In 300 pages, House lays out evidence for Trump impeachment
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a sweeping impeachment report, the House on Tuesday outlined evidence of “significant misconduct” by President Donald Trump toward Ukraine, findings that will now underscore a debate over whether the 45th president should be removed from office.
The
300-page report from Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee
makes the case that Trump misused the power of his office for personal
political gain and, in the course of their investigation, obstructed
Congress by stonewalling the proceedings like no other president in
history.
The report does not render a judgment on whether Trump’s actions
stemming from a July 25 phone call with Ukraine rise to the level of
“high crimes and misdemeanors” warranting impeachment. That is for
Congress to decide. Debate will begin Wednesday at a landmark hearing of
the House Judiciary Committee.
“We have a very difficult
decision ahead of us to make,” said Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in
releasing the findings. “This kind of conduct by a president of the
United States, putting his own personal political interest above the
interest of the American people, is exactly why they prescribed a remedy
as extraordinary as the remedy of impeachment.”
In a statement,
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said, “Chairman Schiff and
the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by
President Trump.” She said the report “reads like the ramblings of a
basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of
nothing.”
The president, at a NATO meeting in London, called the
impeachment effort by rival Democrats “unpatriotic,” and said he
wouldn’t be watching Wednesday’s hearing.
The “Trump-Ukraine
Impeachment Inquiry Report” provides a detailed, stunning, account of a
shadow diplomacy run by Trump attorney 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.
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 that Trump “solicited the interference of a foreign government,
Ukraine, to benefit his reelection,” 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.
The House intelligence panel voted later Tuesday, in a party-line tally, to send the document to the Judiciary Committee.
Republicans defended the president in their own 123-page rebuttal claiming Trump never intended to pressure Ukraine when he asked for a “favor” — investigations of Democrats and Joe Biden. They say the military aid the White House was withholding
was not being used as leverage, as Democrats claim — and besides, the
$400 million was ultimately released, although only after a
congressional outcry. Democrats, they argue, just want to undo the 2016
election.
For Republicans falling in line behind Trump, the
inquiry is simply a “hoax.” Trump criticized the House for pushing
forward with the proceedings while he was overseas, a breach of
political decorum that traditionally leaves partisan differences at the
water’s edge.
“They are trying to impeach President Trump because
some unelected bureaucrats chafed at an elected President’s ‘outside
the beltway’ approach to diplomacy,” according to Republican Reps. Devin
Nunes of California, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Michael McCaul of Texas.
The
report will lay the foundation for the Judiciary Committee to assess
potential articles of impeachment, presenting a history-making test of
political judgment with a case that is dividing Congress and the
country.
In prefacing it, Schiff drew deeply from history, citing
George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and other Founding Fathers, to
explain grounds for impeachment “as a remedy of last resort.”
Democrats
once hoped to sway Republicans to consider Trump’s removal, but they
are now facing a ever-hardening partisan split over the swift-moving proceedings on impeaching the president.
House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi faces a critical moment of her leadership as she
steers the process ahead after initially resisting the impeachment
inquiry, warning it was too divisive for the country and required
bipartisan support.
Possible grounds for impeachment are focused on whether Trump abused his office as he pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
to open investigations into Trump’s political rivals. At the time,
Trump was withholding $400 million in military aid, jeopardizing key
support as Ukraine faces an aggressive Russia at its border.
The
report also accuses Trump of becoming the “first and only” president in
U.S. history to “openly and indiscriminately” defy House’s
constitutional authority to conduct the impeachment proceedings by
instructing officials not to comply with subpoenas for documents and
testimony.
For Democrats marching into what is now a largely
partisan process, the political challenge if they proceed is to craft
the impeachment articles in a way that will draw the most support from
their ranks and not expose Pelosi’s majority to messy divisions,
especially as Republicans stand lockstep with the president.
While
liberal Democrats are pushing the party to go further and incorporate
the findings from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on
Russian interference in the 2016 election and other actions by Trump,
more centrist and moderate Democrats prefer to stick with the Ukraine
matter as a simpler narrative that Americans understand.
Trump’s
campaign is spending robustly to run ads against front-line freshmen
lawmakers, many from districts Trump won in 2016 but that flipped in
2018 to give Democrats the House majority. Pelosi will be protective of
these lawmakers as the proceedings unfold.
Hearing from legal
experts at Wednesday’s session, Democrats could begin drafting articles
of impeachment against the president in a matter of days. The Judiciary
Committee could vote next week and the full House Could vote by
Christmas. Then it moves to the Senate for a trial in 2020.
The
White House declined an invitation to participate Wednesday, with
counsel Pat Cipollone denouncing the proceedings as a “baseless and
highly partisan inquiry.”
Trump had previously suggested he might
be willing to offer written testimony under certain conditions, though
aides suggested they did not anticipate Democrats would ever agree to
them.
Cipollone, who will brief Senate Republicans on Wednesday,
left open the question of whether White House officials would
participate in additional House hearings.
Republicans on the
committee, led by Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, plan to use procedural
moves to stall the process and portray the inquiry as unfair to the
president.
House rules provide the president and his attorneys
the right to cross-examine witnesses and review evidence before the
committee, but little ability to bring forward witnesses of their own.
Even
as the proceedings push forward, Schiff said his probe will continue.
The report raised fresh questions, based on previously unreleased cell
phone records, about Nunes’ interactions with Giuliani and the White
House.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Colleen Long, Eric Tucker and Jill Colvin contributed to this report.