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Midnight in washington by adam schiff how we almost lost our democracy and still could warning. When you hear this snippet below you’ll want to have the full version you’re lucky. You can download the full version for free at the link in the description of this video special invitation from amazon, audible coming from republican senators, several of whom had kept their cards close to the vest. If the republican senators were asking that meant, their minds were still open to conviction, and that was good, even though at this point in the trial, they had yet to hear the defense case and still what were they really asking? If senators believed that we had proven trump guilty, withholding hundreds of millions of dollars of military aid from an ally at war, in order to coerce that nation into helping him cheat in the upcoming election, wasn’t that enough had the bar become so high with this president?

That that wasn’t enough, it was like a juror in an extortion case involving the president asking the judge. Okay he’s guilty, but do we really need to convict? Can he just go on running the country, but, as i walked to the lectern, i suddenly understood in a way. I hadn’t fully appreciated until that moment that this was the central question. Why should he be removed?

He was the president of their party. He was putting conservative judges on the court, he was lowering their taxes. Why remove him? I had watched during breaks in the trial, as the president’s senate defenders took to the airwaves to proclaim his innocence, and i had believed them not their claims about the president’s conduct, but that they believed what they were saying that they believed there had been. To quote the president’s mantra of defense: no quid pro quo, but i could see now that that wasn’t it at all.

I should have known better for the past three years, republicans had confided to me and to many of my democratic colleagues there’s serious misgivings about the president. Some would go on fox news and bash me only to urge me privately to keep on with the investigation, and it became clear that many republicans felt someone needed to do it. Someone needed to put a stop to it all, even if they couldn’t or wouldn’t, and the question wasn’t so much. Why should he be removed as why should i be the one to remove him? Why should i risk my seat, my position of power and influence my career and future?

Why should i? Why should i there was only half an hour left of our case that day when i pulled my thoughts, free of my staff to make those seven short paces from the house manager’s table to the lectern, and i had no idea how i was going to answer That question i prepared to go through the record of the president’s call again the one in which he says. I want you to do us a favor, though, because i discovered there was so much more to that transcript. So much more now that we understood the whole scheme and i had planned to go through it line by line it’d, become a practice of mine during the hearings in the house to do a kind of impromptu summary. At the end of each proceeding to try to distill the importance of what we had heard or learned to try to express simply the significance of something that had struck me as particularly powerful or telling it didn’t even have to be all that important in its own.

Right as long as it spoke to something larger, something that shed light on the bigger issue on what was at stake, but the call record now seemed insignificant compared to the question. Why should i i needed time to think, and so i did go through the call record, with the senators pulling out a line here or there to explain its new significance. Most of the senators were listening politely after a long day, but not all and their concentration was wandering and so was mine. I was doing a kind of extreme multitasking reading and speaking about the call, but thinking about the question i needed to answer and all the other questions that it presumed what made this man so dangerous. What had he done to the country?

How, in three short years had he been able to so completely remake his own party, get it to abandon its own ideology, get my friends and colleagues to surrender themselves to his obvious immorality. How had he caused us to question ourselves our values, our commitment to democracy? What the country even stood for? How had he been able to convince so many of our fellow citizens that his views were the truth and that they should believe him? No matter how obvious the lies, when i finished going through the call record, when i could delay no longer, i told the senators.

This brings me to the last point i want to make tonight at the end of the trial. I said i believed that we would have proven the president guilty, that is, he had done what he was charged with doing, but it was a slightly different question. I acknowledged whether he really needed to be removed. Still, i was wondering, even as i was saying the words. How do i answer the question in the few minutes i have left what do i say and all of a sudden, every senator seemed to be watching, alert and keenly interested in the answer.

The moment stretched on take advantage of this special invitation from amazon, audible now and download this free audiobook with the link you have in the description thanks for watching this video, i would love for you to subscribe to my channel, and you would make me happy if You like this video

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