Senator Scott Remarks On Impeachment Vote

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) gave the following remarks today on the Senate Floor regarding the vote on the articles of impeachment. Below is the video of his remarks accompanied by the transcript:

 

Click photo to watch the full video 

Transcript as delivered on the Senate Floor

M. President, over the past few weeks, we have heard a lot of arguments, accusations and anecdotes

Some very skilled speakers on both sides have presented their case both for and against impeachment

I listened intently hour after hour, day after day, to the House Managers and the President’s lawyers

And the word that kept coming to me, that I kept writing down in my notes, was fairness

Because you see, here in America, you are innocent until proven guilty

As the President’s defense team noted, “at the foundation of those authentic forms of justice is fundamental fairness. It’s playing by the rules. It’s why we don’t allow deflated footballs or stealing signs from the field. Rules are rules. They’re there to be followed.”

You can create all the rhetorical imagery in the world, but without the facts to prove guilt, it doesn’t mean a thing

They can say the President cannot be trusted, but without proving why he can’t be trusted, their words are just empty political attacks

You can speak of David v. Goliath, but if you are the one trying to subvert the presumption of innocence, if you are the one trying to will facts into existence…you are not David. You have become the Goliath.

Our job here in the Senate is to ensure a fair trial, based on the evidence gathered by the House

I’ve been accused, as have many of my colleagues, of not wanting that “fair” trial

The exact opposite is true – we have ensured a fair trial in the Senate, after House Democrats abused historical precedents in their zeal to impeach a President they simply do not like

During prior impeachment proceedings in the last 50 years, lasting around 75 days or so in the House, the opposing party has allowed witnesses and the ability to cross examine

This time, House Republicans were locked out of the first 71 of 78 days

Let me say that differently, the ability to cross examine the witnesses that are coming before the House against the president, the House Republicans were not allowed, the president’s team was not allowed to cross examine those witnesses.

The ability to contradict and/or to cross examine or have a conversation about the evidence of the foundation of the trial, White House counsel, Republicans, not allowed.

Think about the concept of due process, the House Republicans, the president’s team, not allowed. 71 of 78 days in the House, this is not a fair process?

Does that sound fair to you?

Democrats began talking about impeachment within months of President Trump’s election, and have made it clear that their number one goal…perhaps their only goal…has been to remove him from office

Does that sound fair to you?

They said, “We’re going to impeach  *and they used an expletive*!”

They’ve said, “We have to impeach him, otherwise he’s going to win the election”

Now that might be the transparency we’ve been looking for in this process, the real root or the foundation of why we found ourselves here for 60 hours of testimony. It might be because as they’ve said themselves, if we don’t impeach him, he might just win.

What an amazing thought, that the American people and not members of Congress would decide the presidency of the United States.

What a novel concept that the House Managers and Congress would not remove his name from the ballot in 2020, but we would allow the American people to decide the fate of this president and of the presidency.

They don’t get it. They don’t understand that the American people should be and are the final arbiters of what happens.

They want to make not only the president vulnerable, but they want to make Republican senators vulnerable so that they can control the majority of the United States senate, because the facts are not winning for them.

The facts are winning for us, because when you look at the facts, they’re not their facts and our facts. They are just the facts.

But what I’ve learned from watching the House managers’ very convincing, very convincing they were for the first day, and after that, what we realized was some facts, mixed with a little fiction, led to 100% deception.

You cannot mix facts and fiction without having the premise of deceiving the American public, and that’s what we saw here in our chambers.

And why is that the case? Well, it’s simple. When you look at the facts of this presidency, you come to a few conclusions that are, in fact, indisputable.

One of those conclusions is our economy is booming, and it’s not simply booming from the top. It’s when you start looking into the cross tabs, as I like to say, what you find is that the bottom 20% are seeing increases that the top 20 percent are not seeing.

So this economy is working for the most vulnerable Americans, and that’s challenging to our friends on the other side.

When you think about the fact that the Opportunity Zones legislation supported by this president is bringing $67 billion of private sector dollars into the most vulnerable communities, that is challenging to the other side, but those two are facts.

When you think about the essence of criminal justice reform and making communities safer and having a fairer justice system for those who are incarcerated, that is challenging to the other side, but it is indeed a fact driven home by the Republican party and president Donald John Trump.

And these facts do have consequences, just like elections, and our friends on the other side unfortunately decided that they could not beat them at the polls, give Congress an opportunity to, in fact, impeach the president.

My friends on the left simply don’t want a fair process. This process has lacked fairness.

Instead, they paint their efforts as fighting on behalf of democracy when, in fact, they are just working on behalf of democrats. That’s not fair. It’s not what the American people deserve.

House managers said over and over again the Senate had to protect our nation’s free and fair elections, but they are seeking to overturn a fairly won election with absurd charges.

The House managers said over and over again that the Senate has to allow new witnesses so as to make the Senate trial fair, but they didn’t bother with the notion of fairness when they were in charge in the House.

Their notion of fairness is to give the prosecution do-overs and extra latitude, but not the defendants. Actions speak louder than words, and democrat actions have said all we need to hear.

Let’s vote no on these motions today and give back to working — and get back to working for the American people.

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