“This conduct is not ‘America First,’” Nadler said, in reference to Trump’s campaign slogan. “This conduct is Donald Trump first.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House’s lead impeachment manager, indicated early in the day that his team would seek to apply the facts of the case to the constitutional framework for impeachment — including an argument for why Trump’s alleged misconduct meets the threshold for “high crimes and misdemeanors” as outlined in the Constitution. Thursday’s presentation focused on the first article of impeachment against Trump, centering on his alleged abuses of the powers of the presidency. Schiff and his team will delve into the second article — obstruction of Congress — on Friday, according to a Democratic official working on the trial.
The arguments closely mirrored those laid out by the House Judiciary Committee last month, when constitutional law experts called by Democrats made the case that Trump’s conduct crossed the threshold into impeachable territory. The House impeachment managers’ arguments on Thursday were heavy on constitutional history and legalese. Democrats view this as a necessary burden to prove their case, especially because it was a prominent feature of previous impeachment trials.
“Impeachment is the Constitution’s final answer to a president who mistakes himself as a king,” Nadler said. Trump’s alleged misconduct “puts even President Nixon to shame,” he added.
The Senate adjourned for the day at 10:32 p.m., after an impassioned appeal from Schiff to Republicans who believe Trump’s conduct was inappropriate but that he should not be removed from office for it, especially with an election 10 months away. Schiff sought to persuade an attentive Senate chamber that it was not enough to believe Trump is guilty — but that he should be removed from the presidency, and barred from holding future office.
“Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own FBI director. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own national security advisers,” Schiff said, referring to Trump’s personal attorney. “That makes him dangerous — to us, to our country.”
Schiff said in closing: “If you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.”
But as the day wore on, it became clear that the House impeachment managers also wanted to drill down on the chronology of the Ukraine saga — especially for a primetime television audience. Thursday’s session also included an effort to push back on the unsubstantiated theories that drove Trump’s alleged pressure campaign toward the Ukrainian president.
The Democratic impeachment managers tried to exhaustively debunk the allegations at the center of Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden. Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), one of the managers, said the claims against Biden — specifically that he pushed for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor to benefit his son Hunter — are “groundless.”
Garcia’s presentation included video clips of the witnesses who testified before House impeachment investigators last year, all of whom said Biden’s efforts to push out the former top Ukrainian prosecutor were in accordance with official U.S. policy. Garcia also made the case that Trump only undertook the alleged effort to pressure the Ukrainians until Biden jumped into the presidential race and presented a formidable challenge to Trump.
“It wasn’t until Biden began beating him in the polls that he began calling for the investigation,” Garcia said, seeking to undercut Trump’s claims that he was seeking to root out foreign corruption.
Democrats also pushed back in earnest against claims from Trump’s lawyers that an impeachable offense must be a statutory crime, such as bribery or obstruction of justice. The president’s allies have harangued Democrats for impeaching Trump without accusing him of a crime, arguing that the two articles of impeachment are legally defective and set a dangerous precedent for future presidential impeachments.
Source: politico.com
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