Texas’ U.S. senators never wavered as they fought for Trump’s acquittal

Texas’ two U.S. senators voted Wednesday to acquit President Donald Trump, mirroring each other just as they have throughout the trial.

They each voted for acquittal and to deny a Democratic push last week to subpoena more evidence. They each asked questions of the House impeachment managers and president’s lawyers, a total 20 altogether.

They each have been fixtures of Fox News, defending the president. On Jan. 28, they released almost identical statements re-framing the impeachment investigation into Trump’s alleged abuse of power and obstruction of Congress into an attempt by Democrats to overturn the results of the 2016 election and remove Trump from the 2020 ballot.

And they each sat in the same section on the floor of the Senate, Cruz in the back row and Cornyn a few rows forward, even assuming a similar posture — leaning back with a right foot dangled over the left knee.

“This has been a little bit ‘Back to the Future’ for me. This reminds me of the 13 years I spent as a judge ‘cause we had to sit, you know, in our seats for seven or more hours a day and not talk and serve as the judge of the case and the law,” Cornyn said Tuesday.

The trial ended Wednesday afternoon with Trump acquitted of the charges, 52 to 48. Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican and 2012 GOP presidential nominee, joined the Democrats on the charge of abuse of power — the first senator to vote for removal of a president in his own party in American history. The second charge, of obstruction of Congress, was a party line vote, 53 to 47.

The Trial

Before the trial started, Cornyn observed, “The more I look at this the more I think the facts really are not all that disputed, it’s just sort of the inferences or the conclusions that people are drawing from them.”

He was right.

House Democrats impeached Trump for abuse of power. They said he withheld foreign aid to Ukraine that had been appropriated by Congress in order to pressure that country into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden’s family. They also impeached the president, charging obstruction of Congress, for refusing to cooperate with their investigation.

Trump has continued to maintain that his conversation with the Ukrainian president where he asked the leader to “do us a favor though” was a perfect phone call.

The president’s lawyers didn’t argue the facts of the case, instead saying that the president couldn’t properly be removed even if he had done what House Democrats said. They also assailed the fairness of the process and attacked the Bidens.

When both sides finished their arguments, senators could ask questions.

Cornyn asked six, and Cruz asked 15, with the two asking one question together, for a total of 20. Of those 20, nearly all were either challenges to the House managers or questions the president’s lawyers would find easy to answer.

After questions, the Senate considered whether to subpoena more witnesses or documents.

It was unclear for a time whether the Republicans would be able to hold their caucus together and deny any further evidence in the trial, but the measure to call witnesses or documents failed with a 49 to 51 vote. Cruz and Cornyn voted in the majority.

All that was left was closing arguments and the final vote.

The Senior Senator

Cornyn’s arguments for acquittal were mainly about the future.

“Whether you like President Trump or dislike President Trump, this impeachment trial isn’t just about him. It’s about future presidents and whether impeachments will become a normal part of our politics,” he said in a Tuesday call with reporters.

If Trump had been removed from office, he argued, then he would expect every president facing an opposing party majority in the House of Representatives to be impeached going forward.

“The framers of the Constitution granted this awesome power to the United States Congress and placed their confidence in the Senate to use it only when absolutely necessary, when there is no other choice,” Cornyn said in a Wednesday floor speech.

Some Republican senators acknowledged that Trump’s actions under question were “improper,” “inappropriate” or “shameful and wrong,” but Cornyn declined to characterize the president’s actions beyond his vote to acquit.

“I think it would be wrong, just like it would be wrong in a court of law, to acquit someone charged with a crime but then to go on to disparage their activity or character. I just don’t think that’s the job that I’m called upon to do here,” he said.

“I will say that nobody is going to confuse me with Donald Trump or vice versa,” Cornyn started to add on the phone call, but he was cut off by the sound of a country guitar riff that started playing out of nowhere. He didn’t finish his answer.

The Junior Senator

Cruz’s speeches about his decision to acquit, on the other hand, were primarily focused on the past.

“One, they allege that the president wrongfully delayed aid to Ukraine. And two, they allege that the president wrongfully asked for an investigation into a political rival,” he said of the House managers. “Both of those objectives have been done by any measure substantially worse by the preceding administration — by the Obama administration.”

He also attempted to reframe the public conversation about Trump’s conduct into one about the Bidens.

Biden’s son, Hunter, was on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, which critics have charged was a conflict of interest for the family because Joe Biden was involved in diplomacy with Ukraine during the Obama administration.

“The House managers built their case on the proposition that seeking an investigation into Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian natural gas company, and Joe Biden and Hunter Biden — seeking any investigation into whether there was corruption there, was in the words of the House managers, ‘baseless, a sham and utterly without merit,” Cruz said.

“And the White House legal defense team laid out in considerable detail that there was very substantial evidence of corruption,” he said. “Burisma is a company that was built on corruption.”

Politics

Both senators have argued that ultimately the entire impeachment process has been about politics.

“All of this was done on the eve of an election and just days shy of the first primary in Iowa,” Cornyn said of Monday’s caucus. “Well, to say that timing was a coincidence would be laughable.”

Cornyn said he hopes the Senate can move on to other business.

“The American people, especially the Texans I talk to, feel we’ve bogged down in this nonproductive, partisan impeachment and they want to see us go forward and get something done,” he said.

This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 4:55 PM.