WASHINGTON -- Closing out their case, House Democrats warned Friday in Donald Trump's impeachment trial that the president will persist in abusing his power and endangering American democracy unless Congress intervenes to remove him before the 2020 election.
"He is who he is," declared Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He told the senators listening as jurors that Trump put the U.S.-Ukraine relationship on the line in a way that benefited Russia just so he could take a political "cheap shot" at a Democratic foe, former Vice President Joe Biden.
"You cannot leave a man like that in office," Schiff said. "You know it's not going to stop. ... It's not going to stop unless the Congress does something about it."
The Democratic prosecutors ended their presentation Friday evening, with Schiff in the well of the Senate making one final plea to senators to ensure witnesses are called to testify.
"Give America a fair trial," Schiff said. "She's worth it."
Trump is being tried in the Senate after the House impeached him last month, accusing him of abusing his office by asking Ukraine for politically motivated investigations of Biden and other matters while delaying military aid from a U.S. ally that was at war with bordering Russia. A second article of impeachment accuses him of obstructing Congress by refusing to turn over documents or allow officials to testify in the House ensuing investigation.
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As Democrats finished their third day, Trump's legal team prepared to start his defense, expected today. Trump commented on the schedule in a tweet, saying "looks like my lawyers will be forced to start on Saturday, which is called Death Valley in T.V."
Republicans are defending Trump's actions as appropriate and are casting the impeachment trial as a politically motivated effort to weaken him in his reelection campaign. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and eventual acquittal is considered likely.
Senators will make a critical decision next week on Democratic demands to hear testimony from top Trump aides, including acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton, who refused to appear before the House.
The No. 1 witness Democrats want to hear from is Mulvaney, who played a central role in the Ukraine pressure campaign.
Mulvaney is "the chief cook and bottle washer in this whole evil scheme," Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, told reporters Friday morning.
It would take four Republican senators to join the Democratic minority to seek witnesses, and so far the numbers appear lacking.
"This needs to end," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Once Trump's lawyers conclude their arguments, between today and Tuesday, senators are expected to have a short debate on whether to admit new evidence and witnesses to the trial.
This is an area where Democrats have been hoping to sway some of the Republicans who have signaled they might be open to hearing from witnesses, including Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Democrats also are holding out hope for Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who is retiring at the end of this term.
Murkowski, however, already may have made up her mind.
"The House made a decision that they didn't want to slow things down by having to go through courts," Murkowski said Thursday, citing a key argument in the president's defense. "And yet now they're basically saying 'You guys -- the Senate -- got to go through the courts. We didn't, but we need you to.'"
'DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIOR'
With Chief Justice John Roberts presiding, Friday's session opened with a sweeping and impassioned argument from Democrats that Trump's actions with Ukraine were not unique but part of a pattern of "destructive behavior" now threatening the core foundations of American democracy.
The House managers appeared to shift their approach Friday.
For one, they picked up the pace.
In the first 90 minutes, senators heard from three managers -- Reps. Schiff, Jason Crow of Colorado and Hakeem Jeffries of New York -- over the course of five segments. During the two previous days, individual managers rarely presented for less than 45 minutes at a time and often spoke for much longer.
The managers also used a greater number of short video clips to punctuate their remarks and seemed to speak at a faster clip.
Since the managers began making their case Wednesday, Republican senators have complained that the presentations were tedious and repetitive.
Just before the trial resumed Friday, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., urged House managers and the president's team to be concise.
"Old expression: Very few souls are saved after the first 20 minutes of a sermon," Kennedy told reporters.
Schiff told the senators that Trump has shown repeatedly that he is willing to put his personal political interests above those of the country he is sworn to protect.
The evidence shows, he said, that Trump bucked the advice of his own national security apparatus to chase "kooky" theories about Ukraine pushed by lawyer Rudy Giuliani, resulting in "one hell of a Russian intelligence coup" that benefited Vladimir Putin at U.S. expense.
This was not simply a foreign-policy dispute, Schiff argued, but a breach of long-held American values for Trump to leverage an ally -- in this case Ukraine, a struggling democracy facing down Russian troops -- for the investigations he wanted ahead of 2020.
When the House started investigating his actions, Democrats said, Trump blatantly obstructed the inquiry. Even President Richard Nixon, they argued, better understood the need to comply with Congress in some of its oversight requests.
Schiff said that, left unchecked, Trump, who insists he did nothing wrong, would seek foreign election interference again.
Drawing on historical figures, from the Founding Fathers to the late GOP Sen. John McCain and the fictional Atticus Finch, Schiff made his arguments emphatically personal.
"The next time, it just may be you," he said, pointing at one senator after another. "Do you think for a moment that if he felt it was in his interest, he wouldn't ask you to be investigated?"
The senators though, appear as deeply divided as the nation, with Democrats ready to vote to convict the president and Republicans poised to acquit.
"As additional evidence of the president's wrongdoing mounted, White House lawyers redoubled their efforts to prevent Congress and the American people from learning of the president's misconduct," Jeffries said. "At the same time, top administration officials ... tried to convince President Trump to lift the hold on the security assistance. They failed. President Trump was determined to carry out his corrupt scheme."
Jeffries said the military aid was released on Sept. 11 only "after the House launched an investigation and after Congress learned about the existence of a whistleblower complaint," Jeffries said. "The $391 million in security aid was only released because President Trump was caught red-handed."
Jeffries said it was clear Trump "was undoubtedly calling the shots."
"But there's another reason we know the president lifted the aid only because he got caught, because there's no other explanation," Crow said.
Crow also sought to rebut a Republican argument that the aid was eventually released and no investigations were announced "so therefore no harm, no foul."
"Well, this defense would be laughable if this issue wasn't so serious," Crow said. "First, I've spoken over the past three days about the real consequences of inserting politics into matters of war. Real people, real lives are at stake every day. Every hour matters. So, no, the delay wasn't meaningless. Just ask the Ukrainians sitting in trenches right now."
"Regardless of whether the aid was ultimately released, the fact that the hold became public sent a very important signal to Russia that our support was wavering," said Crow. "The damage was done."
Trump is the third president in American history to face an impeachment trial. Neither Andrew Johnson in 1868 nor Bill Clinton in 1999 was removed by the Senate. Nixon left office before a House vote that was likely to impeach him.
The House mounted its case against Trump after a government whistleblower complained about his July call with the Ukrainian president. The House relied on testimony from current and former national security officials and diplomats, some who defied White House instructions not to appear.
Evidence presented in the House investigation has shown that Trump, with Giuliani, asked for investigations of Biden and his son, Hunter, who served on a Ukrainian gas company's board, and sought an inquiry into a theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
It's a story line many in the president's camp are still pushing. Giuliani, in an appearance Friday on Fox & Friends, insisted he would present evidence on his new podcast of "collusion going on in Ukraine to fix the 2016 election in favor of Hillary" Clinton.
Vice President Mike Pence, during an overseas trip in Italy, told reporters confidently that "we fully expect the Senate will acquit the president."
Pence denied allegations made by Lev Parnas, a former associate of Giuliani, that he knew about the efforts to pressure Ukraine to open an investigation into the Bidens.
"What he has said about me has been completely false. I don't recall ever having met Mr. Parnas. But what I've said over and over again is I was never aware of the allegations that there was some pressure campaign for investigations against the Bidens that was underway until those matters became public," Pence said.
Asked whether Giuliani exercised good judgment in taking Parnas into Trump's orbit, Pence said, "I hold Rudy Giuliani in the highest regard."
2018 RECORDING
Meanwhile, Trump can be heard in a taped 2018 conversation saying he wants to get rid of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, whose removal a year later emerged as an issue in Trump's impeachment. The president was talking with a small group that included Parnas, according to a report Friday about the audio recording.
Trump demanded the removal of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch at an April 2018 dinner at his hotel in Washington, according to ABC News, which reported on the recording.
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ABC said a speaker who appears to be Trump says on the recording, "Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."
Yovanovitch, who was viewed as an obstacle to investigations into the Bidens, was not recalled from her position until the following April. She said the decision was based on "unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives" that she was disloyal to Trump.
Parnas, who is a key figure in the investigation, appears to say on the recording: "The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She's still left over from the Clinton administration."
He later can be heard telling Trump. "She's basically walking around telling everybody 'Wait, he's gonna get impeached, just wait."
Democrats seized on the recording as further evidence of Trump's involvement.
"If this is additional evidence of his involvement in that effort to smear her, it would certainly corroborate much of what we've heard, but I'm not in a position yet to analyze that, not having looked at it," Schiff said.
Parnas has done a series of interviews in recent days in which he has asserted that Trump was aware of the plan to remove Yovanovitch. Trump has distanced himself from Parnas, and the president's supporters have questioned his credibility and motives.
"I don't know Parnas other than I guess I had pictures taken, which I do with thousands of people," Trump said last week. "But I just met him. I don't know him at all. Don't know what he's about, don't know where he comes from, know nothing about him. I can only tell you this thing is a big hoax."
The Associated Press said that it has not reviewed the recording. A request from the AP to Parnas and his lawyer for comment was not immediately answered.
Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Eric Tucker, Zeke Miller, Jonathan Lemire, Mary Clare Jalonick, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly and Padmananda Rama of The Associated Press; by John Wagner and Colby Itkowitz of The Washington Post; and by Eileen Sullivan of The New York Times.
A Section on 01/25/2020