Democratic impeachment managers laid out a sprawling argument that Trump had abused his power, deftly deploying old clips of Republicans making statements that underscored Democrats' points.
Democratic impeachment managers pushing the Senate to remove President Donald Trump from office laid out a sprawling argument Thursday that he had abused his power.
On their second day of opening statements, the seven House Democrats, led by Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., zeroed in on the first of two articles of impeachment that the House passed last month. They have 24 hours total, spread out over three days, to state their case. Under Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's rules, the Senate will then get to vote on whether to produce documents and witnesses in the trial that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been pushing for. Amendments to issue subpoenas beforehand for a slew of documents and witnesses, were shot down Tuesday.
Trump and his allies had pushed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, as well as a debunked conspiracy theory alleging Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election, while millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine were being withheld.
Impeachment, Nadler said, "is not a punishment for crimes." Rather, "Impeachment exists to address threats to the political system, applies only to political officials and responds not by imprisonment or fines, but only by stripping political power," he said. From the time Democrats launched their investigation, Graham has been among the Senate's most vocal critics of the impeachment proceedings. "They're on a crusade to destroy this president," Graham said of Nadler, Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Wednesday.
An all-caps chyron above Graham in the clip read: "LINDSEY GRAHAM: IMPEACHMENT DOES NOT REQUIRE A CRIME." But neither Biden nor his son have been credibly accused of wrongdoing. Biden's push for Ukraine to fire that prosecutor aligned with official U.S. policy at the time, as well as the wishes of numerous other countries who saw him as corrupt.
"This theory was brought to you by the Kremlin," Schiff said. "So we're not talking about generic interference … what Donald Trump wanted investigated or announced was this completely bogus, Kremlin-pushed conspiracy theory."
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