House will draft Trump impeachment articles, Pelosi says
She is to make a public statement on impeachment at 9 a.m.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 12:34:08 GMT
link -- with images
WASHINGTON — House Democrats moved aggressively to draw up formal articles of impeachment against President Trump on Thursday, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying he “leaves us no choice” but to act swiftly.
Democrats say it is their duty, in the aftermath of the Ukraine probe, while Republicans say it will drive Ms. Pelosi’s majority from office.
Mr. Trump has said he did nothing wrong. He tweeted that the Democrats “have gone crazy.”
Drafting articles of impeachment is a milestone moment, only the fourth time in U.S. history Congress has tried to remove a president, and it intensifies the rigid and polarizing partisanship of the Trump era that is consuming Washington and dividing the nation.
Democrats are already beginning to prepare the formal charges.
Mr. Trump tweeted that if Democrats “are going to impeach me, do it now, fast.” He said he wants to move on to a “fair trial” in the Senate.
Asked if he was concerned that impeachment would tarnish his legacy, Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House, “No, not at all, not at all. It’s a hoax, it’s a big fat hoax.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) criticized Democrats for focusing on impeachment over other issues. “It’s all impeachment, all the time,” he said.
“Working Americans and their families are not well-served by Democrats’ political performance art. What they really need, what they really need, are results,” Mr. McConnell said in response to Ms. Pelosi’s announcement. “The only path to results is bipartisan legislation.”
Approval of articles of impeachment is considered likely in the Democratic-majority House. Conviction in a following trial in the Republican-dominated Senate seems very unlikely.
Once reluctant to pursue impeachment, warning it was too divisive for the country and needed to be bipartisan, Ms. Pelosi is now leading Congress just ahead of the election year.
Her generally calm poise showed cracks as she delivered a sharp response to a question about the President.
At a news conference two hours after her impeachment announcement, James Rosen, a reporter for Sinclair Broadcast Group, asked, “Do you hate the President, Madam Speaker?”
Ms. Pelosi stopped near the edge of the podium, jabbed a finger, and said tersely: “I don’t hate anybody.”
“This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that led to the President’s violation of the oath of office. And as a Catholic I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me,” she said.
She returned to the podium and finished by pointing a thumb toward herself.
“Don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.”
Republicans support Mr. Trump, unswayed by allegations that his actions amount to wrongdoing, let alone impeachable offenses.
Ms. Pelosi emphasized the Russia connection, from special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into 2016 election interference to the President’s phone call this summer with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The number of articles and the allegations Democrats will include will be both a legal and political exercise for the House committee chairmen, who will be meeting privately. They must balance electoral dynamics while striving to hit the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Pulling from the House’s 300-page investigation of the Ukraine matter, Democrats are focusing on at least three areas — abuse of power, bribery, and obstruction — that could result in two to five articles, they say.
They argue that Mr. Trump abused the power of his office by putting personal political gain over national security interests; engaging in bribery by holding out $400 million in military aid that Congress had approved for Ukraine, and then obstructing Congress by stonewalling the investigation.
But more centrist and moderate Democrats, those lawmakers who are most at risk of political fallout from the impeachment proceedings, prefer to stick with the Ukraine matter as a simpler narrative that Americans can more easily understand.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, one of two Democrats to vote against formalizing the impeachment inquiry, said he plans to vote against all the articles of impeachment “unless there’s something that I haven’t seen, haven’t heard before.”
He warned Democrats to “be careful what you wish for” and he added that impeachment “is tearing the nation apart. ... And I want to bring people together.”
Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson is the other Democrat who opposed the inquiry.
No U.S. president has ever been removed from office through impeachment. Republican Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 after the House began the impeachment process in the Watergate corruption scandal.
House members are preparing to vote on the articles of impeachment in the Judiciary Committee, possibly as soon as next week.