House impeachment managers Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) walk to Senate floor on January 25, 2020. (Photo by ALEX EDELMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) - In a telling moment on Sunday morning, House impeachment manager Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said House Democrats didn't wait for the courts to compel witnesses and documents in their impeachment case because the 2020 election would be over by the time the courts ruled.

Her comments reflect what President Trump's defense team told the nation on Saturday. Attorney Pat Cipollone said the Democrats – not President Trump – are the ones trying “to perpetrate the most massive interference in an election in American history.”

Jake Tapper, host of CNN's "State of the Union," noted that Lofgren had urged senators not to "surrender to the president's stonewalling." Democrats are insisting that senators call the witnesses and subpoena the documents that House members didn’t wait for.

"We did go to court, as you know," Lofgren said.

Tapper interrupted: "But you didn't pursue it in court. You ultimately withdrew the cases and went to the Senate."

"Ultimately, we realized we had the evidence we were going to get, and that it was sufficient to prove our case," Lofgren said.

Tapper pressed her: "But didn't you surrender to the president's stonewalling, in that sense?"

"Well, in that -- I guess, in that sense, we did, because, if we had waited for three or four years, the election would be over. The issue would be almost moot. If he is committing a high crime and misdemeanor now, and continuing to do it, we need to act."

In his opening remarks to the U.S. Senate on Saturday, Cipollone said Democrats are "asking senators to do something "very, very consequential" and "very, very dangerous":

They're asking you not only to overturn the results of the last election, but as I've said before, they're asking you to remove President Trump from the ballot in an election that's occurring in approximately nine months. They're asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative -- take that decision away from the American people. And I don't think they spent one minute of their 24 hours talking to you about the consequence of that for our country, not one minute. They didn't tell you what that would mean for our country -- today, this year and forever into our future. They're asking you to do something that no Senate has ever done, and they're asking you to do it with no evidence. And that's wrong, and I ask you to keep that in mind.







