Senator Hassan Announces She Will Vote in Favor of Both Articles of Impeachment

To watch the Senator’s floor speech, click here.

WASHINGTON – Ahead of the Senate’s vote today on the articles of impeachment, Senator Maggie Hassan took to the Senate floor to address Granite Staters and her fellow Senators, discussing why she will vote in favor of both articles of impeachment.

See below for excerpts from the Senator’s speech, or click here to read her speech in full.

Considering whether to convict a President of the United States on articles of impeachment is a solemn and consequential duty and I do not take it lightly. 

Even before we had a country, our founders put forward the notion of “country first,” pledging in the Declaration of Independence their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor – a pledge they made to an idea, imagining and hoping for a country where no one was above the law, where no one had absolute power. My dad, a World War II veteran, and my mom raised me to understand that this is what made our country the unique and indispensable democracy that it is.  

My obligation throughout this process has been to listen carefully to the case that the House Managers put forward and the defenses asserted by the President’s lawyers – and then to carefully consider the Constitutional basis for impeachment, the intent of our founders, and the facts. That’s what I have done over the past days.

The Senate heard extensive presentations from both sides and answers to the almost two hundred questions that Senators posed to the House Managers and the President’s advocates. The facts clearly show that President Trump abused the public’s sacred trust by using taxpayer dollars to extort a foreign government into providing misinformation about a feared political opponent. He violated the law and the public trust. And he put our national security, and the lives of Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines of Russian aggression, at risk.

[…] Rather than gathering full, relevant testimony under oath and with the benefit of cross examination, the Senate majority has apparently decided, that despite what it has heard, it is not interested in learning more. Not interested in learning more about how a President, his personal agent, and members of his Administration corrupted our foreign policy and put our nation’s security at risk. Not interested in learning more about how they planned to use the power of his office to tilt the scales of the next election to ensure that he stays in power. Not interested in learning more about how they worked to cover it up.

Increasingly over the last few days, the President’s defense team and more and more of my colleagues here in the Senate have acknowledged the facts of the President’s scheme. Their argument has shifted from “he didn’t do it” to “he had a right to,” to “he won’t do it again,” or even “it doesn’t really matter.”

I disagree. So strongly. 

The idea that in our country, established by the very rejection of a monarchy, the President has absolute power is absurd. As is the idea that this President, whose conduct is ultimately the cause of this entire process, will suddenly stop.

[…] Our founders knew that we needed a mechanism to hold Presidents accountable for behavior that violated that basic understanding and that would threaten our democracy. Our founders believed that they were establishing a country that would be unique in the history of humankind, a country that would be indispensable, built on the rule of law, not the whims of a ruler. And they provided a mechanism for removal outside of the election process because of the immense damage a President could do in the time between elections. Damage, in the case of this President’s continuing behavior, to our national security and election integrity.

Our founders believed that they were establishing a country that would be unique in the history of humankind, a country that would be indispensable, built on the rule of law, not the whims of a ruler. Generation after generation of Americans have fought for that vision because of what it has meant to our individual and collective success. And to the progress of humankind worldwide. That’s the America that I have sworn an oath to protect.

I will vote in favor of both articles of impeachment because the President’s conduct requires it, Congress’s responsibility as a coequal branch of government requires it, and the very foundation and security of our American idea requires it.

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