Democrats focus on abuse of power, obstruction in impeachment

Democrats focused on charges that President Donald Trump abused his office and obstructed Congress as they delivered their closing arguments Monday for what would be a historic House vote to impeach the president.

At a Judiciary Committee hearing that is a prelude to the expected drafting of articles of impeachment later this week, the chief counsels for Republicans and Democrats presented dueling interpretations of the set of facts that have been laid out over weeks of public testimony.

“President Trump’s actions are impeachable offenses. They threaten our rule of law. They threaten our institutions. And as James Madison warned us, they threaten our republic,” Barry Berke, counsel for the Judiciary Committee Democrats, said in his presentation to the committee.

The panel’s Republican counsel, Steve Castor, accused Democrats of pursuing an “artificial and arbitrary political deadline” to overturn the 2016 election and impeach Trump’s before the Christmas holiday.

“The purpose of this hearing as we understand it is to discuss whether President Donald J. Trump’s conduct fits the definition of a high crimes and misdemeanors,” Castor said. “It does not.”

Officials familiar with the Judiciary Committee’s plans say it will start to publicly debate and compose final versions of articles of impeachment as soon as Thursday, though it could spill into another day. With a vote of the full House the following week, which is expected to cleave along party lines, Trump would be only the third U.S. president to be impeached. He is all but certain to be acquitted in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority.

“The evidence is overwhelming that the president abused his power” by trying to get Ukraine to help his prospects for re-election by announcing an investigation into a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, Berke said.

Berke and Daniel Goldman, who is counsel for Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, walked through the evidence and testimony collected during the impeachment inquiry that the majority Democrats likely will use as a foundation for articles of impeachment.

Goldman detail what he called four “critical” findings from the investigation:

• Trump used the power of his office to pressure and induce the newly-elected president of Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential election for Trump’s personal and political benefit;
• In order to increase the pressure on Ukraine to announce the politically-motivated investigations that the president wanted, he withheld a coveted Oval Office meeting and $391 million of essential military assistance from Ukraine;
• Trump’s conduct undermined the U.S. election process and poses an imminent threat to our national security;
• Faced with the revelation of his pressure campaign against Ukraine, Trump directed an unprecedented effort to obstruct Congress’ impeachment inquiry into his conduct.

Castor, the Republican counsel, accused Democrats of sustaining a months-long quest to find an issue on which to impeach Trump. After Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation didn’t deliver the results they wanted, Democrats now are focusing on Trump’s interactions with Ukraine, particularly his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“The record in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry does not show that President Trump abused the power of Congress or obstructed Congress,” Castor said. “To impeach a president who 63 million people voted for over eight lines in a call transcript is baloney.”

Zelenskiy Call

He argued that the call with Zelenskiy showed no evidence that Trump was trying to bribe or extort the Ukrainian president. “Simply put, the call is not the sinister mob shakedown some Democrats have described,” Castor said.

The president had a legitimate interest in examining whether Biden improperly exerted influence when he was vice president to protect his son Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, Castor said.

Echoing allegations made by Trump and some of his allies in Congress, Castor said there is evidence some Ukrainians worked against Trump during the 2016 campaign, and that more than one country could have sought to undermine the election.

Republicans tried to raise objections to the proceedings and demanding a day of hearings on topics they want the committee to consider. Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler put off an answer, saying he’s considering the request but that wasn’t the purpose of the Monday hearing.

Both sides are making political as well as legal arguments with the 2020 election that will decide control of the White House and Congress less than a year away.

Public’s View

The weeks of testimony at public hearings conducted by Democrats haven’t budged public opinion on impeachment. Poll averages compiled by FiveThirtyEight and RealClear Politics both show Americans evenly divided with roughly 47% to 48% supporting impeachment and 44% to 45% opposing. What’s more, some individual polls have found that more than eight in 10 people say their minds are made up.

Democrats have argued that the president’s dealings with Ukraine is the most direct and clearest case to make against the president. Nadler said Sunday on NBC that he’s reserving judgment on whether to include evidence from the Mueller investigation and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have a role in that determination. The differences aren’t expected to hinder the quick timetable set by the Democrats.

The debate over what evidence to include coincides with the expected release on Monday of a long-awaited Justice Department Inspector General report on the genesis of the FBI’s Russia probe, which led to Mueller’s nearly two-year-long investigation.

Mueller’s report specifically said that the investigation didn’t exonerate Trump of obstructing justice.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net

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