Thank you Speaker Nancy Pelosi - speech given at House impeachment hearing

December 18, 2019:  Colleagues, this morning and every morning when we come together, members rise and pledge allegiance to the flag. 

Every day, all across America, children in school, members of the military, officials and those civically engaged also pledge allegiance to the flag. Let us recall what that pledge says.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic, to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The Republic for which it stands is what we are here to talk about today. A Republic if we can keep it. We gather today under the dome of this temple of democracy to exercise one of the most solemn powers that this body can take, the impeachment of the President of the United States.

No member, regardless of party or politics, comes to Congress to impeach a president, but every one of us as our first act as a member of Congress stood on this historic house floor before our beautiful American flag and raised our hands in this sacred oath.

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. So help me God.

For 230 years, members have taken that sacred oath, which makes us custodians of the Constitution. When our founders declared independence and established a new nation, they crafted a system of government unlike anyone ever seen before. A Republic starting with the sacred words, we the people. For centuries Americans have fought and died to defend democracy for the people, but very sadly now our founder’s vision of a Republic is under threat from actions from the White House. That is why today, as Speaker of the House, I solemnly and sadly opened the debate on the impeachment of the President of the United States.

If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty. It is tragic that the president’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice. What we are discussing today is the established fact that the president violated the Constitution. It is a matter of fact that the president is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections, the basis of our democracy. Hundreds of historians, legal scholars, and formal prosecutors regardless of party had stated that the president committed impeachable offenses.

Since today is a national civics lesson, though a sad one, I submit these documents for the record and commend them for students to study.

What we are discussing today is the established fact that the president again violated the Constitution. It is a matter of fact that the president is again, an ongoing threat to our national security and the testimony of decorated war heroes, distinguished diplomats and patriotic career public servants, some of the president’s own appointees over the past weeks have told us this.

The president used the power of his public office to obtain an improper personal political benefit at the expense of America’s national security. When a president weakens a democratic ally that is advancing American security interest by fighting an American adversary, the president weakens America. This abuse of power also jeopardizes the integrity of our elections. All Americans agree that American voters should choose our president, not some foreign government.

The founders understood that it is profoundly corrosive for our democracy, for a president to invite interference in our elections. 

As George Washington, our nation’s patriot under whose gaze, we stand today, warned, “History and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most painful foes of Republican government,” George Washington.

Sadly, the American people have witnessed further wrongs of the president, which necessitate the Second Article of Impeachment, Obstruction of Congress. When the president’s wrongdoing was revealed, he launched an unprecedented, indiscriminate and categorical campaign of defiance and obstruction.

Never before in the history of our nation have we seen a president declare and act if he is above the law. The president goes even so far as to say and act on this absurdity. When he says, Article Two says, “I can do whatever I want.” No, it doesn’t. That recklessness is a profound violation of the Constitution and our Republic, which endure because of our system of separation of power, three co-equal branches, each a check and balance on the other. A Republic. Again, if we can keep it.

The founder’s great fear of a rogue or corrupt president is the very reason why they enshrined impeachment in the Constitution. As one founder William Davy of North Carolina warned, “Unless the Constitution contained an impeachment provision, a president might spare no efforts or means whatever to get himself reelected.” Another founder, George Mason, insisted that the president who procured his appointment in the first instance through improper and corrupt acts might repeat his guilt and return to power.

We in Congress, Article One the legislative branch, must stand up and make clear to the American people and to all people, that this body still stands by the principles enshrined in the Constitution and defended by generations of Americans.

Last week and observance of the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, members travel to that hallowed ground to express our gratitude to the heroes of freedom, who sacrificed everything to secure victory of freedom over tyranny, not just for America but for the world. The veterans of that battle who were there in their nineties told us how after the war was won, the Europeans to whom they liberated would ask, “Why did you risk us? You don’t know us and give your lives to save us. We’re not Americans.” And our men would say, “We came here to fight for you, not because you are Americans, because we are Americans.”

As our beloved (the late) chairman, Representative Elijah Cummings and oversight committee chair, our North star said, when announcing his support for this action, “When the history books are written about this tumultuous error, I want them to show that I was among those in the House of Representatives who stood up to lawlessness and tyranny.” He also said almost prophetically, “When we are dancing with the angels*, the question will be, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact.” Elijah, as you know, has since passed on. Now he is dancing with the angels and I know that he and all of us here are very proud of the moral courage of members, want to honor the vision of our founders for a Republic, the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform to defend it, and the aspirations of our children to live freely within it. Today, we are here to defend democracy for the people. May God bless America.

*In my vision of heaven, just my personal opinion, Rep. Cummings was a spirit in the House, during Speaker Pelosi's speech.

Racism is an evil Donald Trump diversion tactic

Trump’s Twitter Attacks Are Backfiring
President Trump seems eager to divert attention from impeachment and investigations, but distractions work only if they distract.

Echo opinion published in The Atlantic by David A. Graham

If former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony to the House last week wasn’t the clear victory that many Democrats had hoped it would be, there are indications it didn’t go as well for President Donald Trump as he and his allies have claimed either. (In my opinion, the instant replays reported in the media after the Mueller testimony served to reinforce obstruction of justice incidents and emphasized how corrupt the Trump administration was in trying to cover up evidence.)

The first sign of things not going well came on Friday afternoon, when the president gave a series of nonsensical sound bites to reporters, saying that Barack Obama had ruined the White House HVAC system and calling for an investigation of how Obama, the author of a critically acclaimed memoir and a former president of the United States, got a book deal.

As it turned out, this was merely a warm-up for what was to come: a scorched-earth racist rant against Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, and his district in Baltimore. The rant has extended into a third day and now also targets Al Sharpton, who Trump claims hates white people. 

Not since the fall of 1814 has there been such a concerted assault on the Charm City from the south, but don’t expect any national anthems to be written about this battle.

Even without the example of Trump’s fusillade against the “squad” of Democratic congresswomen earlier this month, this routine is by now familiar. When faced with a series of headlines that he doesn’t like, Trump endeavors to change the subject, by whatever means necessary.

It’s reminiscent of the old parody motivational poster that reads, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Or, in Trump’s case: “The tweeting will continue until the chyrons improve.” In the past, this has worked well for Trump. His ability to change the subject has managed to prevent sustained attention on some of the biggest scandals of his political career. But there are limitations to this tactic, as the oxymoronic poster suggests, and they may be emerging right now.

You don’t have to look hard to see what Trump was upset about. Even though Mueller’s testimony to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees was short on dramatic sound bites, and the infernal “optics” debate seemed to favor Republicans in the first day or so, it became clear by week’s end that this wasn’t the death knell for investigations that the GOP had hoped it would be. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t come around on impeachment, but Democrats also showed they were not going to drop the matter and move on. The chairs of the two committees, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, seemed perhaps more resolved to move forward after the hearings.

On Friday, some Democrats said they were conducting an impeachment investigation—while hastening to add that didn’t mean that actually impeaching Trump was a foregone conclusion. 

And on Thursday, in the move that drew the president’s fury, Cummings’s Oversight Committee approved subpoenas for White House communications from the senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, as well as the former strategist Steve Bannon.

There are several reasons to question the efficacy of Trump’s distraction here. The first is that it means that a piece of good news for the president Friday afternoon, a Supreme Court decision that allows the Trump administration to begin work on a wall on the southern border while litigation continues, has been largely overlooked.

A second is the same as the point that I and many others made after Trump’s attack on the squad: Exploiting racial tension has been a successful strategy for Trump and many other politicians, but open racism is, in addition to its moral repugnance, a risky electoral ploy.

Third, and perhaps most important, a distraction works only if it distracts. Trump has successfully turned the conversation to his tweets about Cummings, but he has not turned it away from impeachment. In fact, he’s deepened his problems: As of yesterday, 107 House Democrats back an impeachment inquiry, up from the mid-90s last week. That’s almost half the caucus. Non–House members, including Patty Murray, a top Senate Democrat, have also voiced support.

This is in part a testament to Cummings’s standing inside the caucus. There have been tensions between more establishment Democrats and the squad since the start of the Congress—notably between Pelosi and the foursome. When Trump attacked them, Democrats rallied against him, but they may have hesitated to line up too loudly behind the rabble-rousers. 

Cummings, however, is a 23-year House veteran, a committee chair, and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. 

As my colleague Peter Nicholas notes, he was also a Democrat who was willing to work with the White House, so Trump’s attack shows that he’s willing to go scorched-earth even on members who are far more restrained than Ilhan Omar. The president may have underestimated the extent to which Democrats would rally around Cummings.

The spark of Trump’s fury at Cummings matters too. Setting aside the bile about Baltimore, what Trump is angry about is the subpoenas. No president likes being subpoenaed, but they are a well-established tool of Congress. I wrote in May that the more Trump stonewalls congressional investigations, the more likely it is that Congress acts. Members of the House may flinch at hauling Trump up for impeachment on obstruction of justice related to the Mueller report, or other causes, seeing political peril for themselves, but once Trump starts infringing on their prerogatives as a body, members start getting fired up.

When the president throws this kind of over-the-top tantrum about the Oversight Committee’s tactics, he’s falling into just this trap. His attack on Cummings is designed to change the focus, but he’s actually zooming it in.