Political Quotes

“Mr. Chief Justice, I send a question to the desk and refer it to the House managers. The CHIEF JUSTICE. The question is from Senator Menendez to the House managers: President Trump has maintained that he withheld U.S. security assistance to Ukraine because he was concerned about corruption. Yet, his purported concern about corruption did not prevent his Administration from sending congressionally-appropriated assistance to Ukraine more than 45 times between January 2017 and June 2019, totaling more than $1.5 billion. So why did the President suddenly become concerned about corruption in early 2019? Mr. Manager CROW. Mr. Chief Justice, Senator, thank you for the question. He became concerned about corruption supposedly in early 2019 because Vice President Biden was running for election for the Presidency. That is what the overwhelming amount of the evidence shows because there is no other legitimate reason, as your question points out. First, the publicly released records of President Trump's April 21 and 25 calls to President Zelensky never mentioned the word ``corruption'' despite the fact that the talking points for these calls prepared by his own staff listed ``corruption.'' Second, in May 2019, the State Department certified to Congress Ukraine had ``taken substantial actions for the purposes of decreasing corruption'' and met the anti-corruption benchmarks this very body established when it appropriated $250 million of those funds.…”