Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/138

 blocking anything for us."

The bottom line is that President Trump used for personal political gain the powers entrusted to his office. He did so knowingly, deliberately, and repeatedly. He involved parts of the Executive Branch in his scheme. He undermined American security and democracy to help ensure his re-election—and did not care. And after he was caught, President Trump not only insisted his conduct was acceptable and did everything in his power to obstruct Congress's investigation into his misconduct, he also sought to normalize and justify his behavior by publicly soliciting foreign powers to investigate a citizen who is challenging him in next year's election.

A President who acts this way believes he stands above the law. That belief is itself a guarantee that allowing him to remain in our highest office, vested with our mightiest political powers, poses a continuing threat to the Constitution. Unless he is stopped, President Trump will continue to erode our democracy and the fundamental values on which the Nation was founded.

6.Consistency with Previous Conduct

The First Article of Impeachment impeaches President Trump for abuse of power relating to Ukraine. Yet, as noted in that Article, President Trump's conduct is "consistent with President Trump's previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections." An understanding of those previous efforts, and the pattern of misconduct they represent, sheds light on the particular conduct set forth in that Article as sufficient grounds for the impeachment of President Trump.

These previous efforts include inviting and welcoming Russian interference in the 2016 United States Presidential election. On July 27, 2016, then-candidate Trump declared at a public rally: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." The referenced emails were stored on a personal server used by then-candidate Trump's political opponent, Hillary Clinton. And Russia was listening. Within approximately five hours of Trump's statement, Russian hackers targeted Clinton's personal office and the referenced emails for the very first time.

In the fall of 2016, as Election Day approached, WikiLeaks began publishing stolen emails that were damaging to the Clinton Campaign. WikiLeaks received these e-mails from the GRU, a Russian military group. Rather than condemn this interference in our elections, then-candidate Trump repeatedly praised and encouraged Wikileaks. For instance, he said on October 10, 2016: "This just came out. WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks!" Two days later, he said: "This WikiLeaks stuff is