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CNN Live Event/Special

The Impeachment Trial; House Managers Respond to Trump Lawyers' Closing Argument. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired February 03, 2020 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:00:00] CIPOLLONE: I want to thank, as members of that team, the Republican members of the House of Representatives who have also been engaged in that effort throughout this tire -- entire period of time and the Democrats in the House who voted against this partisan impeachment.

And I also want to thank the President of the United States for his confidence in us to send us here to represent him, to all of you in this great body and for all he has done on behalf of the American people.

I would make just a couple of additional points. Number one, as we've said repeatedly, we've never been in a situation like this in our history. We have a -- a -- an impeachment that is purely partisan and political, it's opposed by -- by bipartisan members of the House, it does not even allege a violation of law, it is passed in an election year and we're sitting here on the day that an election season begins in Iowa.

It is wrong, there is only one answer to that and the answer is to reject those articles of impeachment, to have confidence in the American people, to have confidence in the result of the upcoming election, to have confidence and respect for the last election and not throw it out, and to leave the choice of the President to the American people and to leave to them also the accountability for the members of the House of Representatives who did that. That's what the Constitution requires.

Point number two -- and I think that should be done on a bipartisan basis and that's what I ask you to do. Point number two, I believe the American people are tired of the endless investigations and false investigations that have been coming out of the House from the beginning, as my colleague Mr. Sekulow pointed out.

It is a waste of tax dollars, it is a waste of the American people's time and I would argue more importantly -- most importantly the opportunity costs of that -- the opportunity costs of that, what you could be doing, what the House could be doing working with the President to achieve those things on behalf of the American people is far more important than the endless investigations, the endless false attacks, the besmirching of the names of good people.

This is something that we should reject together and we should move forward in a bipartisan fashion in -- in the way this President has done successfully. He's achieved successful results in the economy and across so many other areas, working with you on both sides of the aisle and he wants to continue to do that and that's what I believe the American people want those of you elected to come here to Washington to focus on, to spend your time on, to unify us as opposed to bitter division that's caused by these types of proceedings.

So we -- at the end of the day, we put our faith in the Senate -- we put our faith in the Senate because we know you will put your faith in the American people, you will leave this choice to them where it belongs. We believe that they should choose the President. We believe that this president, day after day, has put their interests first, has achieved successful results, has fulfilled the promises he made to them, and he is eager to go before the American people in this upcoming election.

At the end of the day, that is only result. It is a result, I believe, guided by your wise words from the past: that we can together end the era of impeachment; that we can together put faith in the American people, put faith in their wisdom, put faith in their judgment. That's where our founders put the power, and that's where it belongs.

And I urge you, on behalf of those Americans, of every American, on behalf of all of your constituents, to reject these articles of impeachment. It's the right thing for our country. The president has done nothing wrong, and these types of impeachments must end. You will vindicate the right to vote. You will vindicate the Constitution. You will vindicate the rule of law by rejecting -- by rejecting these articles. And I ask you to do that on a bipartisan basis this week, and end the era of impeachment once and for all.

[14:05:00]

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening to us, for your attention and for considering our case on behalf of the president. I come here today to ask you, reject these articles of impeachment. Reject these articles of impeachment. I thank you for granting us the permission to appear here in the Senate on behalf of this president, and I ask you on his behalf, on behalf of the American people to reject these articles. Thank you.

LOFGREN: Mr. Chief Justice and senators, it's a problem that here at the end of the trial, the president's lawyers still dispute the meaning of high crimes and misdemeanors. Some say it requires an ordinary crime or that if the president misbehaves when he thinks it's good for the country, it's OK. Neither is correct.

We need to clear this up by looking at what the founders said. When the founders created the presidency. they gave the president great power. They'd just been through a war to get rid of a king with too much power and they needed a check on the great power given to the president.

It was late in the Constitutional Convention that they turned to the impeachment clause. Madison argued in favor of impeachment. He said it was indispensable. Mason asked, quote, "Shall any man be above justice, above all? Shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?" Randolph defended the propriety of impeachments, since, quote, "The executive will have great opportunity of abusing his power."

Now, the original draft of the Constitution provided for impeachment only for treason or bribery. Mason asked, quote, "Why is the provision restrained to treason and bribery only?" Treason, as defined in the Constitution, will not reach many great and dangerous offenses." And he added, "Hastings is not guilty of treason. Attempts to subvert the Constitution might not be treason as defined." Now, Hasting's impeachment in Britain at this time was well-known, and it wasn't limited to a crime.

They considered adding the word maladministration to capture abuse of presidential power but Madison objected. He said so vague a term, the equivalent to tenure during the pleasure of the Senate. So maladministration was withdrawn and replaced with the more certain term high crimes and misdemeanors because the founders knew the law.

Blackstone's Commentaries, which Madison said was a book in every man's hand, described high crimes and misdemeanors as offenses against king and government. Hamilton called high crimes and misdemeanors, quote, "those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public manner and other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust."

During ratification, Randolph, in Virginia, cited the president's receipt of presents or emoluments from a foreign power as an example, and Mason's example was a president who would, quote, "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or before invite -- indictment or conviction, quote, "to stop inquiry and prevent detention -- detection."

It's clear. They knew what they wrote. The president's lawyers tried to create a muddle to confuse you. Don't let them. High crimes and misdemeanors mean abuse of power against the constitutional order, conduct that is corrupt, whether or not a crime.

Now, some say no impeachment when there's an election coming, but without term limits when they wrote the Constitution, there was always an election coming. If impeachment in election years was not to be, our founders would have said so.

So here we are. Congress passed a law to fund Ukraine to fight the Russians who invaded their country. President Trump illegally held that funding up to coerce Ukraine to announce an investigation to hurt his strongest election opponent. He abused his power corruptly to benefit himself personally, and then he tried to cover it up. That's impeachable. The facts are clear, and so is the Constitution. The only question is what you, the Senate, will do.

[14:10:00]

Now, our founders created a government where the tension between the three branches would prevent authoritarianism. No one of the branches would be allowed to grab all the power. Impeachment was to make sure the president, who had the greatest opportunity to grab power, would be held in check. It's a blunt instrument, but it's what our founders gave us.

Some of the founders thought the mere existence of the impeachment clause would prevent misconduct by presidents, but sadly, they were wrong because twice in the last half-century a president corruptly used his power to try to cheat in an election: first Nixon with Watergate, and now another president corruptly abuses his power to cheat in an election.

The founders worried about factions, what we call political parties. They built a system where each branch of government would jealously guard their power, not one where guarding the faction was more important than guarding the government. Opposing a president of your own party isn't easy. It wasn't easy when Republican Caldwell Butler voted to impeach Nixon in the Judiciary Committee. It wasn't easy for Senator Barry Goldwater to tell Nixon to resign. But your oath is not to do the easy thing. It's to do impartial justice. It requires conviction and removal of President Trump.

GARCIA: Mr. Chief Justice, Counsel for the President, Senators; since I was a little girl and started going to church, I'd been inspired by the words in scripture. Whatever you did for one of these least (ph) of my brothers, you did for me.

We're called to always look out for the most vulnerable. Sometimes fighting for the most vulnerable means holding the most powerful accountable. And that's what we are here to do today.

The American people will have to live with the decisions made in this chamber. In fact Senators, I believe that the decision in this case will affect the strength of democracies around the world.

Democracy is a gift that each generation gives to the next one. If we say that this president can put his own interest above all else, even when lives are at stake, then we give our nations children a weaker democracy than we inherited from those that came before us.

The next generation deserves better. They are counting on us. I'm a Catholic and my faith teaches me that we all need forgiveness. I have given this president the benefit of the doubt from the beginning despite my strong opposition to so many of his policies.

I know that the success of our nation depends on the success of our leader. But he has let us down. Senators, we know what the president did and why he did it. This fact is seriously not in doubt. Senators on both sides of the aisle have said as much.

The question for you now is does it warrant removal from office? We say, yes. We cannot simply hope that this president will realize that he has done wrong or inappropriate and hope that he does better.

We have done that so many other times. We know that he has not apologized. He has not offered to change. We all know that he will do it again. What President Trump did this time pierces the heart of who we are as a country. We must stop him from further harming our democracy. We must stop him from further betraying his oath. We must stop him from tearing up our Constitution. The Founders knew that in order for our Republic to survive, we would need to be able to remove some of our leaders from office when they put their interest above the country's interest.

[14:15:00]

Senators, we have proven that this president committed what was called the ABCs of impeachable behavior; abusing his power, betraying the nation, and corrupting our elections.

He deserves to be removed for taking the very actions that the Framers feared would undermine our country. The Framers designed impeachment for this very case. Senators, when I was growing up poor in South Texas, picking cotton, I confess I didn't spend any time thinking about the Framers.

Like me, little girls and boys across America aren't asking at home what the Framers meant by high crimes and misdemeanors. But someday they will ask why we didn't do anything to stop this president who's put his -- who put his own interest above what was good for all of us.

They will ask. They will want to understand. Senators, we inherited a democracy. Now we must protect it and pass it on to the next generation. We simply can't give our children a democracy if their president is above the law because in this country no one is above the law.

Not me, not any of you, not even this president. (Foreign Language). This president must be removed. With that I yield to my colleague, Mr. Crow.

CROW: Mr. Chief Justice, members of the Senate; two weeks ago we started this trial promising to show you that the president withheld $391 million of foreign military aid to coarse an ally at war to help him win the 2020 election.

And by many of your own admissions, we succeeding in showing you that because the facts still matter. We also promised you that eventually all of the facts would come out and that continues to be true.

But we didn't just show you that the president abused his power and obstructed Congress, we painted a broader picture of President Trump. A picture of a man who think that the Constitution doesn't serve as a check on his power but rather gives it to him in an unlimited way.

A man who believes that his personal ambitions are synonymous with the good of the country. A man who in his own words thinks that if you're a star, they will let you do anything.

In short, it's the picture of a man who will always put his own personal interest above the interest of the country that he has sworn to protect. But what's in an oath anyway? Are they relics of the past?

Do we simply recite them out of custom. To me, an oath represents a firm commitment to a life of service. A commitment to set aside your personal interest, your comfort and your ambition to serve the greater good.

A commitment to sacrifice. I explained to you last week that I believe America is great not because of the ambition of any one man, not simply because we say it's true but because over our almost 250 year history millions of Americans have taken the oath and they meant it.

Many of them followed through on that oath by giving everything to keep it. But there is more to it than simply keeping your word because an oath is also an bond between people who have made a common promise. Perhaps the strongest example is the promise between the Commander in Chief and our men and women in uniform.

Those men and women took the oath with the understanding that the Commander in Chief, our president would always put the interest of the country and their interest above his own and understanding that his orders will be in the best interest of the country and that their sacrifice in fulfilling those orders will always serve the common good.

But what we have clearly shown in the last few weeks and what President Trump has shown us the past few years, is that this promise flows only one way. As Maya Angelou has said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

Many of us in this room are parents, we all try to teach our kids the important lessons of life. One of those lessons is that you won't always be the strongest, you won't always be the fastest, and you won't always win. There are a lot of things outside our control, but my wife and I have tried to teach our kids that what we can always control are our choices.

[14:20:00]

It's in that spirit that, hanging in my son's room, is a quote from Harry Potter. The quote is from Professor Dumbledore, who said, "It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities."

This trial will soon be over, but there will be many choices for all of us in the days ahead, the most pressing of which is how each of us will decide to fulfill our oath. More than our words, our choices will show the world who we really are, what type of leaders we will be and what type of nation we will be.

So let me finish where I began, with an explanation of why I am here, standing before you. I've been carrying my kids' (ph) constitutions these last few weeks. And this morning, I wrote a note to them to explain why I'm here.

"Our founders recognized the failings of all people, so they designed a system to ensure that the ideas and principles contained in this document would always be greater than any one person. It's the idea that no one is above the law. But our system only works if people stand up and fight for it. And fighting for something important always comes with a cost. "Someday, you may be called upon to defend the principles and ideas embodied in our Constitution. May the memory and spirit of those who sacrificed for them in the past guide you and give you strength as you fight for them in the future."

Thank you for your time.

DEMINGS: Mr. Chief Justice, Senators and counsel for the president, this is a defining moment in our history and a challenging time for our nation. A thousand things have gone through my mind since this body voted to not call witnesses in this trial.

The vote was unprecedented. The president's former national security advisor indicated that he was willing to testify under oath before the Senate, yet this body did not want to hear what he had to say.

The president's lawyers have asked you to not believe your lying eyes and ears, to reinterpret the Constitution and to believe that if the president thinks his re-election is in our national interests, then he can do whatever he wants -- anything -- to make it happen.

And that's exactly what he was attempting, to do anything, when he illegally held much-needed military aid while pressuring Ukraine's president to announce bogus investigations into his most-feared political rival.

This trial is about abuse of power, obstruction, breaking the law and our system of checks and balances. And since we are talking about the president of the United States, this trial is also most certainly about character.

I'm reminded today, Senators, of my own father. He worked more than one job. He didn't have a famous last name, his name appeared on no buildings. But my father was rich in something no money and apparently no powerful position can buy. You see, my father was a man who was decent, honest, a man of integrity. And he was a man of good moral character.

The president's lawyer never spoke about the president's character during this trial, and I find that quite telling.

[14:25:00]

I joined the police department because I wanted to make a difference, and I believe I did. As a police chief, I was always concerned about the message we were sending inside the agency, especially to young recruits, especially to newly hired, dedicated police officers. We had to be careful about just how we were defining what was acceptable and unacceptable behavior inside the department and out in the community.

Yes, people make mistakes. Yes, individuals make mistakes, but we had to be clear about the culture inside the organization, and we had to send a strong message that the police department was not a place where corruption could reside, where corruption was normalized and where corruption was covered up. Today, unfortunately, I believe we are holding young police recruits to a higher standard than we are the leader of the free world. If this body fails to hold this president accountable, you must ask yourselves, what kind of republic will we ultimately have with a president who thinks that he can really, truly do whatever he wants?

You will send a terrible message to the nation, that one can get away with abuse of power, obstruction, cheating and spreading false narratives if you simply know the right people.

Well, today, Senators, I reject that because we are a nation of laws. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, said this: "America will never be destroyed from outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we chose to destroy ourselves."

I urge you, senators, to vote to convict and remove this President. Thank you so much for your time.

JEFFRIES: Mr. Chief Justice, distinguished members of the Senate, President's counsel, I mentioned on the floor last week that Alexander Hamilton has played a starring role during this impeachment trial but Ben Franklin has only made a cameo appearance.

But that cameo appearance was an important one. When he made the observation in the aftermath of that convention in 1787, that the framers of the Constitution had created a republic, if you can keep it. Why would Dr. Franklin express ambiguity about the future of America during such a triumphant moment?

Perhaps it was because the system of government that was created at that convention - checks and balances, separate and co-equal branches of government, the independent judiciary, the free and fair press, the preeminence of the rule of law, all of those values, all of those ideas, all of those institutions had never before been put together in one form of government.

So perhaps it was uncertain as to whether America could sustain it but part of the brilliance of our great country is that year after year, decade after decade, century after century we've held this democracy thing together.

But now all of those ideas, all of those values, all of those institutions are under assault, not from without but from within. We've created a republic, if you can keep it. House managers have proven our case against President Trump with a mountain of evidence.

President Trump tried to cheat, he got caught and then he worked hard -

[14:30:00]