Dick Lugar: “Mr. Chief Justice, for the first time in 120 years, and only for the second time in U.S. history, the Senate is about to…”

“Mr. Chief Justice, for the first time in 120 years, and only for the second time in U.S. history, the Senate is about to conclude a Presidential impeachment trial. Our Founding Fathers viewed the power to remove a President as a necessary constitutional safeguard, but they wanted to make certain that the process was sufficiently difficult that the will of the voters would be overturned only for the gravest of reasons. They wrote the words ``high crimes and misdemeanors'' as a threshold, but left it to us to determine what transgressions met this standard. All of us have endeavored to fulfill this enormous responsibility. From the beginning of the consideration of impeachment last year, many Members of Congress in both parties have made public statements expressing their opinions that the President lied to a federal grand jury and that he obstructed justice on numerous occasions. These judgments are apparently shared by large majorities of the American people as illustrated in frequent public opinion polls. The same polls have consistently found that a large majority of Americans do not want the President to suffer the Constitutional consequence of these breaches of law, namely, removal from office.”