WASHINGTON (AP/WBTW) — Democrats have announced two articles of impeachment charging President Donald Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The charges announced Tuesday stem from Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to announce investigations of his political rivals as he withheld aid to the country.
House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff said Democrats had “no choice” but to unveil articles of impeachment against President Trump.
Schiff said not impeaching President Trump would make us “complicit in the President’s abuse of his high office.”
“We stand here today because the President’s continuing abuse of his power has left us no choice. To do nothing would make ourselves complicit in the President’s abuse of his high office, the public trust and our national security,” he said.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump tweeted that he did “NOTHING” wrong and that impeaching a president with a record like his would be “sheer Political Madness!” The case against Trump was laid out at a daylong House Judiciary Committee hearing on Monday.
Debate on them will begin in the Judiciary Committee later this week.
“On an issue like this, we don’t count the votes. People will just make their voices known on it,” Pelosi said at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council. “I haven’t counted votes, nor will I.”
The outcome, though, appears increasingly set as the House prepares to vote, as it has only three times in history against a U.S. president.
“A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to,” Engel said.
Some liberal lawmakers wanted more expansive charges encompassing the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Centrist Democrats preferred to keep the impeachment articles more focused on Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., was blunt as he opened Monday’s hearing, saying, “President Trump put himself before country.”
Trump’s conduct, Nadler said at the end of the daylong hearing, “is clearly impeachable.”
Collins said Democrats are racing to jam impeachment through on a “clock and a calendar” ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
“They can’t get over the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and they don’t have a candidate that can beat him,” Collins said.
In one testy exchange, Republican attorney Stephen Castor dismissed the transcript of Trump’s crucial call with Ukraine as “eight ambiguous lines” that did not amount to the president seeking a personal political favor.
Democrats argued vigorously that Trump’s meaning could not have been clearer in seeking political dirt on Biden, his possible opponent in the 2020 election.
Republicans also revived criticism of Schiff’s decision to expose phone records of members of Congress. The inquiry showed that Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was in frequent contact with California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Collins accused Democrats of engaging in a “smear” campaign against lawmakers by disclosing phone records. But Goldman said investigators did not subpoena lawmaker accounts but simply matched them up once they appeared in the records.
The Republicans tried numerous times to halt or slow the proceedings, and the hearing was briefly interrupted early on by a protester shouting, “We voted for Donald Trump!” The protester was escorted from the House hearing room by Capitol Police.
The White House is refusing to participate in the impeachment process, and Trump appears to be focused elsewhere — on Giuliani’s own probe and the president’s upcoming campaign rallies.
Trump and and his allies acknowledge he likely will be impeached in the Democratic-controlled House, but they also expect acquittal next year in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority.