Schiff: “...that’s the argument I suppose you have to make if the facts are so dead set against you, if the pres. has admitted to the wrongdoing, his chief of staff has confessed to the wrongdoing, his [E.U.] amb. has confessed to the same quid pro quo...”
“...you have to rely on an argument that even if he abused his office in this horrendous way, that it’s not impeachable, you had to go so far out of the mainstream... to leave the realm of constitutional law scholars and go to criminal defense lawyers.”
“...the intel. community is beginning to withhold documents from Congress on [Ukraine]. They appear to be succumbing to pressure from the administration. The NSA in particular is withholding what are potentially relevant documents to our oversight...”
“...it is the fact with many of the people surrounding the president... end up indicted... people like... Michael Cohen, like Lev Parnas, like so many others, Paul Manafort, and these are people that do have information about the president's misconduct.”
“...we don't know what witnesses will be allowed and... if we’ll be allowed witnesses... will there be a fair trial? Will the senators allow the House to call witnesses to introduce documents? That is the foundational issue on which everything else rests.”
“If the Senate decides, if Senator McConnell prevails and there are no witnesses, it will be the first impeachment trial in history that goes to conclusion without witnesses.”
“We’ve seen [Trump] in public ask the Ukrainians [and Chinese] to get involved.”
Shelby: “those are just statements political. They make them all the time.”
“So it’s OK?”
“I didn’t say it was OK. I said people make them—people do things. Things happen.”
Shelby: “those are just statements political. They make them all the time.”
“So it’s OK?”
“I didn’t say it was OK. I said people make them—people do things. Things happen.”
Sen. Shelby: “...it looks to me at this juncture that the House has got a weak hand. They’re wanting us in the Senate to open the case up and to try everything—re-try their stuff. We don’t know what's going to come forth this week.”
Sen. Booker: “...the fact that we can’t even get Republicans to answer your question directly, is that behavior wrong? It is absolutely wrong. And this is the thing that really disturbs me, because we as senators have access to classified information...”
“...about the incredibly detailed, earnest efforts by the Russians and others to interfere in our elections. This is real. From Madagascar to the E.U., democracy is under attack by at least Russia and more... to try to undermine democracy as we know it.”
“What the founders never envisioned was a U.S. Senate that would abdicate their responsibility in an impartial way to hold a president accountable. [The 2021] inauguration, to me, will probably be the most profound inauguration of a president since 1861.”
