing an investigation and to be doing discovery in a matter like the impeachment of the president of the united states. if the house has not done the

investigation and cannot support its case, then it is not the time that once it arrives here to start doing all of that work. that is something that is the house's role. so, this is something that is important for this institution, i believe, not to allow the house to turn it into a situation where this body would have to be doing the house's work for it. if there is not evidence to support the case, if they have not done their investigation, then they are not going to be able to support their case. again, what is at issue here, and i think it is important to recall on the issue of this amendment. it is not whether the senate, whether this body will be considering, whether this should be witnesses or not, but when that should be considered, and there is no reason not to take

the approach that was done in the clinton impeachment. 100 senators agreed then that it made sense to hear from both sides before making a determination on that. to hear from both sides, to see what sort of case the house could present and the president's defense. that makes sense. in every trial system there is a mechanism for determining whether the parties have actually presented a triable issue, whether there is really some there there that requires the further proceedings. and this body should take that commonsense approach, and hear what the house managers have to say and why they are afraid to present the case. they had weeks in a process that they controlled to compile their record, and they should be able to make that presentation now. and the one point that i will close on and we have heard

manager schiff say several times that we have to have a fair process here, and i was struck by it. at one point he said that if you allow only one side to present evidence the outcome will be predetermined. the outcome will be predetermined and that is exactly what happened in the house. let's recall that the process they had in the house was one-sided. they locked the president and his lawyers out. there was no due process for the president. they started with the secret hearings in the basement. the president couldn't be present by hhis counsel, and he could not present evidence. and then a second round in public that again, they locked the president out. then they said that the president had an opportunity to participate. in the third round of hearings that they held before the judiciary committee, after one hearing on december 4th, speaker pelosi on the morning of december 5th went out and

announced the conclusion of the judiciary committee proceedings and directing chairman nadler to draft articles of impeachment, and that is before the president was to say what rights he wanted to have and exercise in the proceedings. it was already predetermined. the outcome had been predetermined. the judiciary committee had decided it would not have any fact hearings. there was no process for the president. he was never allowed to participate. so when chairman schiff says here that if you are only going to allow one side to present evidence that predetermines the outcome. that is what they did in the house, because they had a predetermined outcome there, because it was all one-sided and for him to locecture this body w on what a fair process would be takes some gall. a fair process would be that when you come to the day of the trial, be ready to present your case and not ask for more

discovery. the president is ready to proceed, and the house manager should be ready to proceed, and this amendment should be rejected. thank you. >> counsel, the house managers have eight minutes remain. >> the house is certainly not asking the senate to do the house's job. we are asking the senate to do its job, to hold the trial. have you ever heard of a trial that doesn't have evidence? that doesn't have witnesses? that is what this amendment is all about. just a moment about the subpoenas. the president, president trump refused to provide any information to the house. ordered all of his people to stonewall us. now, it has been suggested that

we should spend two or three years litigating that question. i was a young law student actually working on the nixon impeachment many years ago. and i remember the day that the supreme court issued its unanimous decision that the president had to release the tapes. i think u.s. v. nixon still is relevant. and so for it to be good law, the president is not complying with the requirements to the detriment of the truth. this is not about helping the house. this isn't about helping the senate. this is about getting to the truth.

and making sure that impartial justice is done and that the american people are satisfied that a fair trial has been held. i would yield now to my colleague, mr. schiff. >> mr. philbin say says that the house is not ready for its case, but we are ready. the house calls john bolton. the house calls mick mulvaney and let's get this trial started, all right. we are ready to present our case and we want to call our witnesses, but the question is will you let us? that is the question before us. and mr. philbin says that if i showed up and said i was not ready, the judge would throw me out of court, and of course, with ready, but you know what would happen if mr. philbin went into the court and said that i have made a deal with the defendant and i won't let the prosecutor call any witnesses and let the presenter present

any documents and you know who would be thrown out of the court? the judge. the judge would be taken out in handcuffs and so step out of the body for a moment and imagine what a real trial would look like and it would begin with the government receiving documents and introducing documents and calling witnesses, and this trial should be no different, and now, mr. philbin is making reference to the cipollone letter on october 18th, which followed a cipollone letter on the 18th that said that we will not do anything that you ask. in part, and law diatribe and mostly diatribe and you should read it. it is mostly what the president said on the tv screen, we will fight all subpoenas. the doctrine of absolute immunity that the counsel is referring to, yes, it has been invoked and attempted by presidents of both parties and rejected uniformly by the courts including in the most recent decision involving don mcgahn, the former white house counsel where the court said that it

would make him a king. he is no king. and this trial has determined that he shall not become a king, accountable to no one, and answerable to no one. and what's more is this idea of the absolute immunity, and this fever dream of presidents of both parties, it is no application to documents. again, this amendment is on documents, and there no absolute immunity from providing documents. as representative lofgren illustrated when this case has gone to the supreme court in the nixon case, the court held that the interest and confidentiality and the impeachment proceeding must give way to the interests of the truth and the senate and the american people. you cannot invoke privilege to protect wrongdoing. you cannot invoke privilege to protect evidence of a constitutional crime like we

have here. and finally, with respect 2to te secret hearings that the counsel is referring to, those secret depositions in the house were so secret that only 100 members of congress were able to be there and participate. only 100, and that is how secret that chamber was. imagine that in the grand jury proceed flings in the clinton investigation or the jaworski and nixon investigation inviting 50 or 100 members of congress to sit in on those and imagine as the president would like here apparently that the president is insisting is on having his lawyer on the grand jury because of a case being investigated against him. now, we had no grand jury here. why is that? why no grand jury here or special prosecutor here? because the justice department said that they won't look into this. bill barr's justice department said that there is nothing to see here.

if it were up to that justice department, you wouldn't know anything about this. that is why there is no grand jury. that is why we, in the house, we had to do the invest gaytiigati rules, and you know what was those unfair deposition rules that we used? they were written by the republicans. we were using same rules that gop house members used and that is how terribly unfair they were, and my gosh, they used our rules. how dare they. how dare they. and why do we have depositions? because we didn't want one witness to hear what another witness was saying so they could either tailor the stories or know that they just had to admit so much, and know more, and it is how every credible investigation works. counsel can repeat all they like that the president did not have

a chance to participate or a chance to offer the evidence and they can say it as much as they want, but it is not anymore true when they make the same false presentation time and time again, but it is that much more deliberate and onerous. the president could have presented evidence in the judiciary committee and he chose not to. there is a reason for that. there is a reason why the witnesses that they have talked about are not material witnesses. they don't go to the question of whether the president withheld the aid for this corrupt purpose and not that, because they don't have any witnesses to absolve the president on the facts. you should want to see these documents. you should want to see them. you should want to know what these private emails and text messages have to say. if you are going to make a decision about the president's guilt or innocence, if you are going to make a decision about

whether he should be removed from office, you should want to see what these documents say. now, if you don't care, if you have made up your mind that he is the president of my party or for whatever reason, i'm not interested or what's more, i don't want the country to see this, that is wholly different matter, but it is not what your oath requires. it is not what your oath requires. the oath requires you to do impartial justice which means to see the evidence, to see the evidence. that is all we are asking. just don't blind yourself to the evidence. i yield back. >> majority leader is recognized. >> i send a motion to the desk to table the amendment and ask the yeas and nays. >> the question is on the motion to table. is there sufficient second?

there is. the clerk will call the roll. >> mr. alexander. >> yay. >> ms. baldwin. >> yes. >> mr. barrasso. >> yaye. >> mr. bennett? mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal. mr. blount. mr. booker. we are letting them vote. this is jake tapper, and what is going on right now is that there is an amendment being introduced by the democratic leader of the senate, the minority leader chuck schumer of new york and the majority leader republican mitch mcconnell of kentucky is asking for the vote to table the amendment, and table the amendment. i guess that anything can happen, but we expect that this is going to pass on the par partyline vote to table the

schumer amendment for subpoenas and a whole bunch more evidence to be obtained from the white house, and it is not likely, we don't think that it will pass the republican-led senate. >> 5 3 republicans and 47 democrats and four independents who caucused with the republicans, and it is expected along the partylines, jake and i would be surprised if it is not. >> and especially after the maneuver that mcconnell made before this amendment was introduced which was backing off some of the more harder line provisions that he had made in his rule. there was some concessions made to the senators like susan collins of maine and the allowing the presentation of evidence to be spread out over three days and eight hours each for each side as opposed to two days and 12 hours each as well as the idea that the house evidence is now going to be introduced automatically and it was not that way before.

so mcconnell having made those concessions probably a good gambit to keep the republicans in lock step with him and shoot down the schumer amendment which is the vote going on right now. the vote yea is to table the schumer amendment. >> and to reject it. >> so when they table it, they table it in perpetuity. >> and this is the schumer amendment to subpoena certain white house documents and records. dana bash is up on capitol hill, and what are you hearing up there, dana? >> this is the first of what we expect is going to be the first of several attempts of the democrats to push for votes to change the rules of the road that mitch mcconnell has put forth. the expectation is that, as jake was just describing, is that what we will see now is going to pass which means they will kill this democratic attempt, and the democratic leader chuck schumer has released to the public and i am sure that the clerk has it

there, the second attempt that we will see today. this is specifically going to be about trying to subpoena the records from the state department that they believe are relevant to this trial. so this is, when we heard earlier this morning senator schumer talk about the tactics that they are going to use which he insisted are not dilatory tactics and not just trying to delay for delay's sake, that is what we are seeing right now. we are not seeing and hearing votes on the substance of the fundamental articles of impeachment yet, and the democrats are trying to force votes on the process. but important process issues they feel that the republicans who run the senate have not addressed. >> dana bash, thank you so much. john king, as they are voting on the schumer amendment to subpoena the documents from the white house, and thaafter that, expect that the amendment is going to fail, and then they will want to subpoena documents from the state department and what is interesting is that the

democrats are saying that we see in the fact that mcconnell backed off of the harder line provisions and the harder line rules, the power of the four senators whether it is mitt romney or lamar alexander, susan collins or whomever in forcing mcconnell to open up the process a little at the very least. >> so what he did early in the day is that he added two days to the trial. and that is all we know, spreading out the presentations of the prosecution and the president's team, and they are giving them an extra day to stretch it out. this is much more important. we expect mcconnell to win here, and the question is if the democrats get any republican votes, and we will revisit all of the issues at the end of the presentation, and the democrats are saying that we should have the subpoenas up front and get the documents from the white house and the next amendment is to get them from the state department and if schumer is going to want to press this, he is going to ask for specific witnesses, and when the presentation is over, the senators will ask the questions and that is going to play out

next week, and then the democrats will start it again, and the organizing resolution allows them to raise it later, but they are trying to raise a question of fairness, and yes, this morning mitch mcconnell made concession, and this is if they will hold the party firm. >> they have finished the roll call. let's listen in. >> well, while we are waiting for the final roll call to come n and we are expecting it to have passed and mitch mcconnell to have gotten the majority of the senate, which is republican to agree to table chuck schumer's motion to subpoena the white house records. gloria, borgnl borger, while we waiting for the final roll call

on this schumer amendment, you were looking at the arguments being made by the president's impeachment managers and not managers, but defenders -- hold on. >> and would anyone like to change his or her vote? if not, the yeas are 53 and the nays are 47. the amendment is tabled. so as expected on the party line vote. >> mr. chief justice, i send an amendment to the desk to subpoena certain documents and records from the state department and i ask that it be read. >> the clerk will read the amendment.

>> the senator from new york, mr. schumer proposes an amendment, number 1285. at the appropriate place in the resolving clause insert the following section notwithstanding any resolution pursuant to rules 5 and 6 of the rules of procedures and practice in the senate when sitting in impeachment trials, one, the chief justice of the united states through the secretary of the senate shall issue a subpoena to the secretary of senate commanding him to produce for the time period from january 1, 2019 to the present all documents, communications and other records within the possession, custody or control of the department of state, referring or relating to a, all meetings and calls between president trump and the president of ukraine, including documents, communications and other records related to the scheduling of preparation for and follow-up from the president's april 21 and july 25, 2019 telephone calls as well

as the president's september 25, 2019 meeting with the president of ukraine in new york. b, the actual and potential suspension, withholding, delaying, freezing or releasing of united states foreign assistance, military assistance or military assistance of any kind to ukraine including but not limited to the ukraine security assistance initiative, usai, and military financing, amf and all communications with the white house, department of defense, and office of management and budget as well as the ukrainian government's knowledge prior to august 28th, 2019, of any actual or potential suspension of delaying, freezing or delaying of the foreign assistance from the united states to ukraine and including all meeting and calls and engagements with the ukraine kran officials requiring the actual suspensions or holds or

delays withs a since sises and the to ukraine. all documents and notes and communications received by michael r. pompeo, counselor brechbuhl, and kurt volker, secretary george kent, then united states embassy ukraine charged affairs william b. taylor, ambassador to the european union gordon sondland and other officials relating to one, solicit, request, demand, persuade or coerce ukraine to announce or conduct investigations. two, schedule, cancel or withhold a white house meeting for ukraine's president or three, hold and then release military and other secretary of security assistance to ukraine. d, any meetings or proposed meetings at or involving the white house that relate to ukraine, including but not limited to one, president

zelensky's inauguration on may 20th 20, 19 in kiev, ukraine, and including but not limited to president trump's decision not to attend, to ask vice president pence to lead the delegation, directing vice president pence not to attend and the subsequent decision about the composition of the delegation of the united states. two, a meeting at the white house on or around may 23, 2019 involving among others president trump, then special representative for ukraine negotiations ambassador kurt volker, and then energy secretary rick perry and united states ambassador to the european union gordon sondland and any private meetings or conversations with the individuals before or after the larger meeting. three, the meetings at the white house on or about july 10th, 2019, involving ukrainian officials andriai yermak and

other communications not limited to john bolton, secretary perry, ambassador volcker, and ambassador sondland to include a meeting with ambassador bolton's meeting in the boardroom. a meeting in the white house on or around august 30th, 2019 involving president trump, secretary of state mike pompeo and secretary of defense mark esper. five, a planned meeting later canceled in warsaw, poland on or around september 1, 2019 between president trump and president zelensky and subsequently attended by vice president pence. six, a meeting on or around september 11th, 2019 involving president trump, vice president pence and mr. mulvaney concerning the lifting of the hold on security assistance in ukraine. e., all communications including but not limited to whats app and other communications with current or former state official

employees and not limited to michael r. pompeo, ambassador volcker, 578 bas dor sondland, ambassador taylor and deputy secretary kent and the following, president zelensky, andre yermic, and other entities acting in any capacity as a representative, agent or proxy for president zelensky before and after his election. f, all records specifically identified by witnesses in the house of representatives and impeachment inquiry that memorialize any key events and response there to including but not limited to august 21, 2019 cable sent from ambassador taylor to secretary pompeo. two, aus gu 16th, 2019 memorandum to file written by deputy assistant secretary kent and three, a september 15, 2019, memorandum to file written by deputy assistant secretary kent,

and all meetings not limited to all meetings or telephone calls or records of scheduling items or calendar events and other texts using work related devices between or among current or former state officials and employees and including but not limited to michael r. pompeo, ambassador volcker and ambassador sondland and two, rudolph w. giuliani and victoria, tvictoria toensing, and other recalled ambassadors to ukraine, maria masha yovanovitch to kiev and including credible threats gains hert and any protective security measures taken in response, and two, the sergeant at arms is authorized to utilize the services of the deputy sergeant at arms or any other employee of the senate in serving the subpoena authorized to be issued

by this section. >> mr. chief justice. >> the majority leader is announced. >> i ask for a brief ten-minute recess before the parties are recognized to debate the schumer amendment. at the end of the debate time, i will move to table the amendment, because the timing is specified in the underlying resolution, so i ask that the senate stand in recess subject to the recall of the chair. >> without objection, the senate stands in recess. that is a quick break that the senate is now taking as they begin taking up senator schumer's second amendment. the first one failed. the republicans on a party line vote 53-47 voted to table the schumer amendment which would be one that would issue subpoenas to get documents from the white house. that did not pass. the next attempt by schumer will be to issue subpoenas to get

documents from the state department. let's talk about all of this. >> i suspect that this is going to fail ads well 53-47 strictly along the party lines and if there is a third schumer amendment and if there is, there will be two hours of debate on that one, and two hours coming up now, and mitch mcconnell the senate majority leader has the republicans in line, and they will vote uniformly to reject all of the amendments and get on to the final vote approving his initial resolution for the rules of the road going forward. >> and it does show that we saw what happened is behind the closed doors and some republicans were told to push the matter with mitch mcconnell as to some of the harder line provisions that he had for his rule, and originally, it with go -- it was going to be each side, the ministers and the president's defense would be spread over two days, but now it

is three eight-hour days. pardon me. then in addition the evidence that the house collected was not going to be automatically introduced in the senate impeachment trial. that is now not the case. that evidence will be introduced, although the senators will be able to on a majority vote strike out the provisions if they want. and it seems, gloria, that mcconnell by ceding the small points he has been able to keep the entire 53-member conference in line. >> yes, and ads wolf said, you will see it again on the question of the state department. the question that the democrats raised in their hearings is mike pompeo, the secretary of state and what did he know and when did he know it. ambassador sondland and the ambassador to the european union testified that the state department would not allow him to see all of his emails that he had. he had a bunch of them which he

divulge and clearly they want to see more. so what they are looking for here is a way to connect the dots and find out the white house involvement with the state department in either cutting off aid or the role of rudy giuliani for example who we all know operated on his own tangent and this is what they are looking for. in a normal trial, you'd say, sure, have them in, but as the president's lawyer said in regard to the last amendment, he said, we don't want to allow the senate to become an investigatory body, heaven forb forbid. pardon me, neil, and i want to bring in dana bash with braeakig news. >> we got on the inbox, and susan collins a key senator from maine and in it she says and the key line, it is likely that i would support a motion to subpoena witnesses at that

point, meaning towards tend of the trial as i did in 1999. this is a longer statement explaining the nakt s ing thing voting with the party and with republicans against the democrats' attempts to move up the promises that witnesses and documents that they want will be part of this trial. so as part of the statement, she is leaning into the notion of potentially voting for witnesses. sheet does say likely, so she is couching it, but if likely turns into yes, what that means in all practical terms is that you have susan collins, and you have lisa murkowski who has said that she is interested in witnesses and mitt romney who has said that he is interested in witnesses, and that is three. so if there is a fourth republican on any of the witness votes that means that, that witness will be subpoenaed to come before the u.s. senate. again, likely, but the fact that she made a point of sending this

statement out right now is noteworthy. >> all right. dana bash, thank you so much. and nia-malika, your reaction? >> well, one of the things that is notable here is that the trial experience of not only lofgren, but also schiff is very much on display here, right. you saw them with testimony from the house trial, raising what fiona hill said, and raising what vindman said and essentially saying, don't you want to nil in tfill in the dot and not only the 100 senators there, but also the american public, and the twha were able to tell a come pkocompelling st same as in the house, what the republicans are doing, and philbin is not the most charismatic and television-friendly presenter, and he is talking about process mainly. so they are using their opportunity every time they get up there even though it is about the process and the amendments that are not going to pass, they are using time quite

effectively. they very well know that americans have a short attention span. they may not be through, you know, through the trial, through the whole thing. they have got one bite at the apple, at least right now, and maybe the viewership is really high now, and they are using time wisely. >> i thought that one of adam schiff's most effective moments was in responding to the accusation which we have heard many times is that the president's lawyers keep saying that the presidents, the house managers are not ready and he says we are ready. we call john bolton. okay. let's see john bolton. they can't call john bolton unless the senate agrees to call john bolton and so the idea that, you know, that the house managers are like kids who came to the teacher without their homework is just not true. what's true is that they are not allowed to try their case. and you know, that is -- and when you are coming to the

documents, these two motions for documents, you know, if you were trying a real case -- >> right. >> first thing that you would do is to get the documents. >> connect the dots. >> and the question is when is the right time? i mean, this is the game that the republicans have been playing in. well, the right time was not in the house, and the democrats should go to the courts and fight it through the courts, and now they are in a senate trial, and the right time is not now that we are on trial, and we should wait until later in the trial, and the question is if there is ever evidence they will admit. and one of the most significant changes made earlier in the day before they got to the voting is not so much the time extension, but the time extension is a humanitarian thing and it is nice, but the more significant change is the automatic at mitts and the from the hous-- admitta the house, and that is going to change what is going to change the two amendments from senator schumer and there is a stronger argument for the senators to

really take the second one, the state department document amendment and think about it in a different way than the white house one. because the white house one, you can think of all of the different privileges that would apply there. >> executive privilege. >> and attorney/client privileges and the executive and the communications with the nsc lawyer, but the state department documents go to heart of what was going on within that branch, and i would think that senators should be thinking about each of those amendments separately and individually. >> and michael gerhart, i want to bring you in, because you were taking issue with the fact that the trump lawyers and the defense team keeps arguing that the president trump has not been allowed to participate in the house process and you want to fact-check that for us? >> sure. he has been invited more than once to participate and his lawyers have been invited more than once to participate on the house side and they declined. what we are seeing from the president's lawyers here, they are asserting the same talking

points, and the audience of course is not just the base, but to the republican senators, and to remind them all of the talking points even if they are not true. on the other side, we have the house managers arguing to the of course american people and to the senators, but they are trying to work the evidence. they are trying to remind everybody of the evidence that they had pulled together on the house side. so it is actually going to undercut any argument made by the other lawyers. >> i want john to weigh n because the first amendment that chuck schumer introduced to get white house, to subpoena certain white house documents and records failed 53-47. the second amendment to subpoena certain department of state documents and records by all accounts is likely to fail along the same lines 53-47, and if there is a third amendment, and i anticipate possibly could be to get the witnesses, to subpoena the witnesses and by all accounts that will fail as well. but there is a political point that the democrats the house

managers and schumer are making right now. they want some of the vulnerable republican senators on the record rejecting these requests. >> and so don't understate the importance of the votes, but don't overstate the importance of the votes, because we are in the senate. when you are joining the democratic caucus, you are joining a club and expected to support the leader on the rule whchlt en you start a debate and they bring the legislation to the floor whether it is ted cruz or susan collins, and when the leader is going to floor, you are expected to support him on the rules and later disagree and the leader may not like it and disagree with the substance, and in the case of the votes, but mitch mcconnell says if you lose today, then the democrats could get control on day one and he is expecting loyalty on day one. and susan collins is in a tough re-election battle and it is 48-46 and she knows that she is in a tough

she is explaining herself. i might be in a different position in a week. but today, she is with the leader. and so ms. lofgren and the other democrats good enough to plant the seeds when the votes come up again in a week, they will get a different result, and this is about party loyalty, day one. >> and gloria, it is not hard to imagine the democratic senatorial campaign committee using roll call votes in which they say the senator's name, and he or she says aye or nay running as that vulnerable republicans such as mcsally in arizona, and gardener in -- >> and flip it in doug jones in alabama. >> and yes, vice versa. >> and this is why susan collins had to say -- >> she said that she voted to cover up the -- and that is what the democrats will say. >> and that is what chuck schumer is doing, and they know that. and that is why if susan collins votes no on the witnesses now, and that is why she released the statement saying that it does

not mean that i won't vote no on the witnesses later, because that is the way it is in the clinton trial and we waited to hear the case. >> i am not saying that she doesn't have an explanation, but you can't add to the -- >> well, she has the to explain it, and when you are explaining in politics, you are losing. it is difficult. and one thing, too, the misstatements, lies that keep coming up again and again and again from the president's lawyer and i know that adam schiff has countered this directly, but mr. cipollone said that not even mr. schiff's republican colleagues were allowed into the scif, the secure location, and that is not true. every single republican on three investigative committees were allowed into, that and mr. schiff came back and he said actually 100 republicans who participated. >> 100 members of congress. >> sorry, not 100 republicans, but 100 members of congress who

participated and so we see this circulatin circulating, because the democrats with the majority over there were so unfair to the president and to the republicans that the process, itself, is so tainted and so political that therefore you are jekted outright no matter the case is, and they are not talking about the case. >> i wanted to point out that we are waiting in a recess, and a very brief recess. >> and here is chuck schumer. >> and so it is 2:00 in the morning and good to admit the evidence, but the real test is witnesses and documents. will our republican senators put pressure on mcconnell so that we really have witnesses and documents produced either now or after the arguments are made? and one other point, and i am not answering questions, and one other point which is this. we are hearing a lot of arguments from president's counsel. none of them directly address why there shouldn't be witnesses

and documents. they talk about how bad the house is, and i don't agree with that at all, but they don't argue, one, they don't make a single argument why there should not be witnesses and documents and that speaks volumes. thank you. >> all right. so that is chuck schumer, the senate minority leader and the top democrat who just introduced a second amendment to subpoena certain department of state documents and records. the first amendment as you know, it failed 53-47, by all accounts, the second one will fail as well. i wanted your thoughts, jeffrey, on the presentations that we are hearing from the house managers, the democrats versus the presentations that we are hearing from the president's counsels. >> you know, i don't want to sound like a partisan, but the democrats have been so much better, it is not even a close comparison as far as i can tell. adam schiff knows the facts, and that is something that you can't

fake. i mean, you know, a lot of what he is doing is off of the cuff. it is responding to the arguments, and most of the lawyers have been just reading, reading presentations, and jay sekulow for the president knows the facts well, and is, i think a very effective lawyer and pat cipollone, less so, and mr. philbin is not ready for primetime or the afternoon as the case may be. but, you know, i think that adam schiff is just in charge of, and you know, acting like a lead prosecutor. i think that congresswoman lofgren while not as theatrical of a performer, she had a good argument to make, and she made it effectively, because what she did was that she went through the evidence and said, there would be evidence, there would be emails associated with these meetings and there would be documents that are relevant here, and she showed exactly

where. it looks like we won't see them at this stage in the trial. >> and now, let me ask you, because impeachment is not just a matter in the trial of the facts and the evidence, but it is also a political matter. adam schiff is a former prosecutor and i see why a lot of people think that he is effective, and i also think that a lot of republicans see him as a very part san democrat. -- partisan democrat, and do you think that the audience we are talking about here is one or two democrats who are iffy like manchin and the senator from arizona, and talk about the politics of it to go after and win over these six, six senators in the middle? >> i think that because he is, actually, because he does know the facts, and because he is an effective orator, and he is effective at making this presentation, and he really does

come across that he truly believes in what he is saying, i think thats him an effective advocate. i think that congress mwoman lofgren was effective in the preparation and clearly understood and was able to communicate in an accessible way the history and some of the historical precedents that are in play here today. so i think that he is effective. the only thing that i worry about congressman schiff is that in the long term, it is serving in this role hurts his leadership of the intelligence committee. it is going to be hard for him to go back to work on intelligence matters and that committee will struggle with how to move beyond the partisanship of the impeachment hear, but he is effective. i do want to come back though for a second that gloria made earlier, and because there is a difference, and as a matter of lawyering, there is a difference of being a really strong

advocate and effective advocate as a lawyer, and lying or misstating the truth. so if this were a actual trial with a judge who was actually going to be more active, a lawyer who knowingly appeared before that proceeding and misstated the facts in a way that is so obvious for anyone -- >> you are talking about the president's lawyers? sekulow and cipollone. >> yes. and cipollone and philbin. >> cipollone and philbin who misstated quite obviously the presence of republican members in the closed hearings in the house. that is just not okay, as a lawyer, to misstate the facts in that way, when they know what they are doing, and it is just something that goes beyond the step of forceful advocacy of a lawyer. >> something that the republican senators we will watch that they tell you privately the president

in the tweets or through his lawyers throughout the process they don't like what they view as misstatements and outright lies of the white house and does it affect them? >> well, they say they don't like it when they are talking privately to you or me, and do they do anything about it? and that is the question. when the republican senators don't already know the facts of the case, and maybe they are doing other things, and so when they find out, wait a second, you mean there were more than 40 house republicans who were allowed into the secure area to hear that testimony? and wait, the president refused to participate and not like he didn't van opportunihave an opp will the republican senators hold that against the president's defense team? >> well, i think that they know something else, and that is the president's defense team has an audience of one, donald trump. that is who they are playing to. i think it is true, jake, what you said, they have not followed every single moment. they were not watching all of

the testimony the way that we were, but they were watching the recaps of it. and they were watching the highlights and they know the basic points here. the real question at the end of the day, i think, it will be the dweing of the witnesses which mitch mcconnell has made it clear that he does not want. in a closed door luncheon he said to the republican conference it's going to be very unpleasant he said couple of weeks. and i don't know about the rest of you, but i like to get through unpleasant things as quickly as possible. and that is what he is trying to do. will there be a break somewhere along the line? will susan collins had said in her statement that she is likely to want to see what this is, and see if they go to magic.

>> but seems this is going to go on not only this week, but most of next week at a minimum and if there are witnesses, it will be longer and remember the bill clinton impeachment trial and witnesses that went five weeks. >> yes, and again, the house managers made the point that in every prior impeachment trial, and certainly every impeachment trial that the president had witnesses. so they are reminding everybody of the history and another thing to make note of is that the democrats have been more aware of this than the republicans that as time goes by, there are going to be more revelations and the other revelations that happen are not going to help the president, so the more the democrats hammer home the evidence and the republicans pretend it is not there, in the long run, the republicans will look bad because of it. >> talk about that, gloria. the truth of the matter is that john bolton's book is going to come out, right? we are going to hear at some point, and there is going to be more leaks and investigations by journalists if not by the senate

and the house, and we are going to find out ultimately even more than we know right now, and how much will that be damaging to the republicans who vote against more evidence and more witnesses, the vulnerable republicans who are coming from states where they have re-elections to be tough already. >> it is going to be damaging. that is why you have some of the vulnerable republicans saying like susan collins, saying, i want these witnesses so that she has an opportunity to hear, and then maybe change her mind. i mean, we have, and we don't know. the whole thing about this impeachment is that it has been such a dynamic process, so unpredictable, changing day-to-day and bolton may testify the washington post reports and he may testify in a classified setting, and who knows who the republicans are going to ask for if they get their witness, and i presume

they will want one for one, we don't know. will they ask for hunter biden, whatever? that is why the white house is backing away from the details, and backing away from the specifics here and sticking to a message which is this is partisan and i'm looking at something that is pat cipollone said. he said a partisan impeachment is like stealing an election, and there you go. that is a donald trump phrase. through ere you go. they said if they can do it to an american president they can do it to any american citizen. >> unfair trial. >> and so what they are trying to do is to hammer in unfairness and process and the president being the victim. the victim here of these radical left democrats, and what the democrats is doing is to say, just wait, when you hear maybe from, i'm ready to call john

bolton and mick mulvaney and ma hear from the people who have the firsthand knowledge, and it is not hearsay. it is two games. >> and so the republicans with the democrats in this in terms of wanting to hear the witnesses is like 70% of the american public want to hear witnesses, so, you know, we will see what ends up happening. you know, if you have said it before that mitch mcconnell does not necessarily care where the american public feels on this, and he wants to rush this process through, and we saw twit initial resolution and wanting it to go into the dead of night and wanting it to be a much shorter. what is interesting though is how long can they keep the process argument going? there is all of the evidence. and all of this evidence, and one of the things that is interesting for adam schiff is he, himself, issued a warning to the senators saying that all of the information is going to come out. right. it is going to come out through the foia as or books or books,

bolton has a book coming out, and so it is going to be in the process and not necessarily through the foias or the book. >> and so if the former national security adviser john bolton is going to release a book and write about all of this stuff, doesn't he have a responsibility to come forward at a sensitive moment like this in american history and volunteer to say i am willing to tell the american people. >> he did. >> but to actually come to do it though? >> absolutely. >> and reject the advice he is getting from the white house? >> and there is an interesting revolution in bolton's position. because at first, he was saying, i am writing the book and not talking to congress. that is self-evidently outrageous, and now he has said, okay, senate, if you, if you subpoena me, i will come. i think that is a very responsible thing. >> and i am asking you, without

a subpoena, doesn't he have a responsibility if he is going to say all of this in a book, at this sensitive moment to come to speak? >> well, you can't sort of just show up. i mean, you have to -- i guess he could hold a press conference and talking about it. but -- go ahead. >> well, it is giving him political cover. no question that he could hold a press conference. he could write something, an op-ed, a statement. that might take care of in a press conference questions that he does not want to answer. many ways that he could come forward, but they would not give him political cover, and that is why he wants this book out. >> and so he needs cover, because he needs people to buy the book and he needs to have a career after this is all over. he can't have the republicans, and there is what my guess, he can't have the republicans who is going to be the ones to buy his book resenting him if he explains that i only did it because i was subpoenaed. >> well, in fairness to john

bolton, this is a trial. you don't just sort of show up, and you know, stand on the sidewalk, and, you know, give evidence in the trial. you give evidence at the trial when you are called as a witness. he has now said appropriately if you call me i will be a witness. what is outrageous is that when you have someone in bolton's position who is clearly the most important witness in terms of what the president actually thought about these issues and also it is worth saying parenthetically, there is a chance that it could backfire against the democrats, and so what? what matters is that you get the relevant evidence and let the chips fall where they may. and so that is why it is so outrageous that the republicans are not subpoenaing him. >> and let me ask you a question, john king, because senator schumer, the minority leader said at the beginning of the day, what happens if the president's behavior is deemed acceptable by the u.s. senate,

and what does that mean for politicians and not just the president, but politicians to use a foreign country by whatever means to uncover dirt about an opponent, and what does happen? >> well, let's hope that the next president whether it is in a few months or five years or four or five years does not think it is okay to call the foreign leaders and say investigate americans. i don't think that anybody who if you are a republican or democrat or independent thinks that you should call foreign leaders and say, do you have any dirt against me or a opponent who is running against me? and the respect for the presidential oversight, and the presidential respect for subpoenas and democrat or republican or independent down the road faced with a subpoena would have a precedent. and donald trump said no to everything, and i will say no to everything. that is a bigger danger. i don't think that schumer thinks that presidents are going to be routinely calling around

the world to drum up dirt on the opponents. >> it seems that the recess an hour and a half later is going to resume. >> thank you. and mr. cipollone? >> yes. >> mr. schiff, you have an hour and we will be able to reserve time for rebuttal. >> chief justice roberts, senators, counsel for the white house, i am val demings from the state of florida. the house managers strongly support the amendment to issue subpoena for documents to the state department. as we explain the first article of impeachment charges the president with using the power of his office to solicit and pressure ukraine to announce

investigations that everyone in this chamber knows to be bogused. the president didn't even care if an investigation was actually conducted, just that it was announced. why? because this was for his own personal and political benefit. the first article further charges that the president did so with corrupt motives, and that his use for power for personal gain harmed the national security of the united states. as a second article of impeachment channelrges that th president sought to conceal evidence of this conduct. he did so by ordering his entire administration, every office, every agency, every official to defy every subpoena served in

the house impeachment inquiry. no president in history has ever done anything like this. many presidents have expressly acknowledged that they couldn't do anything like this. president trump did not take these extreme steps to hide evidence of his innocence or to protect the institution of the presidency. as a career law enforcement officer, i have never seen anyone take such extreme steps to hide evidence allegedly proving his innocence. and i do not find that here today. the president is engaged in the cover-up, because he is guilty,

and he knows it. he knows that the evidence that he is concealing will only further demonstrate his culpability. notwithstanding this effort to stonewall our inquiry, the house amassed powerful evidence of the president's high crimes and misdemeanors. 17 witnesses. 130 hours of testimony combined with the president's own admissions on phone calls and in public comments confirmed and corroborated by hundreds of texts, emails and documents. much of that evidence came from patriotic, nonpartisan, decorated officials in the state department. they are brave men and women who honored their obligations under the law and gave testimony required by the congressional subpoena in the face of the

president's taunts and insults. these officials described the president's campaign to induce and pressure ukraine to announce political investigations. his use of $391 million of vital military aid, taxpayer money, appropriated on a bipartisan basis by congress as leverage to force ukraine to comply and is withholding of a meeting desperately sought by the newly elected president of ukraine. this testimony was particularly compelling, because the state department is at the very center of president trump's wrongdoing. we heard firsthand from diplomatic officials who saw up close and personnel, personal

what was happening and who immediately, immediately sounded the alarms. ambassador william taylor who returned to ukraine in june of last year as acting ambassador texted other state department officials. i think it is crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign. ambassador to the european union gordon sondland who was delegated authority over ukraine matters by none other than president trump testified that we knew that the investigations were important to the president. and we followed. the president's orders. and david holmes, a senior official at the u.s. embassy in kiev said that it was made clear

that some action on a burisma/biden investigation was a condition for an oval office meeting. during their testimony, many of the state department officials provided specific documents including the text messages and emails. former diplomatic cables and notes that would corroborate their testimony and shed additional light on president trump's corrupt scheme. for instance, bams dambassador who said that aid had been conditioned on the president's demand for political investigations described a little notebook in which he would take notes on conversations he had with key officials. ambassador sondland referred by date and recipient to emails regarding the president's demand

that ukraine announce political investigations. as we will see through the emails from president trump to the top advisers including the acting chief of staff mick mulvaney and secretary of state michael pompeo and secretary of energy rick perry. deputy assistant secretary george kent who oversaw ukraine policies and matters for the state department wrote at least four memos to file, to document concerning conduct that he witness witnessed or heard. ambassador kurt volker, the special representative for ukraine negotiations provided evidence that he and other american officials communicated with high level ukrainian officials, including president

zelensky, himself. via text message and whats app about the president's demands and how the ukrainian officials would respond to them based on the testimony we received and on evidence that has since emerged, all of these documents and others that we will describe bear directly on the allegations set forth in the first article of impeachment. they would help complete our understanding of how the president's scheme unfolded in realtime. they would support the conclusion that senior ukrainian officials understood the corrupt nature of president trump's demand and further expose the extent to which secretary pompeo, and mick mulvaney and

other senior trump officials were aware of the president's plot and helped carry it out. we are not talking about a burdensome number of documents. we are talk about a specific, discrete set of materials held by the state department. documents that the state department has already collected in response to our subpoena, but has never produced. we know that these materials exist. we know that they are relevant, and we know the president is desperately trying to conceal them. as i will describe what the subpoena is the following whats app communications and emails and diplomatic cables and four, notes. given the significance and the relevance of the documents that the house requested that they be

provided. when these requests were denied. when our requests were denied, the house issued subpoenas commanding that the documents be turned over. but at the president's direction, the department of state unlawfully defied that subpoena, and i stand here now as i stand here now, the state department has all of these documents in its possession, but refuses based on the president's order to let them see the light of day. this is an affront to the house which has full power to see these documents and it is an affront to the senate which has been denied a full record on which to judge the president's guilt or innocence, and it is an affront to the constitution

which makes clearly that nobody, not even the president is above the law. and it is an affront to the american people who have a right to know what the president and his allies are hiding from them and why it is being hidden. prior impeachment trials, this body has issued subpoenas requiring the recipient to hand over relevant documents. it must do so again here. it must do so now at the beginning of the trial and not the end. of course, the need for a senate subpoena arises because i have seen the president to order the state department to defy a subpoena from the house. that point, i'd like to briefly describe our own efforts to get

those materials, and thenally ed a -- and then i will address what documents the state department has hidden from the american people and why the senate should require them to turn it over. on september 9th, exercising the article one oversight authority the investigative committee sought a, sent a document request to the state department. the committee sought materials related to the president's effort to pressure ukraine to announce investigations into his political rival as well as his dangerous unexplained withholding of millions of dollars in vital military aid. after the state department failed to produce any documents the house committee on foreign affairs shi s issued a subpoenae state department on september 27th. on october 1st, secretary pompeo acknowledged receipt of the subpoena.

at that time, he stated that he would respond to the committee's subpoena for documents by the return date, october 4th. but his response never came. instead october 8th, president trump's lawyer writing on his behalf issued a direction that the administration would stonewall the impeachment inquiry, and to date, the state department has not produced a single document, not a single document in response to the congressional subpoena. but witnesses have testified, who testified indicated that the state department had gathered all of the records and was prepared to produce, provide them before the white house directed it to defy the subpoena. notwithstanding this unlawful ob

struob and right now, those documents are sitting, right now, at the state department. i'd like to walk you through four key categories of documents that should be subpoenaed and which illustrate the highly relevant documents that the state department could produce immediately. they could produce them immediately for this trial. the first category consists of whats app and other text messages from the state department officials caught up in this, these ventevents inclu ambassador sondland and taylor and george kent and all three of whom confirmed in the testimony that they regular use whats app

to communicate with each other and foreign government officials. as the deputy assistant secretary can explain whats app is a dominant form of electronic communication in certain parts of the world. we know that the state department possesses the records of whats app and text messages from critical eyewitnesses to these proceedings including from ambassador sondland and taylor and deputy assistant secretary kent. we know that the department is deliberately, deliberately concealing these records at the direction of the president, and we know that they could contain highly relevant testimony about the president's plan to condition official presidential acts on the announcements of investigations for his own personal and political gain. we know this not only from testimony, but also because

ambassador volcker was able to provide us with the small telling selection of the whatsapp messages. those records confirm with the full review of these texts and whatsapp texts would be relevant to help paint a vivid firsthand picture of statements, decisions concerns and beliefs held by important players of events unfolding in realtime. for example, thanks to ambassador volckk voccer's mess that we know that the campaign of testifying about a quid pro quo campaign texted directly with the ukrainian president zelensky. this image produced by ambassador volcker appears to be a screen shot of the text

message that ambassador sondland exchanged with president zelensky about plans with the white house visit and the very same visit that president zelensky badly needed and that president trump later withheld as part of the quid pro quo described by ambassador sondland in his testimony. this body and the american people have a right to know what else ambassador sondland and president zelensky said in this and other relevant exchanges about the white house meeting or about the military aid and the president's demand. but we don't know exactly what was kconveyed and when. we don't know if president trump directed the state department to conceal the vital records. state department would have he otherwise turned over if not for the president's direction and desire to cover-up his wrongdoing. to get a sense of why texts and

whatsapp messages are so vital, just consider whether another piece of evidence that we have gleaned from ambassador volker's production. at the white house meeting in which ambassador sondland pressured the investigations of president trump's political opponents, and the official texts with ambassador volker is that the key is rudy. and so the text that followed is the ultimate tum, that they recognized that they had to appease rudy giuliani to carry out the investigation, and of course, mr. giuliani publicly confirmed that he was not

engaged in policy, but advancing his client's, and the president's own personal interests. and further in a text exchange provided by ambassador volker, we can see that the president of ukraine understood the president's requests loud and clear. on the morning of july 25th, half an hour before the infamous call between president trump and president zelensky, ambassador volker wrote to a senior ukrainian official, heard from the white house, and assuming that president z convinces trump, he is going to investigate and get to bottom of the what happened in 2016, and we will nail down date for visit to washington. good luck. see you tomorrow. kurt. ambassador sondland confirmed that this text accurately summarized the president's directive, the president's

directive to him earlier that morning. after the phone call between president trump and president zelensky, the ukrainian official responded pointedly, phone call went well. he then discussed potential dates for a white house meeting. then the very next day, ambassador volckelker vote to r giuliani the exact messages that we discussed. these messages confirmed mr. giuliani's central role, the premeditated nature of president trump's solicitation of the political investigation and the pressure campaign on ukraine waged by mr. giuliani, and senior officials at president trump's direction. again, there is just, and this is just some of what we learned from ambassador volker's

records. as you will see during this trial presentation, there were numerous whatsapp messages and while ambassadors volker and sondland and others were pressuring the top aid rudy giuliani to announce the investigations that president trump wanted. ambassador taylor's text that you saw earlier about withholding the aid further reveals how much more material there likely is that relates to the articles of impeachment. there can be no doubt that a full production of the relevant texts and whatsapp messages from other officials involved in ukraine and in touch with ukrainian officials including ambassador sondland, ambassador taylor and deputy assistant secretary kent would further illuminate the malfeasance addressed in our first article.

this leads to the second category of documents that the state department is unlawfully withholding. emails involving key state department officials concerning interactions with senior ukrainian officials and related military aid and a white house meeting and the president's demand for investigations into his rivals. for example, on july 19th, ambassador gordon sondland spoke directly to president zelensky with the upcoming call between president trump and president zelensky. ambassador sondland then sent an email to update the key officials, including secretary pompeo, acting white house chief of staff mulvaney and the senior adviser robert blair. and this email, noted that he prepared president zelensky who was willing to make the

announcements of political investigations that president trump desired. secretary perry and mick mulvaney then responded to sondland and acknowledging that they had received the email and recommending to move forward for the phone call that became the july 25 call, between the presidents of the united states and ukraine. we know all of this not because the state department provided us with critical document, but instead, because ambassador sondland provided us with a reproduction of the email. in the public testimony, ambassador sondland quite correctly explained that this email demonstrated, quote, everyone was in the loop. >> everyone was in the loop.

it is no secret that everyone was informed via email on july 19th, days before the presidential call. as i communicated to the team, i told president zelensky in advance that assurances to run a fully transparent investigation and turn over every stone were necessary in his call with president trump. >> even viewed alone this reproduced email was damning and sent shortly after ambassador sondland personally conveyed the president's demands for investigations into the ukrainians into the the white house and leading officials to sound alarms. it was sent a few days before the july 25 call where president trump asked for a favor. and by itself, this email shows who was involved in president trump's plan to pressure the

ukrainian president for his own political gain. but, it is obvious that the full email chain and other related emails to the key time period would also be highly relevant. we don't have those emails because the state accident hide hiding them at the direction of the president. the senate should issue the proposed subpoena to ensure a complete record, a complete record of these and other relevant emails. any doubt that the state department is concealing critical evidence from this body was resolved when the state department was recently ordered to release documents and including emails pursuant to a lawsuit under the freedom of information act. these documents are heavily redacted and they are limited to a very narrow time period, but nevertheless, despite the heavy

redactio redactions, these highly important glimpses into the state department show that those records are full of information relevant to this trial. for example, several of the newly elected, released emails show contacts of the state department including secretary pompeo and mr. giuliani throughout 2019. this is an important fact. mr. giuliani served as the president's point person in executing his corrupt scheme. mr. giuliani repeatedly emphasized that his role was to advance the president's personal agenda. the president's political interests not to promote the national security interest of the united states. the fact that the president's

private attorney was in contact at key junctures with the secretary of state whose senior officials were directed by the president to support mr. giuliani's efforts in ukraine is relevant, disturbing and telling. for example, we know that on march 26th, as mr. giuliani was pursuing the president's private agenda in ukraine and just one week after "the hill" published an article about rudy giuliani's ukrainian conspiracies, mr. giuliani and mr. pompeo spoke directly on the phone. that week, the secretary was asked for a direct connection to secretary pompeo, and based on these records, it is also clear

that secretary pompeo was already actively engaged with mr. giuliani in early spring of 2019, and also appears that the efforts were backed by the white house given the involvement of president trump's personal secretary. this body and the american people need to see these emails and other files at the state department. fleshing out these exchanges and the details surrounding mr. giuliani's communications with secretary pompeo. moreover, based on call records lawfully obtained by the house from this period, we know that from march 24th to march 30th, mr. julg ygiuliani called the w

house several times and also connected with an unidentified number numerous times. these records show that on march 27th, mr. giuliani placed a series of calls, a series of calls to the state department switchboard. secretary pompeo's assistant and the white house switchboard in quick succession all within less than 30 minutes. obtaining emails and other documents regarding the state department's leadership's interaction with president trump's private lawyer in this period when mr. giuliani was actively orchestrating the pressure campaign in ukraine related to the sham investigation and into vice president biden and into the 2016 election would further clarify the president's involvement and direction at this key juncture in the formation of a plot to solicit

foreign interference into our election. we also all know that on recently obtained documents that a prior associate of rudy giuliani has assisted him in the reputation of president trump and that he had spoken to secretary pompeo about the ukraine matters even earlier than previously understood. according to documents obtained from mr. parnas, mr. giuliani wrote in early february of 2019 that he apparently spoke with secretary pompeo about the removal of the u.s. ambassador in ukraine marie yovanovitch. mr. giuliani viewed her as an

impediment to implement the president's corrupt scheme and running a longstanding political scheme against her. this is what mr. parnas said about this just last week. >> do you believe that part of the motivation to get rid of ambassador yovanovitch to get her out of post is because she was in the way of this effort to get the government of ukraine to announce investigations of joe biden? >> that is the only motivation. >> that is the only motivation. >> there is no other motivation. >> these are some of the email communications that we know. these are just some of the email communications that we know to exist and there are undoubtedly more including ambassador yovanovitch's request to issue a statement of support of her from state department around the time

that mr. joule ygiuliani was sp directly with secretary pompeo, but that statement never came. the state department has gathered the records, and they are ready to be turned over pursuant to a subpoena from the senate. it would not be a time consuming or lengthy process to obtain them. and there are clearly, clearly important and relevant documents to the president's scheme. if we want the full switchboard. then we need to see those emails. they seek a third item the state department refused to provide, that's ambassador taylor's extraordinary first person diplomatic cable to second

pompeo dated august 29 and sent at the recommendation of the national security adviser, john bolton, in which ambassador taylor strenuously objected with withholding of military aid from ukraine, as ambassador taylor recounted in his deposition. >> near the end of ambassador bolton's visit i asked to meet him privately during which i expressed to him my serious concern about the withholding of military assistance to ukraine while the ukranians were defending their country from russian aggression. ambassador bolton recommended i send a first person cable to secretary pompeo directly relaying my concerns. i wrote and transmitted such a cable on august 29th, describing the folly i saw withholding military aid to ukraine at a time when hostilities were still active in the east and when russia was watching closely to gauge the level of american support for the ukranian

government. the russians as i said in my deposition would love to see the humiliation of president zelensky at the hands of the americans. i told the secretary that i could not and would not defend such a policy, although i received no specific response, i heard that soon thereafter, the secretary carried the cable with him to a meeting at the white house focused on security assistance for ukraine. >> we know from ambassador taylor and deputy assistant secretary kent that the cable was received, we do not know whether or how the state department responded, nor do we know if the state department possesses any other internal records relating to this cable. this cable is vital for three reasons. first, it demonstrates the harm that president trump did to our national security when he used foreign policy as an instrument

of his own personal political gain. second, on the same day the cable was sent, president zelensky's senior aide told ambassador taylor that he was very concerned about the hold on military assistance. he added that the ukranians were just desperate at it to be released. in other words, president trump's effort to use military aid to apply additional pressure on ukraine was working. and finally, based on reporting by "new york times," we now know that within days of ambassador taylor sending this cable, president trump discussed ukranian security assistance with secretary pompeo, defense secretary esper, and national security adviser bolton. the investigation uncovered testimony that secretary pompeo

brought ambassador taylor's cable to the white house. perhaps what during this meeting, there perhaps prodded by ambassador taylor's cable, all three of them pleaded, pleaded with the president to resume the crucial military aid, yet the president refused. this body has a right to see ambassador taylor's cable as well as the other state department records addressing the official response to it. although it may have been classified at the time, the state department can no longer claim the topic of security assistance remains classified today in light of the president's decision to declassify his two telephone calls with president zelensky and mr. mulvaney's public statements about security

assistance. the fourth category of documents that the senate should seen a are contemporaneous first person accounts from state department officials who were caught up in president trump's corrupt scheme. these documents which were described in detail by deputy assistant secretary kent, ambassador taylor, and political officer david holmes would help complete the record and clarify how the president's scheme unfolded in real time and how the ukranians reacted. mr. kent wrote notes or memos to file at least four times according to his testimony. ambassador taylor took extensive notes of nearly every conversation he had, some in a little notebook, and david

holmes, the embassy official in ukraine was a consistent note taker of important meetings with ukranian officials. >> did you take notes of this conversation on september 1st with ambassador sondland? >> i did. >> and did you take notes related to most of the conversations, if not all of them, you recited in your opening statement? >> all of them, mr. goldman. >> and you are aware, i presume that the state department has not provided those notes to the committee, is that right? >> i am aware. >> so we don't have the benefit of reviewing them to ask you these questions. >> correct. i understand they may be coming sooner or later. >> well, we would welcome that. >> the state department never produced those notes. as another example, deputy assistant secretary kent testified about a key document that he drafted on august 16th,

describing his concerns that the trump administration was attempting to pressure ukraine into openly opening politically motivated investigations. >> i would like to start with you, mr. kent. in your testimony you said that you had in mid august it became clear to me that giuliani's efforts to begin up politically motivated investigations were now infecting u.s. engagement with ukraine, leveraging president zelensky's desire for a white house meeting. mr. kent, did you actually write a memo documenting your concerns that there was an effort under way to pressure ukraine to open an investigation to benefit president trump? >> yes, ma'am, i wrote a memo to the file on august 16th. >> but we don't have access to that memo, do we? >> i submitted it to the state

department subject to the september 27th subpoena. >> we have not received one piece of paper from the state department relative to this investigation. >> deputy assistant secretary kent also memorialized a september 15 conversation at which ambassador taylor described a ukranian official accusing america of hypocrisy for advising president zelensky against investigating a prior ukranian president. mr. kent described that conversation during his testimony. he said but the more awkward part of the conversation came after special representative volker made the point that the ukranians who had opened their authorities under president zelensky, had opened investigations of former president paoroshenko. he didn't think that was

appropriate. then and dre' your mack said what? you mean the type of investigation you're pushing for us to do on biden and clinton. the conversation makes clear the ukranian officials understood the corrupt nature of president trump's requests and therefore doubted american credibility on anti-corruption measures. records of these conversations and other notes by senior officials in ukraine flush out, and help complete the record for the first article of impeachment. they would tell the whole truth to the american people and to this body. you should require the state department to provide them. to summarize, the senate should

issue the subpoena proposed and the amendment requiring the state department to turn over relevant texts, messages, emails, diplomatic cables and notes. these documents bear directly on the trial of this body. the trial that this body is required by the constitution to hold. they are immediately relevant to the first article of impeachment. their existence has been attested to by credible witnesses in the house. and the only reason we don't already have them is that the president has ordered his administration, including secretary pompeo, to hide them. the president's lawyers may suggest that the house should

have sought these materials in court or waited further lawsuits under freedom of information act, aka, foia lawsuits. any suggestion is meritless. to start, the constitution has never been understood to require such lawsuits which has never occurred, never occurred in any previous impeachment. moreover, the president has repeatedly and strenuously argued that the house is not even allowed to file a suit to enforce its subpoenas. and in the freedom of information act cases, the administration has only grudgingly and slowly produced an extremely small set of materials but has insisted on applying heavy and dubious

redactions. foia lawsuits filed by third parties cannot serve as a credible alternative to congressional oversight. in fact, it is still alarming that the administration has produced more documents pursuant to the federal office information act lawsuits by private citizens and entities than congressional subpoenas. finally, as we all know, litigation would take an extremely long time, likely years, not weeks or months, while the misconduct of this president requires immediate attention. the misconduct of this president requires immediate attention. if this body is truly committed

to a fair trial. it cannot let the president play a game of keep away and dictate what evidence the senators can and cannot see bearing on his guilt or innocence. this body cannot permit him to hide all the evidence while disingenuously insisting on lawsuits that he doesn't actually think we can file, ones that he knows won't be resolved until after the election. he is trying to cheat to win. instead, to honor your oaths to do impartial justice, we urge each senator to support a subpoena to the state department. that subpoena should be issued now at the beginning of the trial rather than at the end so

these documents can be reviewed and their importance weighed by the parties, the senate, and by the american people. that is how things work in every courtroom in the nation. and it is how they should work here, especially because the states -- the stakes are so high. the truth is there. facts are stubborn things. the president is trying to hide it. this body should not surrender to his obstruction by refusing to demand a full record. that is why the house managers support this amendment.

and mr. chief justice, the house managers reserve the balance of our time. >> mr. cippolone? >> thank you, mr. chief justice. in the interest of time, i won't repeat all of the arguments that we've made already with respect to these motions. i would say one thing before i turn it over to my co-counsel. mr. schiff came here and said he's not asking you to do something he wouldn't do for himself, and the house manager said we're not asking you to do our jobs for us, and mr. schiff came up here and he said i call ambassador bolton. remember paul harvey? it is time for the rest of the story. he didn't call him in the house. he didn't subpoena ambassador bolton in the house. i have a letter here from ambassador bolton's lawyer, he's

the same lawyer that charlie cupperman hired. dated november 8th. he said i write as counsel to dr. charles cupperman and to ambassador john bolton, in response to one, to the letter of november 5th from chairman schiff, engle animal own ee, house chairs, withdrawing the subpoena to dr. cupperman, i mentioned that earlier, and to recent published reports announcing the house chairs do not intend to issue a subpoena to ambassador bolton. he goes on and says we are dismayed that the committees have chosen not to join us in seeking resolution from the judicial branch of this momentous constitutional question. and he ends the letter by saying if the house chooses not to pursue through subpoena the testimony of dr. cupperman and ambassador bolton, let the

record be clear that is the house's decision. they made that decision. they never subpoenaed ambassador bolton, didn't try to call him in the house, and withdrew the subpoena for charles cupperman before the judge could rule and asked that the case be mooted. now they come here, ask you to issue a subpoena for john bolton. it's not right. i yield the remainder of my time to mr. sekulow. >> mr. chief justice, members of the senate, managers said facts are a stubborn thing. let me give you some facts. from the transcripts. ambassador sondland actually testified unequivocally that the president did not tie aid to investigations. instead, he acknowledged any leak he suggested was based

entirely on his own speculation, unconnected to any conversation with the president. here's the question. what about the aid? ambassador volker says they were tied, that the aid was not tied. answer. i didn't say that they were conclusively tied either. i said i was presuming it. question. okay, and so the president never told you they were tied? answer, that is correct. question, so your testimony and ambassador volker's testimony is consistent and the president did not tie investigations, aid to investigations? answer, that is correct. ambassador sondland also testified that he asked president trump directly about these issues and the president explicitly told them he didn't want anything from ukraine. i want nothing. i want nothing. i want no quid pro quo. tell zelensky to do the right

thing. similar comments were made to senator johnson. those are the facts. stubborn, but that's the facts. no one is above the law. here's the law. as every member of congress knows, undoubtedly aware separate from sacred privileges is the presidential communication privilege to communications and performance of a president's responsibilities. the presidential communication privilege has constitutional origins. courts recognized a great public interest in preserving the confidentiality of conversations that take place in the president's performance of his official duties because such confidentiality is needed to protect the effectiveness of the executive decision-making process. that was decided in the district of columbia court of appeals. supreme court found such a privilege necessary to guarantee the candor of presidential advisers and to provide a

president and those who assist him with freedom to explore alternatives, in the process of ultimately shaping policies and making decisions, and to do so in a way many would be unwilling to express, except in private. for these reasons, presidential conversations are presumptively privileged. there's something else about this privilege, communications made by presidential advisers, again quoting courts, and by the way, lawyer lawsuits, lawyer lawsuits? we're talking about the impeachment of the president of the united states, duly elected. and the members, the managers are complaining about lawyer lawsuits? the constitution allows lawyer lawsuits. it is disrespecting the constitution of the united states to even say that in this chamber, lawyer lawsuits.

here's the law. communications made by presidential advisers in the course of preparing advice for the president come under the presidential communications privilege, even when these communications are not made directly to the president. even when they're not made directly to the president. adviser to adviser. given the need to provide sufficient elbow room for advisers to obtain information from all knowledgeable sources, the privilege must apply both to communications which these advisers solicit and receive from others as well as those they authorize themselves. the privilege must also extend to communications authored or received in response to solicitation by members of a presidential adviser staff, since in many instances advisers must rely on their staff to investigate an issue and formulate advice given to the president.

lawsuits. the constitution. a dangerous moment for america when an impeachment of a president of the united states is being rushed through because of lawyer lawsuits. the constitution allows it, if necessary, the constitution demands it if necessary. thank you, mr. chief justice. >> mrs. demings, you have 13 minutes for rebuttal. mr. schiff. >> thank you, mr. chief justice. let me just respond to some of my colleague's points if i can. first counsel said well, the

house would like to call john bolton, but the house it not seek his testimony during the investigation. first of all, we did. we invited john bolton to testify. you know what he told us? i'm not coming, and if you subpoena me, i will sue you. that was his answer. i will sue you. mr. bolton is represented by the same lawyer who represents dr. cupperman who actually did sue us when he was subpoenaed. so we knew that john bolton would make good on that threat. now, second was something about lawyer lawsuits. i wasn't completely following the argument, something about lawyer lawsuits, that we were against lawyer lawsuits. i don't know what that means. i can tell you this, the trump justice department is in court in that case and other cases arguing congress cannot go to court to enforce its subpoenas. so when they say something about lawyer lawsuits and they say

there's nothing wrong with the house suing to get these witnesses to show up and should have sued to get them to show up, their own other lawyers are in court saying the house has no such right. they're in court saying you can't have lawyer lawsuits. so that argument cannot be made in both directions. what's more, in the cupperman litigation, i'm sorry, in the litigation that tested the same bogus theory of absolute immunity, in that lawsuit once again involving his lawyer don mcgahn, the one told to fire special counsel and lie about it, that lawsuit to get his testimony. judge jackson ruled on that very recently when they made the same bogus claim, he is absolutely immune from showing up, and the judge says that's nonsense. there's no support for that, not in the constitution, not in case law, that's made out of whole

cloth. but you know, the judge said something more that was very interesting because what we urged john bolton's lawyer is you don't need to file a lawsuit, dr. cupperman, you don't need to file a lawsuit, there's one already filed involving don mcgahn that's about to be decided, so unless your real purpose here is delay, unless your real purpose is to avoid testimony and you just wish to give the impression of willingness to come forward, you just want to have the court's blessing, if that's really true, agree to be bound by the mcgahn decision. of course they were not willing because they didn't want to testify. now, for whatever reason john bolton is now willing to testify. i don't know why that is. maybe it's because he has a book coming out. maybe it is because it will be very hard to explain why he was unwilling to share important information with the senate that he couldn't show up for a house

deposition or interview because he would need court permission to do it, but he can put it in a book. i don't know. i can't speak to his motivation. i can tell you he is willing to come now, if you're willing to hear him. but of course they weren't willing to be bound by that court decision in mcgahn, but the court said something very interesting because one of the arguments they had been make, one of the arguments john bolton's lawyer had been making as to why they needed their own separate litigation, john bolton, cupperman, they're national security people, don mcgahn was just white house counsel. apparently you have nothing to do with national security. they couldn't be bound by what the court in mcgahn case said. the judge in mcgahn case said this applies to national security stuff, too. so we do have a court decision. what's more, we have the court decision in the harriet meyers case in the george w. bush

administration where the court made short shrift of the claim of absolute, total immunity. there were comments made about ambassador volker's testimony by mr. sekulow, and it was along these lines. the president never told him the aid was conditioned or meetings being conditioned on ukraine doing the sham investigation. i guess that's case closed. unless the president told everyone, called them in their office, said i am going to tell you now, i am going to tell you now, if he didn't tell everyone i guess it is case closed. well, you know who the president did tell? among others? he told mick mulvaney. mick mulvaney went on national television and said yes, they discussed it, this investigation, this russian narrative that it wasn't ukraine that intervened in 2016, it was russia, wasn't russia, it was

ukraine. yes, that bogus 2016 theory. yes, they discussed it. that's part of the reason they withheld the money. the reporter said you're kind of describing a quid pro quo. his answer was yeah, get used to it or get over it. we do it all the time. now, they haven't said they want to hear from mick mulvaney. i wonder why. the president did talk to mick mulvaney about it. wouldn't you like to hear what mick mulvaney has to say? if you really want to get to the bottom of this, if they're really challenging the fact that the president conditioned $400 million in military aid to an ally at war, if mick mulvaney has already said publicly that he talked to the president about it and this is part of the reason why, don't you think you should hear from him? don't you think impartial justice requires you to hear from him? now, counsel also referred to ambassador sondland and sondland saying well, the president told me there was no quid pro quo.

at the time the president said to sondland no quid pro quo, he became aware of the whistle-blower complaint, presumably by mr. cippolone. so the president knew that this was going to come to light on the advice of apparently mr. cippolone or maybe the director of national intelligence for the first time in history withheld a whistle-blower complaint from congress, its intended recipient. but nonetheless, the white house was aware of that complaint. we launched our own investigations. yes, they got caught and in the midst of being caught, what does he say, false exculpatory, a fancy way of saying it is a false, phony alibi. no quid pro quo. he wasn't asked the question was there quid pro quo. he just blurted it out. that's the defense, that the president denies it? and what's more interesting, he didn't tell you about the other hatch of the conversation where the president says no quid pro

quo. he says no quid pro quo. but zelensky needs to go to the mike. and he should want to do it. which is equivalent of saying no quid pro quo, except the quid pro quo. and here's what the quid pro quo is, he needs to go to the mike and should want to do it. that's their alibi? they didn't mention of course, you'll hear about this during the trial if we have a real trial, ambassador sondland also said that we're often asked was there a quid pro quo, the answer is yes, there was a quid pro quo. there was an absolute quid pro quo. what's more, when it came to the military aid, it was as simple as two plus two. tell you something, we're not the only people can add up two plus two. there are millions of people watching this can add up two plus two also. when the president tells his

chief of staff we're holding up the aid because of this as the chief of staff admitted, when the president gives no plausible other explanation for holding up aid that you all and we all supported and voted on a very bipartisan way, has no explanation for it, in that call never brings up corruption except the corruption he wants to bring about, it doesn't take a genius, albert einstein to add two plus two. it equals four. in this case, it equals guilt. now, you're going to have 16 hours to ask questions. you're going to have 16 hours. that's a long time to ask questions. wouldn't you like to be able to ask about the documents in that 16 hours? would you like to be able to say counsel for the president, what

did mick mulvaney mean when he emailed so and so and said such and such, what's your explanation for that because that seems to be pretty damning evidence of exactly what the house is saying here. what's your explanation of that, mr. sekulow, what's your explanation. wouldn't you like to be able to ask about the documents? or ask the house, mr. schiff, what about this text message. doesn't that suggest what the president is arguing. wouldn't you like to be able to ask me that question or my colleagues. i think you would. i think you should. but the backwards way the resolution is drafted, you get 16 hours to ask questions about documents you've never seen, then you know what's more, if you do decide at that point after the trial is essentially over that you do want to see the documents after all and the documents are produced, you don't get another 16 hours. you don't get 16 minutes. you don't get 16 seconds to ask about those documents. does that make any sense to you?

does that make any sense at all? tell you something i'd like to know that may be in the documents. you probably heard about the three amigos. my colleagues mentioned two of the three amigos. amigo volker, amigo sondland. these are two of the three people that the president put in charge of ukraine policy. the third amigo is secretary rick perry, the former secretary of energy. we know from amigo sondland's testimony he was certainly in the loop, he knew exactly all about this scheme, and we know from ambassador volker's testimony and his text messages and his what's app that that amigo was in the loop. what about the third amigo. wouldn't you like to know if the third amigo was in the loop? as my colleagues would explain when we get to the department of

energy records that well, surprisingly we didn't get those either, but any communication between department of energy and department of state is covered by this amendment, wouldn't you like to know? don't you think the american people have a right to know what the third amigo knew about this scheme? i'd like to know. i think you should be able to ask questions about it in your 16 hours. at the end of the day i guess i'll finish with something mr. sekulow said. he said this was a dangerous moment because we're trying to rush through this somehow. it is a dangerous moment. but we're not trying to rush through this trial, we're actually trying to have a real trial here. it is the president that's

trying to rush through this. and i have to tell you that whatever you decide here, maybe this is wasted breath, maybe it is already decided, but whatever you decide, i don't know who the next president will be. maybe it will be someone in this chamber. but i guarantee you this, whoever that next president is, whether they did something right or they did something wrong, there's going to come a time where you in this body are going to want to subpoena that president and that administration. you're going to want to get to the bottom of serious allegations. are you prepared to say that president can simply say i'm going to fight all subpoenas. are you prepared to say and accept that president saying i have absolute immunity. you want me to come testify? senator, you want me to come testify? no, no, i have absolute

immunity. you can subpoena me all you like. i'll see you in court. and when you get to court, i'm going to tell you, you can't see me in court. are you prepared for that? that's what the future looks like. don't think this is the last president if you allow this to happen that's going to allow this to take place. >> time expired. >> i yield back. thank you. >> the majority leader is recognized. >> table the amendment. >> the question is on the motion to table. >> ask for yeas and nays. the clerk will call the role. >> mr. alexander. miss baldwin. mr. barasso, mr. bennett, mrs. blackburn. mr. blumenthal.

mr. blunt. mr. booker. mr. boseman. mr. brawn. mr. brown. mr. burr. miss cantwell. mr. carden. mr. carper. mr. casey. mr. cassidy. >> this is the second roll call of the trial. the effort to subpoena certain department of state documents and records, they're going through alphabetical order. all 100 u.s. senators are there, there are 53 republicans, 47 democrats, 45 democrats, two independents. first amendment failed introduced by the minority

leader, that failed to get white house documents. this is state department documents. we're being told there's a third resolution, third amendment that's about to come forward after this one, presumably this will fail as well. 53-47, strictly along party lines. that will be for office of management and budget. >> we expect this amendment, this is chuck schumer, democratic leader, minority leader from new york, trying to force a vote on the matter of whether or not there should be new evidence in this case, it would be evidence from the state department and there was one of the house impeachment managers congresswoman val demings, a democrat from florida, made the case about all of the different pieces of evidence that were alluded to in the house impeachment hearings but we never actually got to see a copy of, including a memo written from the top diplomat in ukraine, former ambassador bill taylor to secretary of state mike pompeo expressing his alarm

on some of the goings on, never got to see that, never got to see a response from secretary pompeo and on and on. it looks as though it is going to fail by a party line vote. this is a motion from the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell to table schumer's amendment. it was a party line vote to table the amendment to subpoena white house documents. this will be a party line vote in all likelihood to table subpoenas to obtain state department documents, and we're going to see the same with office of management and budget documents. >> dana bash is on capitol hill as we await the final roll call result. what are you hearing? >> reporter: i want to give you a little color. i went into the senate chamber to listen and watch how the senators were acting and reacting. and it really is kind of a remarkable thing to see all of the senators who we are used to when they're here doing their jobs, even when having a vote,

milling around on the floor, just sitting quietly. there was some breaking of the rules. people were kind of whispering to each other, but no electronics. several of the senators, particularly watching closely cory gardner who is probably up for the toughest re-election bid this year taking copious notes, same with susan collins and others. tgs a long day. you can see it wearing on them. i am thinking about how it will go for many, many days as they continue to try to consume the information that's coming at them. consider the fact that we are not there yet. yes, you're hearing arguments that the managers and defense counsel is making, but in large part it is about the process still, that's what we're seeing now, there will be probably several hours left today on the next amendment that jake just talked about that schumer will

put up. >> documents from the office of management and budget, then two hours, dana, to debate that as well. an hour for each side. this could go on for quite awhile. >> exactly. and the thing to keep in mind is that we know how it is going to turn out since the very first vote even before that, it was clear this is shirts and skins time on a procedural measure, particularly since the republicans who are not happy about the way the senate majority leader had originally laid out the plans and the rules of the road for this trial, he changed. he conceded some points in order to accommodate the concerns that you heard loud and clear, so given that, we're going to see several votes on party line vote, and the question will be for democratic leader chuck schumer and others how many of these votes are they going to want their colleagues to take

'til the point is made. >> thanks very much. this is a question of process. but jeffrey toobin, this is also a question about the legislative branch provides oversight of the executive branch, and the legislative branch has an opportunity to get documents here, relevant to whether or not the president was abusing his power, and the legislative branch. yes, they're doing so on a party line vote, but they're voting to not execute those checks and balances. >> indeed. and i thought most of -- looks like roll call will be announced. >> to vote or change their vote. if not, the yeas 53, nay, 47. motion to table is agreed to. >> there you go. exactly another party line vote.

53 republicans voting to table the democratic motion. >> mr. chief justice, i send an amendment to the desk to subpoena certain office and management and budget documents and i ask that it be read. >> the clerk will read the amendment. the senator from new york, mr. schumer, proposes amendment 1286. at the appropriate place and resolving clause insert the following, section notwithstanding any other provision of this resolution pursuant to rules 5 and 6 of the rules of procedure and practice in the senate sit ongoing impeachment trials, one, chief justice of the united states through the secretary of the senate shall issue subpoena to the acting director of office of management and budget commanding him to produce from january 1st,

2019 to present all documents, communications and other records within the possession, custody or control of the office of management and budget, referring or relating to, a, the actual or potential suspension withholding, delaying, freezing, releasing of united states foreign assistance, military assistance, or security assistance of any kind to ukraine, including but not limited to the ukraine security assistance initiative referred to in this section as usai, and foreign military financing referred to in this section as fmf, including but not limited to one, communications among, between or referring to director michael john mick mulvaney, assistant to the president robert blair, acting director russell vaught, michael duffy or any other office of management

and budget employee. two. communications related to requests by president trump for information about ukraine security or military assistance and responses to those requests. three. communications related to concerns raised by any office of management and budget employee related to the legality of any hold on foreign assistance, military assistance, or security assistance to ukraine. four, communication sent to department of state regarding a hold or block on congressional notifications regarding the release of fmf funds to ukraine. five. communications between one, officials at department of defense, including but not limited to undersecretary of defense alain mcqueues kerr, and associate director michael duffy, mark sandy, or any other office of management and budget

employee. six. all draft and final versions of the august 7th, 2019 memorandum prepared by the national security division, international affairs division, and office of general counsel of the office of management and budget about the release of foreign assistance, security assistance, or security assistance to ukraine. seven. the ukranian government's knowledge prior to august 28th, 2019 of any actual or potential suspension, withholding, delaying, freezing or releasing of united states foreign assistance, military assistance, or security assistance to ukraine, including all meetings, calls or other engagement with ukranian officials regarding potential or actual suspensions, holds, or delays in united states assistance to ukraine. b. communications, opinions, advice, counsel, approvals, or

concurrence provided by any employee in the office of management and budget regarding the actual or potential suspension, withholding, delaying, freezing or releasing of security assistance to ukraine, including legality under the impoundment control act. c, associate director michael duffy taking over duties related to apportionments of usai, fmf from deputy associate director mark sandy or any other office of management and budget employee. d. all meetings related to the security assistance to ukraine, including but not limited to interagency meetings on july 18th, 2019, july 23rd, 2019, july 26, 2019. and july 31st, 2019. including any directions provided to staff participating in those meetings, and any

readouts from those meetings. e. the decision announced on or about september 11, 2019 to release appropriated assistance, military assistance, security assistance to ukraine, including but not limited to any notes, memoranda, documentation, or correspondences related to the decision. f, all draft and final versions of talking points related to holding or release of foreign assistance, military assistance, or security assistance to ukraine, including communications with the department of defense, related to concerns about the accuracy of the talking points, and g, all meetings and calls between president trump and the president of ukraine, including documents, communications and other records related to the scheduling of preparation for and follow-up from the president's april 21st and july 25th 2019 telephone calls, as

well as the president's september 25th, 2019 meeting with the president of ukraine in new york, and two, the sergeant-at-arms is authorized to utilize the services of the deputy sergeant-at-arms or any other employee of the senate in serving the subpoena authorized to be issued by this section. >> mr. chief justice. >> the majority leader is recognized. >> first, a scheduling note as the parties are ready to debate this amendment, i suggest we go ahead, get through the debate, and vote before we take a 30 minute recess for dinner, and i would remind everyone that i will be moving to table the amendment. and it is important to remember, both the evidence and witnesses are addressed in the underlying resolution.

>> thank you. the amendment is arguable by the parties for two hours, equally divided. mr. manager schiff, proponent or opponent. >> proponent. >> mr. cippolone, proponent or opponent? mr. schiff, your side will proceed first, you will be able to reserve time for rebuttal. thank you. >> before i begin, mr. chief justice, the house managers reserve time to respond to counsel for the president. mr. chief justice, senators, counsel for the president and the american people, i am jason crow from the great state of colorado. the house managers strongly support the amendment to subpoena key documents from office of management and budget or omb. these documents go directly to one of president trump's abuses

of power. his decision to withhold vital military aid from a strategic partner that's at war to benefit his own personal re-election campaign. why should that matter? why should anybody care? why should i care? before i was a member of congress i was an american soldier serving in iraq and afghanistan. and although some years have passed since that time, there are still some memories that are seered in my brain. one of those memories was scavaging scrap metal in the streets of baghdad in the summer of 2003, that we had to bolt on to the side of our trucks

because we had no armor to protect against roadside bombs. so when we talk about troops not getting the equipment that they need when they need it, it is personal to me. to be clear, here we are talking $391 million of taxpayer money intended to protect our national security by helping our strategic partner, ukraine, fight against vladimir putin's russia, an adversary of the united states. but the president could not carry out this scheme alone. he needed a lot of people to help him. that's why we know as much about it as we do today. but there's much more to know. that's what trials are for.

to get the full picture. we know there's more because president trump needed the office of management and budget to figure out how to stop what should have been a routine release of funds, mandated by congress. a release of funds that was already under way. the people of this chamber don't need me to tell you that, because 87 of you in this room voted for those vital funds to support our partner, ukraine. witnesses before the house testified extensively about omb's involvement in carrying out the hold. it was omb that relayed the president's instructions and implemented the hold. it was omb that scrambled to

justify the freeze. omb has key documents that president trump has refused to turn over to congress. it is time to subpoena those documents. niece -- these documents would show the decision-making process and motivations behind president trump's freeze. they would reveal the concerns expressed by career omb officials, including lawyers, that the hold was violating the law. they would expose the lengths to which omb went to justify the president's hold. they would reveal concerns about the impact of the freeze and ukraine and u.s. national security. and they would show that senior officials repeatedly attempted to convince president trump to

release the hold. in short, they would show exactly how the president carried out the scheme to use our national defense funds to benefit his personal political campaign. we are not speculating about the existence of these documents. we are not guessing what the documents might show. during the course of the investigation in the house witnesses who testified before the committees identified multiple documents directly relevant to the impeachment inquiry that omb continues to hold to this day. we know these documents exist and we know the only reason we do not have them is because the president directed omb not to produce them because he knows what they would show. to demonstrate the significance of the omb documents and value they would apply to this trial,

i want to walk you through some of what we know exists, but the trump administration has refused to turn over. as we have discussed, the trump administration has refused to turn over any documents to the house in response to multiple subpoenas and requests. based on what is known from the testimony and the few documents that have been obtained through public reporting and lawsuits, it is clear that the president is trying to hide this evidence because he's afraid of what it would show. the documents offer stark examples of the chaos and confusion that the president's scheme set off across our government. and they make clear the importance of the documents that are still being concealed by the president. we know that omb has documents that reveal as early as june the president was considering holding military aid for ukraine. the president began questioning military aid to ukraine after

congress appropriated and authorized the money. 250 million in dod funds and 141 million in state department funds. this funding had wide bipartisan support because as many witnesses testified, providing military aid to ukraine to defend itself against russian aggression also benefits our own national security. importantly, the president's questions came weeks after the department of defense already certified that ukraine had undertaken the anti-corruption reforms and other measures mandated by congress as a condition for receiving that aid. so there is a process for making sure that the funds make it to the right place and to the right people. a process that has been followed every year we have been providing that security assistance to ukraine, including

the first two years under the trump administration. nonetheless, the president's questions came days offer dod issued a press release. june 18th, announcing they would provide the 250 million portion of the taxpayer funded military aid to ukraine. according to public reporting, the day after dod's press release, a white house official named robert blair called omb's acting director, russell vaught, to talk about military aid to ukraine. according to public reports, mr. blair told vaught, quote, we need to hold it up. omb has refused to produce any documents related to this conversation. the senate can get them by passing the amendment and issuing a subpoena. but there's more. the same day, blair told vaught to hold up aid, michael duffy, a

political appointee at omb that reports to vaught emailed elaine mccusker and told her the president had questions about the aid. duffy copied mark sandy, career official at omb, that told us about the email in his testimony before the house. like all others, that email was not produced by the trump administration in the house impeachment investigation. we know the email exists, however, because in response to freedom of information lawsuit, the trump administration was forced to release a redacted email consistent with sandy's description. but omb provided none of those documents to the house. with this proposed amendment, the senate has an opportunity to obtain and review the full record that could further demonstrate how and why the president was holding the aid. these documents would also shed light on the president's order

to implement the hold. on july 3rd, the state department told various officials that omb blocked it from dispensing $141 million in aid. omb had directed the state department not to send a notification to congress about spending the money, and without that notification, the aid was effectively blocked. why did omb block the congressional notification? who told them to do it? what was the reason? the senate would get those answers if it issued this subpoena. but there's more. on july 12th, blair, the white house official that called vaught on june 19th and said, quote, we need to hold it up, then sent an email to duffy at omb. blair said, quote, the president is directing a hold on military support funding for ukraine.

we haven't seen this email. the only reason we know about it is from the testimony of mark sandy, the career omb official that followed the law and complied with his subpoena. as you can see from the transcript excerpt in front of aid packages, just ukraine. so, the dozens of countries providing aid and support, the president was only concerned about one of them, ukraine. why? well, we know why. but omb has still refused to provide a copy of this july 12 email and has refused to provide any documents surrounding it all because the president told omb to continue to hide the truth from congress and the american people. what was he afraid of?

a subpoena issued by the senate would show us. omb also has documents about a key series of meetings triggered by the president's order to hold the military aid. in the second half of july, the national security council convened a series of interagency meetings about the president's hold on mull tear aid. omb documents would show what happened during those meetings. for example, on july 18th, the national security council staff convened an agency meeting to discuss ukraine policy. during the meeting, it was the omb representative who announced that president trump placed a hold on all military aid to ukraine. ambassador bill taylor, our most senior diplomat to ukraine, participated in that meeting, and he described his reaction in his open hearing.

>> in a regular secure video call, i heard a staff person from the office of management and budget say there was a hold on security assistance to ukraine but could not say why. toward the end of an otherwise normal meeting, a voice on the call -- the person was off screen -- said she was from omb and her boss instructed her not to approve spending on additional to ukraine until further notice. i and others set in astonishment. ukrainians were fighting russians and counted on the assurance of u.s. support. all that the omb staff person said was that the directive had come from the president to the chief of staff to omb. in an instant, i realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for ukraine was threatened. >> it's hard to believe that omb would not have any documents

following this bombshell announcement. it surely does. it was the agency that delivered the shocking news to the rest of the u.s. government that the president was withholding the vital military aid from our partner. and we would see these documents if the senate issued a subpoena. the july 18th meeting was just the first in a series of meetings where omb held the line and forced the president's hold on the aid. but there was a second meeting on july 23rd when we understood agencies raised concerns about the legality of omb's hold on the aid. and the third meeting at the more senior level on july 26th, witnesses testified that at that meeting omb struggled to offer an explanation for the president's hold on the aid. and then a fourth meeting on july 31st where the legal concerns about the hold were raised. at each of these meeting, there was confusion about the scope and the reasons for the hold.

nobody seemed to know what was going on. but that was exactly the point. all of the agencies except omb which was simply conveying the president's order supported the military aid and argued for lifting the hold. omb did not produce a single document providing information about its participation, preparation or follow up from any of these meetings. did these omb officials come prepared with talking points for these meetings? did omb officials take notes during any of these meetings? did they exchange emails about what was going on? did omb discuss what reasons they could give everyone else for the hold? by issuing this subpoena, the senate can find out the answers to all of those questions and others like them. the american people deserve answers. omb documents would also reveal

key facts about what happened on july 25th. on july 25th, president trump conducted his phone call with president zelensky during which he demanded a favor. this favor was for ukraine to conduct an investigation to benefit the president's re-election campaign. that call was at 9:00 a.m. just 90 minutes after president trump hung up the phone, duffey, the political appointee at omb who is in charge of national security programs emailed dod to, quote, formalize, end quote the hold on the military aid. just 90 minutes after president trump's call, a call in which the president had asked for a favor. that email was on the screen in front of you. we have a redacted copy of this email because it was recently released through the freedom of information act.

it was not release bid the trump administration in response to the house's subpoena. in this email, duffy told dod officials that based on the guidance he received, they should, quote, hold off on any additional dod obligations of these funds. he added that the request was, quote, sensitive and that they should keep this information closely held, meaning don't tell anybody about it. why did duffy consider the information sensitive? why didn't he want anyone to learn about it? answers to those questions may be found in omb emails, emails that we could all see if you issue a subpoena. but there's more. remember the administration needed to create a way to stop funding that was already underway? the train had already left the station. and something like this had

never been done before. later in the evening of july 25th, omb found a way, even though dod had already notified congress that the funds would be released. here is how the scheme worked. omb sent dod a funding document that included a carefully-worded footnote directing dod to hold off on spending the funds. quote, to allow for an interagency process to determine the best use, end quote. remember that language. to allow for an interagency process to determine the best use. let me explain that. the footnote stated that this quote, brief pause, would not prevent dod from spending the money by the end of the fiscal year, coming up on september

30th. omb had to do this because it knew that not spending the money was illegal. and they knew that dod would be worried about that. and they were right. dod was worried about it. mr. sandy testified that in his 12 years of experience at omb, he could recall -- he could not recall anything like this ever happening before. the drafting of this unusual funding document and the issuance of the document must have generated a significant amount of email traffic, memos, and other documentation at omb. email traffic and documentation that we would all see if the senate issued a subpoena. so, what was the result from the series of events on july 25th? where was mr. duffy's guidance to implement the hold coming from? why was the request sensitive?

what was the connection between omb's direction the dod and the call president trump had with president zelensky just 90 minutes before? did agency officials communicate about the questions coming from ukrainian officials? the american people deserve answers. a subpoena would provide those answers. omb documents also would reveal information about the decision to have a political appointee take over-ukraine funding responsibility. the tensions and chaos surrounding the freeze escalated at the end of july when duffy, a political appointee at omb, with no relevant experience in funding approvals took authority for releasing military aid to ukraine away from sandy, a career omb official. sandy could think of no other explanation of a political -- no other example of a political

appointee taking on this responsibility. sandy was given no reason other than mr. duffy wanted to be, quote, more involved in daily operations, end quote. during his deposition, sandy confirmed that he was removed from the funding approval process after he raised concerns to duffy about whether the hold was legal under the impoundment control act. needless to say, omb has refused to turn over any documents or communications involving that decision to replace mr. sandy. why did duffy, a political appointee with no relevant experience in this area, take over responsibility for ukraine funding approval? was the white house involved in that decision? was sandy removed because he had expressed concerned about the legality of the hold? by august 7th, people in our government were worried.