WASHINGTON (CN) — “It is midnight in Washington,” Representative Adam Schiff said Monday, on the cusp of President Donald Trump’s seemingly inevitable acquittal for high crimes and misdemeanors.
Not backing down on his effort for a Senate conviction, however, the lead impeachment manager from the House of Representatives had stern words for Trump loyalists.
“If you find that the House has proved its case and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history,” Schiff warned the senators. “But if you find the courage to stand up to him, to speak the awful truth to his rank falsehood, your place will be among the Davids who took on Goliath — if only you will say, ‘Enough!’”
Not only are Republicans disinclined to remove Trump from the Oval Office, they were nearly unanimous Friday in the 49-51 vote to fast-forward the trial, killing a motion by Democrats to hear witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton and obtain evidence stonewalled by the White House.
The president is slated to give his State of the Union address on Tuesday night and face a Senate vote Wednesday on the articles of impeachment.
A little more than a week ago, Schiff won bipartisan acclaim for his speech revolving around the theme that, in a vibrant democracy, “right matters.” Even Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham praised Schiff’s powers of oration, if disagreeing on substance.
The California Democrat’s final appeal to an opposing party primed to acquit the president circled around another virtue: decency.
“He is who he is, but truth matters little to him,” Schiff said, referring to Trump. “What is right matters less, and decency matters not at all.”
Midnight in Washington, another theme of Schiff’s speech, had literal and figurative overtones. The hour referred to both the inevitable vote by each of the Senate jurors and a dead-of-night filing of a Justice Department brief acknowledging the existence of documents that the White House has refused to release: 24 emails showing Trump’s thinking on the hold on $391 million in military aid to Ukraine.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shook Schiff’s hand, then pulled the lead House manager in for a hug and firm slap on the back after the soaring argument to close the Democrats’ case.
Schumer later told reporters the oratory was “just about the best speech” he has heard in his nearly four decades in Washington.
“I hope maybe it pierced the hardness that is put in front of so many of our Republican colleagues,” Schumer said. “Let’s hope and pray. If that didn’t do it, I don’t know what would.”
Before Schiff implored senators to remove Trump from office as a danger to the country, attorneys for the president argued that the constitutional remedy would be improper with an election looming.
Deputy White House counsel Patrick Philbin accused House Democrats of leading a structurally deficient investigation that produced Trump’s articles of impeachment.