Democrats in the US House of Representatives are poised to unveil two articles of impeachment against US President Donald Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of the US Congress — with an announcement expected late yesterday.
Democratic leaders have said that Trump put US elections and national security at risk when he asked Ukraine to investigate his rivals, including former US vice president Joe Biden.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday declined to discuss the articles or the coming announcement. Details were shared by multiple people familiar with the discussions, but not authorized to discuss them, and granted anonymity.
Asked if she has enough votes to impeach Trump, Pelosi said that she would let House lawmakers vote their conscience.
“On an issue like this, we don’t count the votes. People will just make their voices known on it,” Pelosi said. “I haven’t counted votes, nor will I.”
However, the outcome appears increasingly set as the House prepares to vote, as it has only three times in history against a US president.
Trump spent part of the day tweeting against the impeachment proceedings, but did not comment late on Monday. The president and his allies have railed against the “absurd” proceedings.
Pelosi convened a meeting of the impeachment committee chairmen at her office in the Capitol late on Monday following an acrimonious, nearly 10-hour hearing of the House Committee on the Judiciary, which could vote as soon as this week.
“I think there’s a lot of agreement,” US Representative Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, told reporters as he exited Pelosi’s office. “A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to.”
At the Judiciary hearing, Democrats said that Trump’s push to have Ukraine investigate Biden while withholding US military aid ran counter to US policy and benefited Russia, as well as himself.
“President Trump’s persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security,” said Dan Goldman, the director of investigations at the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, presenting the findings of the panel’s 300-page report of the inquiry.
Republicans rejected not just Goldman’s conclusion of the Ukraine matter, they also questioned his very appearance before the judiciary panel.
In a series of heated exchanges, they said that Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the intelligence committee, should appear rather than sending his lawyer.
From the White House, Trump tweeted repeatedly, assailing the “Witch Hunt!” and “Do Nothing Democrats.”
In drafting the articles of impeachment, Pelosi is facing a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Some liberal lawmakers wanted more expansive charges encompassing the findings from former US 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.
Representative Jerrold Nadler was blunt as he opened Monday’s hearing, saying: “President Trump put himself before country.”
Trump’s conduct “is clearly impeachable,” Nadler said at the end of the day-long hearing.
Representative Doug Collins, the top Republican on the committee, said that Democrats are racing to jam impeachment through on a “clock and a calendar” ahead of next year’s US presidential election.
The White House is refusing to participate in the impeachment process. Trump and his allies have acknowledged that he would likely be impeached in the Democratic-controlled House, but they also expect acquittal next year in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority.
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