Schumer Floor Remarks On The Senate GOP Hiding The Truth By Blocking Witnesses & Documents In Senate Impeachment Trial

Washington D.C. – U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer briefly spoke today on the Senate floor regarding Senate Republicans’ efforts to hide the truth by blocking testimony from key witnesses and documents in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks:

The Majority Leader can come up on the floor and repeat his talking points but there are some salient points that are irrefutable.

The first: this is the first impeachment trial of a president—or an impeachment trial of anybody else that was completed—that has no witnesses and no documents. The American people are just amazed that our Republican friends would not even ask for witnesses and documents.

I thought the House did a very good job. I thought they made a compelling case. But even if you didn't, the idea that that means you shouldn't have witnesses and documents when we're doing something as august, as important as an impeachment trial fails the laugh test.

It makes people believe, correctly in my judgment, that the administration, its top people, and Senate Republicans are all hiding the truth. They’re afraid of the truth.

Second, the charges are extremely serious. To interfere in an election, to blackmail a foreign country to interfere in our elections, gets at the very core of what our democracy is about. If Americans believe that they don't determine who is president, who is governor, who is senator, but some foreign potentate, out of reach of any law enforcement, can jaundice our elections, that's the beginning of the end of democracy. 

So, it's a serious charge. The Republicans refused to get the evidence because they were afraid of what it would show and that's all that needs to be said.

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