GOP, Democrats battle during impeachment hearing — LIVESTREAM
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House marched on Wednesday toward historic nighttime votes to impeach President Donald Trump, split as severely as the nation over the conduct of the 45th American president but all but certain to approve the charges against him and send them to the Senate for trial.
Trump, accused of abusing his presidential power when he asked Ukraine to investigate his political rival ahead of the 2020 election and then obstructing Congress’ investigation, would be just the third American president to be impeached, leaving a lasting stain on his tenure at the White House.
Ahead of the vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi invoked the the Pledge of Allegiance and the Preamble to the Constitution in arguing that the Founders’ vision for a republic was threatened by Trump’s actions.
“Today we are here to defend democracy for the people,” she said to applause from Democrats in the House chamber.
Trump, tweeting from the White House, used all capital letters and exclamation points to register his outrage: “SUCH ATROCIOUS LIES BY THE RADICAL LEFT, DO NOTHING DEMOCRATS. THIS IS AN ASSAULT ON AMERICA, AND AN ASSAULT ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!!!!”
As soon as the session opened, Republicans tried to halt it.
Procedural roadblocks fail
As soon as Wednesday’s session opened, Republicans tried to halt the process. All of their efforts — to adjourn, to condemn, to delay — were soundly turned away through the day.
“So we can stop wasting America’s time on impeachment, I move that the House do now adjourn,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.
He forced a roll call vote — the first of several procedural efforts expected during the day to try to delay the proceedings. It failed on a 188-226 party-line vote.
Then Republicans then tried to force a vote condemning the actions of Democratic committee leaders, based on objections to the way the Democrats conducted hearings leading to Wednesday’s votes. It, too, was defeated.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested that Republicans çould try to undo the vote someday.
“Maybe a future Congress would even expunge this vote,” he told Fox News, deriding the months-long impeachment proceedings as the quickest in history.
Republicans aired Trump-style grievances about what Rep. Debbie Lesko called a “rigged” process and what Alabama Rep. Clay Higgins said was an attempt to undo the will of voters to remove Trump. Some Republicans said Democrats have been trying to impeach Trump ever since the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Said Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, “They want to take away my vote and throw it in the trash. They want to take away my president and delegitimize him so that he cannot be re-elected.”
Democrats say they cannot wait for the next election for the nation to decide whether Trump should remain in office because he has shown a pattern of misconduct, particularly toward Russia, that indicates he will try to corrupt U.S. elections in 2020.
“This is not about making history, this is about holding a lawless president accountable,” said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I.
Democrats drew from history, the Founders and their own experiences, some as minorities and immigrants, seeking to honor their oath of office to uphold the Constitution.
“In America,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., “no one is above the law.”
One Democrat, Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts, read a letter to his young children explaining his vote to impeach. “This is a moment you will read about in your history books,” he told them.
The president, who is heading today to a rally in the election battleground state of Michigan, also lashed out at House Democrats on Tuesday, firing off a letter to Pelosi on White House stationery that accused Democrats of “perversion of justice and abuse of power” for seeking to remove him from office.
Trump was resigned to impeachment by the House, but he chastised Democrats for taking the rare measure.
“One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another president again,” Trump wrote.
Pelosi, in a letter to Democratic colleagues, said House members took the oath of office that “makes us custodians of the Constitution.
“If we do not act, we will be derelict in our duty,” Pelosi wrote.
‘Slapdash’ impeachment case
The House vote for impeachment would send the charges to the Senate, which would weigh the charges in a trial that is likely to come at the first of the year.
“If a trial comes to the United States Senate, then it is my job to take that very solemnly and seriously,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., told the Review-Journal. “I’m going to do my homework and keep an open mind and see what’s presented.”
Meanwhile, Senate leaders battled over the witnesses who would be called during a trial and the length of the process.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the Senate minority leader, asked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to call four witnesses, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton, the former national security adviser.
“Each witness we named was directly involved in the events that led to the charges made by the House,” Schumer said in a letter.
But McConnell appeared to reject Schumer’s request, saying that if the “slapdash” impeachment case in the House is that thin, then “the House should not impeach in the first place.”
So far, Congress remains split along party lines over impeachment.
House Rules Chairman Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said the evidence made it clear that Trump should be impeached because he violated the Constitution by inviting foreign interference in the upcoming campaign “just to win his re-election.”
McGovern said Trump’s actions moved the nation closer to those countries with strong-armed dictators that the president seems to embrace.
But Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the ranking Republican on the Rules Committee, said the rush to impeach the president by Democrats would be remembered as “a sad day” for the House as an institution and the democratic process.
“This is not the result of a fair process,” Cole said. “There is no way this can or should be viewed as legitimate.”
Trump would become the third president to be impeached by the House, following Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. Both were acquitted by the Senate.
Richard Nixon resigned after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment but before a full House vote.
Judiciary Committee report
The House Judiciary Committee found that Trump sought foreign interference in the 2020 election by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to announce investigations into political rival Joe Biden and a debunked theory that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the past presidential election.
A 650-page report released Monday by the committee states that Trump coerced Ukraine for the political investigations while his administration withheld nearly $400 million in military aid.
Democrats also charged Trump with obstruction of Congress for ordering administration officials not to comply with subpoenas to testify before House investigators or produce documents.
In his letter to Pelosi, Trump called the charges against him “a completely disingenuous, meritless and baseless invention of your imagination.”
“It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People,” Trump wrote in the letter.
“While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record,” Trump wrote.
The impeachment debate in the House has solidified along party lines, with Democrats expected to approve legislation to impeach the president over united Republican opposition.
Not one Republican has announced support for the impeachment legislation.
Pelosi said Democratic leaders were not whipping the vote. That would allow several with competitive congressional districts won by Trump in 2016 to break away.
All three Nevada Democrats, Dina Titus, Steven Horsford and Susie Lee, said they would vote for the articles of impeachment.
Review-Journal staff writer Gary Martin and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
