Tag: Trump impeachment

Hoyer predicts impeachment vote next week

The Hill logoHouse Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that Democrats will likely impeach President Trump before Christmas, setting the stage for floor votes in the lower chamber next week.

Behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Democrats earlier Tuesday introduced two articles of impeachment related to Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukrainian leaders for political favors. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said he’ll move those articles through the panel this week — likely on Thursday — and Hoyer predicted the full House will vote on them before the winter holidays.

“Assuming that they … report out articles, my presumption is that we will be considering them before we leave,” Hoyer told reporters in the Capitol.

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Rep. Gohmert Rebuked For Smear Of Judiciary Committee Counsel

Republican lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee continually interrupted Monday’s impeachment hearing with yelling and accusations, including one outburst from Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) that earned him a reprimand from the committee chair.

Gohmert interrupted the hearing to accuse Barry Berke, Democrats’ counsel on the House Judiciary Committee, of essentially buying his position.

“How much money do you have to give to be able to do that?” Gohmert sarcastically asked, referring to Berke’s ability to ask questions at Monday’s hearing.

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Controversy on phone records intensifies amid impeachment

The Hill logoHouse Republicans are escalating their feud with Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, accusing the California Democrat of carrying out a “smear campaign” against his GOP counterpart, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), by publishing his phone records in the panel’s sweeping impeachment report.

Collecting the phone data has been strongly defended by Democrats while Republicans have seized on the new controversy as unfair and a bad precedent.

President Trump’s Republican allies on Capitol Hill have sought to shine the spotlight back on Schiff as Democrats build their case against the president and continue marching toward an impeachment vote as soon as next week.

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The latest Trump defense: If it swims and quacks like a duck, it’s a piano

Washington Post logoWalk to the back of the impeachment hearing room, into the Republican cloakroom where lawmakers huddle during proceedings, and you’ll find a closed double door with a sign taped to it announcing:

“This is not a door. Thank you.”

Pay no attention to the latch, the push bar, the light visible through the crack, the wood panels: This is not a door.

It’s the perfect distillation of the defense of President Trump in these final days of the House impeachment proceedings. This is not a quid pro quo. This is not an abuse of power. This is not an obstruction of justice. It doesn’t matter if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck. This is not a duck. Thank you.

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Nadler: Trump showed ‘pattern’ that poses ‘danger’ to elections

The House Judiciary chairman says Trump acted against his country’s interests.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Sunday that President Donald Trump has shown “a pattern” of seeking foreign interference in U.S. elections but stopped short of saying that obstruction charges would be included in articles of impeachment.

“The central allegation is that the president put himself above his country several times, that he sought foreign interference in our elections several times, both for 2016 and 2020,” Nadler said on “State of the Union“ on CNN. “All this presents a pattern that poses a real and present danger to the integrity of the next election.”

Pressed by host Dana Bash on whether charges related to 2016 would be included in articles of impeachment, Nadler demurred.

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More Than 500 Legal Scholars Call For Trump’s Impeachment

At a public House Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week, three accomplished legal scholars offered extensive testimony explaining why they believe President Donald Trump should be impeached: Prof. Pamela Karlan of Stanford University, Prof. Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School and Prof. Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina Law School. But the three of them are by no means the only legal scholars calling for Trump’s impeachment, and at least 520 legal scholars — as of Friday afternoon — had signed a pro-impeachment open letter.

The letter goes into detail on specific testimony from the House Intelligence Committee’s recent impeachment hearings — and that testimony, the legal scholars assert, makes a solid case for impeaching Trump.

“William B. Taylor, who leads the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, testified that President Trump directed the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine in its struggle against Russia — aid that Congress determined to be in the U.S. national security interest — until Ukraine announced investigations that would aid the president’s re-election campaign,” the letter states. “Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified that the president made a White House visit for the Ukrainian president conditional on public announcement of those investigations.”

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Senate Republicans puncture House GOP dreams for impeachment trial

GOP leaders have no interest in turning the Senate into a circus with the hard-line demands of Trump’s House allies.

On Wednesday, a conservative backbencher in the House issued an explosive request to Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham: Subpoena the phone records of House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.

On Thursday, Graham had a succinct response: “We’re not going to do that.”

The demand from Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) reflects House Republicans’ eagerness to see Democrats squirm once impeachment moves to the GOP-controlled Senate and out of the “sham” process they’ve derided in the House.

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White House adopts confident tone after Pelosi signals go on impeachment

The Hill logoThe White House on Thursday appeared self-assured after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made clear a vote to impeach President Trump was all but inevitable in the House, with administration officials signaling they relish the looming fight in a Senate trial. 

The president and his allies have spent weeks hammering the same narrative about the House impeachment inquiry, dismissing it as a partisan “sham” that failed to produce evidence of wrongdoing.

The White House has refused to turn over documents, blocked witnesses and declined offers to participate. House Democrats have threatened to draft articles of impeachment accusing Trump of obstruction for defying congressional subpoenas.

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Democrats consider bribery, obstruction for impeachment articles against Trump

Washington Post logoHouse Democrats are considering articles of impeachment against President Trump that include obstruction and bribery but are unlikely to pursue a treason charge as they weigh how to illustrate that the president’s activities involving Ukraine were part of what they see as a pattern of misconduct, according to congressional aides.

Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee and Intelligence Committee, which this week released a report of their findings from a two-month-long impeachment investigation, have said that they believe Trump’s actions vis-a-vis Ukraine meet the definition of bribery, one of the crimes the Constitution identifies specifically as an impeachable offense.

Central to the Intelligence Committee’s findings is that Trump compromised U.S. national security when he held back diplomatic engagement and congressionally approved military aid from Kyiv, until Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky committed to publicly announce he was launching investigations into a debunked conspiracy theory surrounding a hacked Democratic National Committee server and of the son of former vice president Joe Biden, who is running to replace Trump in 2020.

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House sets up Monday hearing to hear evidence on Trump impeachment

The Hill logoThe  House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Monday morning to receive presentations of evidence from investigators as it moves forward with crafting articles of impeachment against President Trump.

The Thursday announcement came hours after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) formally announced that the House is drafting articles of impeachment.

It also comes the day after the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing with constitutional experts to discuss whether Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political opponents amounted to impeachable offenses.