Democrats cap impeachment arguments with focus on Trump stonewalling.
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| Pete Marovich for The New York Times |
Democrats say Trump trampled on Congress’s legal authority to act as a check on presidential power when he adopted an across-the-board refusal to cooperate with House investigators examining his dealings with Ukraine last year.
While their case has centered on allegations that Trump abused his power, the third and final day of the Democrats’ opening arguments will focus on the second impeachment article passed by the House last month: obstruction of Congress.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the lead manager of the House team, also signaled that Democrats intend to put up a fight Friday for witnesses, pushing back on the White House legal team’s claims of executive privilege.
“This is not a trial over a speeding ticket or shoplifting. This is an impeachment trial involving the president of the United States,” Schiff told reporters in remarks ahead of Friday’s arguments.
“Unlike in the House where the president could play rope-a-dope in the courts for years, that is not an option for the president's team here,” he continued. “And it gives no refuge to people who want to hide behind executive privilege to avoid the truth coming out.”
The Democrats’ impeachment case hinges on allegations that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine, not to advance U.S. interests, but as leverage to pressure the country’s leaders to find dirt on his political opponents.
“No one anticipated that a president would stoop to this misconduct, and Congress has passed no specific law to make this behavior a crime,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Thursday. “Yet this is precisely the kind of abuse that the Framers had in mind when they wrote the impeachment clause.”
“The Do Nothing Democrats just keep repeating and repeating, over and over again, the same old ‘stuff’ on the Impeachment Hoax,” Trump tweeted Friday morning.
“The Framers, the courts, and past Presidents have recognized that honoring Congress’s right to information in an impeachment investigation is a critical safeguard in our system of divided powers,” the Democratic impeachment managers wrote in the 46-page brief outlining their legal arguments heading into the Senate trial.
The administration’s defiance came in two forms. First, the White House directed administration officials not to testify in the investigation, even if subpoenaed. And second, the administration refused to turn over any documents related to Trump’s pressure campaign in Ukraine.
Democrats have described the administration’s lack of cooperation as nothing less than an attempt to cover up for the president’s conduct.
But Democrats warned that Trump is setting a dangerous precedent, stealing congressional powers that would act as a check on future presidents.
“In terms of the obstruction, the precedent would be equally devastating to the government because it would mean that the impeachment power is essentially a nullity. It is unenforceable. The president can delay it into nonexistence and this goes not just to impeachment investigations,” Schiff said.
“If the Senate goes along with the president's obstruction, it will in every way impede the House and impede the Senate in its own responsibilities."
He asked the senators to consider something else Trump could threaten: themselves.
“I don’t care how close you are to this president,” Schiff said. “Do you think for a moment that he wouldn’t investigate you if it was in his political interests?”
In the Capitol, Mr. Schiff is ordinarily serious, composed and in control. But as he moved toward his closing comments, he grew visibly emotional as he recalled the testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the White House national security aide and Ukrainian immigrant who testified in impeachment hearings before Congress and helped Democrats build their case.
Colonel Vindman, who fled the former Soviet Union with his family when he was 3, testified that he felt deeply uncomfortable with a telephone call Mr. Trump had on July 25 with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, when Mr. Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to “do us a favor” and investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Schiff recalled how Colonel Vindman told lawmakers that unlike in the former Soviet Union, “right matters” in the United States.
“Well, let me tell you something,” Mr. Schiff went on, his forefinger jabbing the air for emphasis. “If right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. Doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is.” If “right doesn’t matter,” he concluded, “we’re lost.”