-I thank the chairman.
And it is interesting that, again, parliamentary inquiries,
and I believe some are actually
some of the things I'm gonna discuss today
because we're sort of coming here today in a different arena.
For everybody who's not been here before,
this is a new room.
It's new rules.
It's a new month.
We've even got cute, little stickers
for our staff so we can come in,
because we want to make this important --
this is impeachment -- because we've done
such a terrible job of it in this committee before.
But what's not new is basically
what's just been reiterated by the chairman.
What's not new is the facts.
What's not new is it's the same, sad story.
What's interesting, even before I get into part
of my opening statement was,
is what was just said by the chairman.
We went back to a redo of Mr Mueller.
We're also quoting him, saying,
"The attention of the American people should be
on foreign interference."
I agree with him completely,
except I guess the American people did not
include the Judiciary Committee, because we didn't take it up.
We didn't have hearings.
We didn't do anything to delve deeply into this issue.
We passed election bills but did not get into
the in depth part of what Mr Mueller talked about,
taking his own report and having hearings about that.
We didn't do it!
So, I guess the American people doesn't include
the House Judiciary Committee.
You know, the interesting --
we also just heard an interesting discussion.
We're going to have a lot of interesting discussion today
about the constitution and other things,
but we also talked about the Founders.
What's interesting is that the chairman talked a lot
about the Founders from the quotes, and, again,
this is why we have the hearing, about the Founders
being concerned about foreign influence,
but what he also didn't quote was the Founders being really,
really concerned about political impeachment
because you just don't like the guy.
You haven't liked him since November of 2016.
The chairman has talked about impeachment since last year,
when he was elected chairman, two years ago in November '17
before he was even sworn in as chairman.
So, don't tell me this is about new evidence
and new things and new stuff.
We may have a new hearing room, we may have new mics,
and we may have chairs that aren't comfortable,
but this is nothing new, folks.
This is sad.
So, what do we have here today?
You know what I'm thinking?
I looked at this, and what is interesting
is there's two things that have become very clear.
This impeachment is not really about facts.
If it was, I believe the other committees would have sent
over recommendations for impeachment.
No, they're putting it on this committee
because if it goes badly,
I guess they want to blame Adam Schiff's committee,
and others want to blame this committee for it going bad.
But they're already drafting articles.
Don't be even fooled.
They're already getting ready for this.
We've already went after this with the Ukraine
after numerous failings, the Mueller, Cohen, emoluments.
The list goes on.
But the American people are failing to see us legislate.
But if you want to know what's really driving this,
there's two things.
It's called the clock and the calendar,
the clock and the calendar.
Most people in life, if you want to know
what they truly value, you look at their --
you look at their checkbook and their calendar.
You know what they value.
That's what this committee values.
Time.
They want to do it before the end of the year.
Why?
Because the chairman said it just a second ago.
Because we're scared of the elections next year.
We're scared of the elections that we'll lose again.
So, we've got to do this now.
The clock and the calendar are what's driving impeachment,
not the facts.
When we understand this, that's what the witnesses here
will say today.
What do we have here today?
What is really interesting over today
and for the next few weeks
is America will see why most people don't go to law school.
No offense to our professors.
But please, really, we're bringing you in here today
to testify on stuff that most of you have already written about,
all four, for the opinions that we already know,
out of the classrooms that maybe you're getting ready
for finals in, to discuss things
that you probably haven't even had a chance to see.
Unless you're really good on TV
or watching the hearings for the last couple weeks,
you couldn't have possibly actually digested
the Adam Schiff report from yesterday
or the Republican response in any real way.
Now, we can be theoretical all we want,
but the American people is really going to look at this
and say, "Huh?
What are we doing?"
Because there's no fact witnesses
planned for this committee. That's an interesting thing.
Frankly, there's no plan at all
except next week an ambiguous hearing on the presentation
from the other committee
that sent us the report and Judiciary Committee,
which I'm not still sure what they want us to present on,
and nothing else. No plan!
I asked the chairman before we left
for Thanksgiving to stay in touch.
Let's talk about what we have because
history will shine a bright light on us
starting this morning.
Crickets, until I asked for a witness the other day,
and let's just say that didn't go well.
There's no whistle-blower.
And, by the way, it was proved today
that he's not or she's not afforded
the protection of identity.
It's not in the statute.
It's just something that was discussed by Adam Schiff.
We also don't have Adam Schiff, who wrote the report.
He said yesterday in a press conference,
"I'm not going to.
I'll send staff to do that." He's not going to.
But to me if he was wanting to, he would come begging to us.
But, you know, here's the problem.
It sums it up very simply like this.
Just 19 minutes after noon on inauguration day
2017, "The Washington Post" ran the headline,
"The campaign to impeach the president has begun."
Mark Zaid, who would later become the attorney
for the infamous whistle-blower, tweeted in January 2017,
"The coup has started.
The impeachment will follow ultimately."
And in May of this year, Al Green says,
"If we don't impeach the president, he'll get reelected."
If you want to know what's happening, here we go.
Why did everything that I say up to this point
about no fact witnesses, nothing,
for the Judiciary Committee, which spent two and a half weeks
before this hearing was even held under
Clinton, two and a half weeks.
We didn't even find your names out
until less than 48 hours ago.
I don't know what we're playing hide the ball on.
It's pretty easy what you're going to say.
But we can't even get that straight.
So, what are we doing for the next two weeks?
I have no idea.
The chairman just said an ambiguous hearing
on the report, but nothing else.
If we're going to simply not have fact witnesses,
then we are the rubber stamp
hiding out back, the very rubber stamp
the chairman talked about 20 years ago.
What a disgrace to this committee,
to have the committee of impeachment
simply take from other entities and rubber-stamp it.
You see, why do the things that I say matter
about fact witnesses and actual hearings
and actually having this a due process,
because, by the way, just a couple of months ago,
the Democrats got all sort of dressed up, if you will,
and says, "We're going to have due-process protection
for the president and good fairness throughout this."
This is the only committee in which the president
would even have a possibility.
But no offense to you, the law professors --
the president has nothing to ask you.
You're not going to provide anything he can't read.
And his attorneys have nothing else.
Put witnesses in here that can be fact witnesses
who can be actually cross-examined.
That's fairness.
And every attorney on this panel knows that.
This is a sham.
But you know what I also see here is quotes like this.
"There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment
or an impeachment supported by one of our major
political parties or imposed by another.
Such an impeachment will produce divisiveness, bitterness,
and politics for years to come and will call into question
the very legitimacy of our political institutions.
The American people are watching.
They will not forget.
You have the votes. You may have the muscle,
but you do not have legitimacy of a national consensus
or of a constitutional imperative.
The partisan coup d'etat will go down in infamy
in the history of the nation."
How about this one?
"I think the key point is that the Republicans
are still running a railroad job
with no attempt at fair procedure.
And today, when the Democrats offered amendments,
offered motions in committee to say
we should first discuss and adopt standards
so that we know what we're dealing with,
standards for impeachment that was voted down
or ruled out of order.
When we say the important thing
is to start looking at the question
before we simply have a vote with no real inquiry first,
that was voted down and ruled out of order.
So, frankly, the whole question of what material
should be released and what is secondary,
but that's all we discussed.
The essential question, and here it is,
which is to set up a fair process
as to whether to put this country
through an impeachment proceeding.
That was ruled out of order.
The Republicans refused to let us discuss it."
Those were all Chairman Nadler before he was chairman.
I guess 20 years makes a difference.
This is an interesting time.
We're having a factless impeachment.
You just heard a one-sided presentation of facts
about this president.
Today we will present the other side,
which it gets so conveniently left out.
Remember, fairness does dictate that, but maybe not here
because we're not scheduling anything else.
I have a Democratic majority who has poll-tested
what they think they ought to call
what the president they think he did.
Wow.
That's not following the facts.
We have just a deep-seated hatred of a man
who came to the White House
and did what he said he was going to do.
The most amazing question I got in the first three months
of this gentleman's presidency from reporters was this,
"Can you believe he's putting forward those ideas?"
I said, "Yes. He ran on them."
He told the truth, and he did what he said.
The problem here today is this will also be
one of the first impeachments.
The chairman mentioned there was two of them,
one before he resigned, one in Clinton,
in which the facts even by Democrats and Republicans
were not really disputed.
In this one, they're not only disputed,
they're contradictive of each other.
There are no set facts here.
In fact, there's not anything that presents
an impeachment here
except a president carrying out his job
in the way the Constitution saw that he sees fit to do it.
This is where we're at today.
So the interesting thing that I come to with most everybody here
is this may be a new time, a new place,
and we may be all scrubbed up
and looking pretty for impeachment.
But this is not an impeachment.
This is just a simple railroad job.
And today's is a waste of time because this is where we're at.
So, I close today with this. It didn't start with Mueller.
It didn't start with a phone call.
You know where this started?
It started with tears in Brooklyn in November 2016,
when an election was lost.
So, we are here, no plan, no fact witnesses,
simply being a rubber stamp for what we have.
But, hey, we've got law professors here.
What a start of a party.