My fellow Americans:
Today I am compelled to declare my candidacy for President of the United States because the very soul of our nation, the existence of our Democracy, the continued integrity of the US Constitution, and the Rule of Law are at stake. I am running for President to protect all of these fundamental pillars of this great country , which are under daily attack, and will be permanently destroyed if Donald Trump is not defeated and sent back to Trump Tower (pause)—New York.
Just yesterday, Trump showed his abject contempt for the American people, the Congress and the Rule of Law by declaring, like a tinpot dictator, that he was ordering all Administration employees to ignore legal subpoenas to testify in an official, legal Congressional proceeding. In one enormous corrupt act, Trump has committed the single biggest act of Obstruction of Justice in the history of the American Presidency—an action that, by itself, was the substance of the third article of Impeachment against Richard Nixon.
Systematically, Donald Trump has, over his totally lawless and corrupt 825 days in office, has undermined everything this country stands for; everything tens of thousands of courageous American men and women and our Allies around the globe have fought and died for in Wars stretching back over a century; everything my son Beau battled for until he breathed his last breath. We will not stay silent and let this Democracy be dumped by a fundamentally treacherous man who is an autocrat and a tool of oligarchs to the very marrow of his bone.
Good, selfless public servants like the Firefighters across Pennsylvania, the police officers in New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Oshkosh, and the patriotic men and women of the FBI who protect us from terrorist attacks every single day, are having their life’s work mocked by a man who puts his own self-interest—and the interests of his superrich, corrupt cronies in this country, Russia and Saudi Arabia, over this nation’s interests.
I served on the Senate Judiciary Committee for 14 years, chairing the Committee for eight of those years. If that public service taught me anything—if my tenure as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee taught me anything, if my 36 years in the US Senate and my 8 years as Vice-President taught me anything, it is that this nation is built on the blood and the sacrifice of our fathers, sons, mothers and sisters; it’s built on a firm foundation of fairness, equality and the Rule of Law. Without respect for the law and for each other as human beings, we invite self-dealing, corrupt conduct , meanness and lawlessness– precisely the hallmarks of the Trump Administration—and Donald Trump.
But you don’t have to just take my word for it, when you have the most chilling case of continuing corruption, cover-up and obstruction of justice laid out by a rock-solid Republican, a Purple Heart Recipient and War Hero like Bob Mueller in 448 pages of riveting evidence. Mueller’s textbook case of high crimes and misdemeanors of a sitting President, documents the most dangerous threat our Democracy has ever seen both from within—right out of the Oval Office—and from abroad, in the form of cyberwarfare conducted against our nation and our system of free elections by a hostile nation—a fact confirmed by our 17 Intelligence Agencies, and Special Prosecutor Mueller, but denied over and over again by Mr. Trump, because the truth undermines his legitimacy to hold the high office he occupies.
Putting aside the national security threat detailed in Volume I of the Mueller Report—which is a clear abrogation of Mr.Trump’s duties as Commander in Chief to protect this nation from a foreign enemy—Volume II’s smoking gun evidence of blatant Obstruction of Justice by the President of the United States—over and over again, across 180 pages of detailed documentation—disqualifies Donald Trump from continuing to serve in this nation’s highest office. Why would any American who cares about the future of this Democracy and its leadership position in the world, want to support someone who, literally every day, commits unlawful acts that merit his removal from office?
His repeated commission of “Corrupt Acts”, as the Special Prosecutor meticulously spells out–and his own Administration members, including his former White House Counsel, testify to–Trump’s congenital lying, bullying his subordinates to lie, witness tampering, dangling pardons, altering testimony, and his repeated failure to uphold his sacred oath of office to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed ,” prove his unfitness to hold the office of President of the United States. The mere thought of, God forbid, four more years of Donald Trump continuing to use the vast powers of this government for his own corrupt purposes, and to pursue his own lawless agenda, is enough to make any concerned citizen stand up and work hard to rebuild this country back to when it benefitted the many, instead of the wealthy, well-connected few.
The culture of corruption permeating this White House—with at least a half-dozen Cabinet members having resigned in disgrace and dozens more Trump Appointees—like the 6 Interior Department Employees this week—and their new Secretary– under the stench of ethics investigations. That pernicious cloud of corruption is even thicker and more ominous with 12 separate, serious criminal investigations swirling around this President himself, his businesses and his questionable associates. Such a stinking swamp of corruption stands in stark contrast to the eight years of impeccable integrity of the Obama/Biden Administration, of which I was a proud partner.
I’m running for President to clean up this monstrous mess created by Trump’s terrible 825-day temper tantrum, to save our democracy from a corrupt, spoiled autocrat, to protect our national security from hostile actors on the world stage, and to reinforce, as the Mueller Report clearly stated that “no person in this country is so high that he is above the law.” Our challenge is no less than to save this great nation.
Join me in bringing this country back to its fundamental promises of hope, fairness and equality for all, and its bedrock principles of democracy and the Rule of Law. This is not a campaign, it is a callingto restore human decency, the dignity of work, democracy and fairness to all law-abiding citizens in this country. I’m calling on you to help save our Democracy, our Constitution and our common decency.