The U.S. House judiciary committee opened its first impeachment hearing Wednesday, moving swiftly to weigh findings by fellow lawmakers that President Donald Trump misused the power of his office for personal political gain and then obstructed Congress’s investigation.
The judiciary committee is hearing from legal experts to determine whether Trump’s actions with Ukraine policy, including a July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, rose to the constitutional level of “high crimes and misdemeanours” warranting impeachment and possible removal from office.
A 300-page report compiled by Democrats on the House intelligence committee laid out evidence of Trump’s efforts to seek foreign intervention in the U.S. election.
The session Wednesday with legal scholars is delving into possible impeachable offences, but the panel, led by chairman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from New York, quickly revealed the sometimes boisterous, sharply partisan divisions on the committee.
“President Trump welcomed foreign interference in the 2016 election,” said Nadler in his opening statement.
“He demanded it for the 2020 election. In both cases, he got caught. And in both cases, he did everything in his power to prevent the American people from learning the truth about his conduct.”
In a 53-page opening statement obtained by the AP, Republican witness Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, will say the Democrats are bringing a “slipshod impeachment” case against the president based on second-hand information. Still, Turley doesn’t excuse the president’s behaviour.
If Congress fails to impeach here, then the impeachment process has lost all meaning.
– Michael Gerhardt, constitutional law witness
“It is not wrong because President Trump is right,” according to Turley. He calls Trump’s call with Ukraine “anything but ‘perfect,” as the president claims. “A case for impeachment could be made, but it cannot be made on this record.”
The remaining three witnesses, all called by Democrats, are expected to argue for impeachment.
Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argues, “If Congress fails to impeach here, then the impeachment process has lost all meaning.”
The White House declined an invitation to participate in Wednesday’s session.
“The president’s conduct described by the testimony embodies the [constitution’s] framers’ concern that a sitting president would corruptly abuse the powers of office to distort the outcome of a presidential election in his favour,” Harvard University law professor Noah Feldman said in his prepared testimony.
Pamela Karlan of Stanford University law school said Trump abused his power by demanding foreign involvement in a U.S. election.
“What has happened in the case today is something I do not think we have ever seen before: a president who has doubled down on violating his oath to faithfully execute the laws and to protect and defend the Constitution,” said Karlan.
Democrats could begin drafting articles of impeachment against the president in a matter of days, with a judiciary committee vote next week. The full House could vote by Christmas. Then the matter would move to the Senate for a trial in 2020.
“If you want to know what’s really driving this — it’s called the clock and the calendar,” said ranking Republican committee member Doug Collins, in an opening statement dismissive of the hearing.
Aid withheld for several weeks
Possible grounds for impeachment are focused on whether Trump abused his office as he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open investigations into Trump’s political rivals, as has been alleged Trump did. At the time, Trump was withholding $400 million US in military aid, jeopardizing key support as Ukraine faces an aggressive Russia at its border.
The report did not render a judgment on whether Trump’s actions stemming from a July 25 phone call with Zelensky rose to the constitutional level of “high crimes and misdemeanours” warranting impeachment. That is for the full House to decide. But its findings involving Trump’s efforts to seek foreign intervention in the American election process provide the basis for a House vote on impeachment and a Senate trial carrying the penalty of removal from office.
“The evidence that we have found is really quite overwhelming that the president used the power of his office to secure political favours and abuse the trust American people put in him and jeopardize our security,” intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, told The Associated Press.
Trump, who’s in London this week for the NATO meeting with world leaders, called the impeachment effort by Democrats “unpatriotic.”
The “Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report” provides a detailed, stunning, account of a shadow diplomacy run by Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, resulting in layers of allegations that can be distilled into specific acts, like bribery or obstruction, and the more amorphous allegation that Trump abused his power by putting his interests above the nation.
Giuliani call ‘no big deal’: Trump
Based on two months of investigation sparked by a still-anonymous government whistleblower’s complaint, the report relies heavily on testimony from current and former U.S. officials who defied White House orders not to appear.
The inquiry found Trump “solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his re-election,” Schiff wrote in the report’s preface.
In doing so, the president “sought to undermine the integrity of the U.S. presidential election process, and endangered U.S. national security,” the report said.
Along with revelations from earlier testimony, the report included previously unreleased cellphone records raising fresh questions about Giuliani’s interactions with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget as well as the top Republican on the intelligence panel, Devin Nunes of California. Nunes declined to comment.
Trump said Wednesday in London at the NATO summit that he didn’t know why Giuliani was speaking with the OMB.
Trump encouraged reporters to ask Giuliani about the calls, but claimed they are “no big deal.”
Republicans defended the president in a 123-page rebuttal claiming Trump never intended to pressure Ukraine when he asked for a “favour” — investigations of Joe Biden, whose son served on a Ukraine energy board, and a probe of a discredited theory involving the cyberintrusions of the Democratic National Committee. They say the military aid the White House was withholding was not being used as leverage and that the aid was ultimately released.
The Democrats have countered that the aid was only released when it was apparent that Congress would investigate.
