“Do you think for a moment that any of you, no matter what your relationship with this president, no matter how close you are to this president — do you think for a moment that if he felt it was in his interest, he wouldn’t ask you to be investigated? Do you think for a moment that he wouldn’t? And if somewhere deep down below you realize that he would — you cannot leave a man like that in office when he has violated the Constitution.” “This is a determination by President Trump that he wants to be all-powerful. He does not have to — to respect the Congress. He does not have to respect the representatives of the people. Only his will goes. He is a dictator. This must not stand. And that is why — another reason he must be removed from office.” “You don’t realize how important character is in the highest office in the land until you don’t have it, until you have a president willing to use his power to coerce an ally to help him cheat, to investigate one of our fellow citizens — one of our fellow citizens. Yes, he’s running for president — he’s still a U.S. citizen. He’s still a U.S. citizen, and he deserves better than that.” “Although senior Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Bill Barr, were reportedly made aware of the concerns about corrupt activity, no investigation into President Trump’s wrongdoing was even opened by the Department of Justice.” “In an effort to conceal the whistle-blower’s concerns, the White House and the Department of Justice took an unprecedented step. No administration had ever intervened in such a manner before. But President Trump maneuvered to keep the whistle-blower’s concerns from the congressional Intelligence Committees.” “At President Trump’s direction, the White House itself refused to produce a single document or record in response to a House subpoena that remains in full force and effect. And it continues to withhold those documents from Congress and from the American people.” “If we are to decide here that a president of the United States can simply say under Article 2, ‘I can do whatever I want and I don’t have to treat a coequal branch of government like it exists, I don’t have to give it any more than the back of my hand’ — that will be an unending injury to this country. Ukraine will survive and so will we, but that will be an undending injury to this country, because the balance of power that our founders set out will never be the same.”