Schumer Demands All Ukraine Evidence At Impeachment Trial

I am writing today to ask all Senators to consider another, equally important aspect of the trial that has thus far received less attention: the need for the Senate to review documentary evidence. In my December 15th letter, I proposed that the Senate subpoena both a short list of four witnesses and a limited set of relevant documents from the Administration. These documents fall into three evidentiary categories: (1) the effort to induce and pressure Ukraine to announce certain political investigations; (2) the withholding of a White House meeting desperately sought by the newly-elected President of Ukraine; and (3) the order to hold, and later release, $391 million in military assistance to Ukraine.

The House of Representatives amassed a tremendous amount of evidence in support of the Articles of Impeachment, including extensive testimony, given in public and under oath, by senior Administration officials appointed by President Trump. However, the House was unable to gain access to a body of additional relevant evidence because of President Trump’s unprecedented, Administration-wide directive to defy all subpoenas issued by the House, notwithstanding the fact that the House issued those subpoenas lawfully and pursuant to its constitutional impeachment power.

As a result of this directive, the White House, Department of State, Office of Management and Budget and other agencies refused to produce a single document in response to the House’s duly-issued subpoenas. This directive not only deprived the House of relevant evidence, it will also prevent the Senate from seeing the available evidence unless the Senate takes action to obtain it. By way of comparison, in the impeachment trial of President Clinton, the Senate had the benefit of thousands of pages of documents from the Department of Justice investigation by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.