Despite their overblown approach to impeachment turning more senators away from voting to remove Trump than towards it, the Democrat impeachment managers aren’t slowing down.
For his part, Jerry Nadler dramatically declared that Trump “puts even President Nixon to shame,” as part of his argument for kicking Trump out of office.
Nadler had kicked off the day by claiming,
“No president has ever used his office to compel a foreign nation to help him cheat in our elections — prior presidents would be shocked to the core by such conduct and rightly so. This conduct is not America First. It is Donald Trump first.”
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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler Thursday accused President Trump of putting his own personal interests above national security and American democracy and charged that Trump is the only president in history to violate his oath of office so flagrantly.
“No president has ever used his office to compel a foreign nation to help him cheat in our elections -- prior presidents would be shocked to the core by such conduct and rightly so,” Rep. Nadler, D-N.Y., said in kicking off day two of the House impeachment managers' opening statements.
“This conduct is not America First,” Nadler said, borrowing Trump’s campaign slogan. “It is Donald Trump first.”
Once Trump was caught pressuring Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election by seeking investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden, he launched an unprecedented effort to stonewall Congress’ inquiry by denying documents and witnesses, Nadler charged.
“It puts even President Nixon to shame,” Nadler said.
Nadler's tough talk set the scene for the second of three days of the House managers' opening arguments against Trump, with a deep dive on the first article of impeachment, abuse of power.
On the first day of the opening arguments, Rep. Adam Schiff and his team used more than seven hours to make their case. That left 16 hours and 42 minutes on the opening statement clock between Thursday and Friday for the House Democrats. Then on Saturday, Trump's lawyers take the floor.
As the public case continued before the camera, another political campaign was underway behind the scenes over the issue of calling new witnesses. Democrats are seeking four GOP senators to join them in demanding new evidence in the trial, but Republicans are actively trying to avoid any GOP defections. No new witnesses would mean a speedy trial and a quicker vote to acquit the president.
Detroit News also said:
House prosecutors expanded their case against President Donald Trump on his impeachment trial’s second day, arguing his actions to withhold military aid to Ukraine and block a congressional inquiry were clear violations under the U.S. Constitution.
“No president has ever used his office to compel a foreign nation to help him cheat in our elections,” Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, one of the seven House impeachment managers, told the Senate.
When Congress began examining his conduct, Nadler said, Trump engaged in an unprecedented “stonewalling” of the inquiry that “puts even President Nixon to shame.”
Nadler and the other impeachment managers urged senators to see the trial as a crucial test of Congress’s willingness to restrain a president dramatically tilting the balance of power toward the executive. They stressed the Constitution leaves it entirely at the discretion senators to decide whether Trump’s actions are “high crimes and misdemeanors,” rejecting claims by Trump’s side that a statutory criminal act is needed.
Members of the president’s defense team say they’re gearing up for a vigorous defense of Trump’s assertion of power and his actions regarding Ukraine when they get their turn beginning Saturday.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Thursday that Trump is “very pleased” with how the trial is going and is eager to prove “he’s done nothing wrong.”
“We’re looking forward to the chance when we get to lay out our case, the attorneys are excited by that, and they’re going to attack it on that front, and release that evidence, prove once and for all that this whole thing is illegitimate, it’s a sham,” Gidley told reporters.
Trump’s acquittal is all but assured in a Senate that Republicans control, 53-47, and some members of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s leadership team say they are confident that enough Republicans will stay united against calls by Senate Democrats for more witnesses and documents to assure a speedy end to the trial.
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