HIGHLIGHTS | Ranking Member Collins’ Opening Statement

DEMS’ EFFORT TO OVERTURN THE 2016 ELECTION

COLLINS: “In 2016, the American people had the audacity to elect, in Democrats’ eyes, the wrong person as president. That is the entire reason we are here. Democrats, and their allies in the media and the permanent federal bureaucracy, are furious at the American people.”

COLLINS: “Just 19 minutes after noon on Inauguration Day, 2017, the Washington Post ran the headline: ‘The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun.’ Mark Zaid, who would later become the attorney for the infamous whistleblower, tweeted in January 2017 that a ‘coup has started,’ and that ‘impeachment will follow ultimately.’ In May of this year, Representative Al Green said, ‘If we don’t impeach the president, he will get reelected.’”

 COLLINS: “Democrats on this committee, under the chairman’s leadership, have been dead-set on impeachment since at least November 2018 — when Chairman Nadler was overheard on an Acela train saying he was ‘all-in’ on impeachment.”

COLLINS: “What are the consequences of the Democrats’ proposed actions? Well, they are extraordinarily dangerous. If presidents can be impeached for partisan policy differences based on presumptions and feelings, not actual evidence, Democrats have profoundly undermined the precedents of this institution.”

THE UNFAIR, SHAM PROCESS

COLLINS: “The last time this committee considered impeaching a president in 1998, Democratic leaders, including Chairman Nadler, insisted the president deserves the presumption of innocence, the right to confront witnesses, and ‘due process quadrupled.’”

COLLINS: “Have Democrats lived up to that standard? Not even close. Today marks the first time the president’s lawyers have been invited to participate, but, rather than asking questions of fact witnesses, the president’s counsel gets to question law professors. I don’t think that meets Democrats’ standard of ‘due process quadrupled.’”

COLLINS: “To Democrats, this is a trial when it needs to be a trial, and a show when it needs to be a show. Witnesses are allowed only when selected by Chairman Schiff to further the impeachment story and ignored when they do not. This unfair process is politics as usual, but this time it’s politics to overturn 63 million American votes.”

DEMOCRATS’ DEPARTURE FROM PRECEDENT

COLLINS: “The voters see the hypocrisy in this sham impeachment. There are significant weaknesses in the case Chairman Schiff has quickly cobbled together, which represent marked differences from prior impeachments.”

COLLINS: “One profound difference is this is the first impeachment where the key facts are disputed. With Nixon, we had the tapes. With Clinton, we had his testimony. In both instances, the facts were investigated over the course of months and years. Here, we had a few weeks of closed-door testimony and two weeks of public hearings. The allegations against the president continue to change, based on how Democrats view the polls.”

COLLINS: By comparison, the Clinton impeachment was preceded by years of investigation into his misconduct beginning during his time as Governor of Arkansas. The Nixon impeachment came after years of House and Senate committee investigations. For President Trump, we have had five days of public hearings. Five days of public testimony is what the Democrats are using to impeach a president.”

COLLINS: “The central allegations against the president in this affair — since the beginning — consist of hearsay, feelings, conjecture and presumption upon presumption, while objective evidence points the other way and supports the president.”

COLLINS: “Additionally, this committee received no evidence supporting the Schiff allegations until yesterday, so the discussion today will be about whether constitutional principles support impeachment based on 300 pages of supposed “facts” we just received — which ignore inconvenient, exculpatory information.”

BASING IMPEACHMENT ON HEARSAY, PRESUMPTIONS, AND POLICY DISAGREEMENTS

COLLINS: “When you look at the facts — not the presumptions, feelings and hearsay on display at the Intelligence Committee — there are several facts all witnesses agree upon.”

COLLINS: “First, President Donald Trump is generally skeptical of foreign aid. America has long been the world’s bank, bailing out troubled countries even when they criticize us. Central to this inquiry is a policy disagreement — a longstanding Republican/Democrat disagreement.”

COLLINS: “Second, witnesses also agreed that President Trump had a deeply held belief that Ukraine is a corrupt country. The evidence shows this is not only reasonable, but accurate. We are talking about massive corruption where government officials are also oligarchs, controlling business and lining their pockets with Ukrainian — and American — taxpayer dollars.”

COLLINS: “Third, zero witnesses identified a crime here.”

COLLINS: “Finally, all the witnesses seem to agree at the end of the day, this is a policy disagreement. Lt. Colonel Vindman dramatically told the Intelligence Committee that the July 25 call was “inappropriate” and “my worst fear of how our Ukraine policy could play out.” From the perspective of Dr. Hill, Kent, Taylor and Holmes, the president’s July 25 call was “not in line with American national security goals.”

COLLINS: “American foreign policy goals, however, are not set by diplomats. It is the American people, through their elected officials, who determine how we conduct foreign relations.”

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