The U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved two articles of impeachment against U.S. President Donald Trump Friday, clearing the way for a vote in the full House that could come as early as next week.Committee members voted along party lines after it recessed late Thursday after 14 hours of debate. The two articles, accusing Trump of abuse of power and obstructing the congressional investigation, were each approved on a vote of 23 to 17.The Democratic-controlled committee rebuffed Republican attempts Thursday to weaken or throw out the allegations and instead will vote on sending them to the full House of Representatives for a vote, likely to be held next week.
Democratic lawmakers, after hours of at-times rancorous partisan claims and counterclaims with Republicans, rejected the Republican effort to eliminate the impeachment allegation that Trump abused the presidency by pushing Ukraine to investigate one of his chief 2020 Democratic election rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden.
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., speaks to reporters at the end of a House Judiciary Committee markup of the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill, Dec. 12, 2019, in Washington.Flawed case?
Republicans contended that the case against Trump is flawed, that the committee was rushing to judgment without hearing more witnesses. They noted that Trump in September released the $391 million in military aid to Ukraine that Trump had temporarily blocked without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy launching the politically tinged Biden investigation that the U.S. leader wanted.
Trump asked Zelenskiy in a late July phone call to “do us a favor” by opening the investigation of Biden, his son Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company and a debunked theory that Ukraine worked to undermine Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, a staunch Trump ally, contended that the “us” in Trump’s request was a reference to the United States, not to a Trump request to benefit himself politically.But Democratic Congressman David Cicilline, supporting Trump’s impeachment, said that Trump in his call with Zelenskiy “never once uttered the word corruption” to investigate corruption generally in Ukraine. “It was about a smear on Vice President Biden,” Cicilline argued.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., joined from left by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal,…Full House vote
If the full House, as expected, votes to impeach Trump, he would become only the third American leader to be impeached in the country’s 243-year history, setting the stage for a trial in the Republican-majority Senate in January, where his conviction and removal from office remains unlikely.Trump denies wrongdoing and has ridiculed the impeachment effort. He has repeatedly referred to his discussions with Zelenskiy as “perfect,” and pointed to statements by Zelenskiy and other Ukrainian officials that they did not feel pressured by Trump to open the investigations in order to get the military assistance it wanted to help fight pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler said that by withholding the military assistance, Trump “weakens an ally who advances American security interests by fighting an American adversary” and “weakens America. And when the president demands that a foreign government investigate his domestic political rivals, he corrupts our elections.”
The top Republican on the committee, Congressman Doug Collins, said Democrats have wanted to impeach Trump since the moment he took office in 2017, and that the facts of the case do not match the allegations they have presented.”The president did not commit any crimes,” he said. “The president had a longstanding skepticism of foreign aid and a deeply held belief that Ukraine was corrupt, and not a good destination for American taxpayer dollars.”Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined from left by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, fields questions from reporters about an impeachment trial in the Senate.Senate trial
The final step in the process would be a trial in the Senate, which Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday would occur next month.McConnell met behind closed doors Thursday with White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and said later in an interview with Fox News he would be in “total coordination” with White House lawyers on whether to call witnesses.McConnell reiterated he hoped the trial would be a “shorter process rather than a lengthy process” with multiple witnessess testifying, an approach preferred by Trump.”You can certainly make the case for making it shorter rather than longer since it’s such a weak case,” McConnell said.A conviction in the Senate would lead to Trump’s removal from office, but that is highly unlikely because at least 20 Republicans would have to side with Democrats to meet the required threshold of 67 of the chamber’s 100 members.Two other U.S. presidents – Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago – were impeached, but both were acquitted in the Senate and remained in office.
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