White House Counsel Cipollone: ‘They’re Not Here to Steal One Election; They’re Here to Steal Two Elections’

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone accused House Democrats of attempting to steal the 2016 presidential election and interfere with the 2020 election in his remarks at the start of President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate on Tuesday.

Cipolloine said: It’s too much to listen to, almost — the hypocrisy of the whole thing. And what are the stakes — what are the stakes?  There’s an election in almost nine months. Months from now, there’s going to be an election. Senators in this body, the last time, had very wise words. They echoed the words of our Founders: “A partisan impeachment is like stealing an election.” And that’s exactly what we have — take about the Framers’ worst nightmare! It’s a partisan impeachment that they delivered to your doorstep. In an election year! Some of you are upset because you should be in Iowa right now. But instead we’re here, and they’re not ready to go. And it’s outrageous, it’s outrageous. And the American people won’t stand for it, I’ll tell you that right now. They’re not here to steal one election; they’re here to steal two elections. It’s buried in the small print of their ridiculous articles of impeachment. They want to remove President Trump from the ballot! They won’t tell you that. They don’t have the guts to say it directly, but that’s exactly what they’re here to do. They’re asking the Senate to attack one of the most sacred rights we have as Americans: the right to choose our president.

Cipllone’s remarks echoed the case made by the White House in Monday’s trial memorandum:

[Democrats] desperately need an illegitimate boost for their candidate in the 2020 election, whoever that may be. Put simply, Democrats have no response to the President’s record of achievement in restoring growth and prosperity to the American economy, rebuilding America’s military, and confronting America’s adversaries abroad. They have no policies and no ideas to compete against that. Instead, they are held hostage by a radical left wing that has foisted on the party a radical agenda of socialism at home and appeasement abroad that Democrat leaders know the American people will never accept. For Democrats, President Trump’s record of success made impeachment an electoral imperative.

House lead impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) attempted to have Cipollone removed from the president’s legal team prior to the opening of the trial, claiming that he was a “material fact witness” because he had knowledge of the president’s attempt to reject subpoenas from the House impeachment inquiry.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.