December 13, 2019: Day 3 House Judiciary Approves Articles of Impeachment ...
The House Judiciary Committee finalized debates last evening and voted this morning on two articles of impeachment against President Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. That sets up the third presidential impeachment in U.S. history — expected next Wednesday, December 18, 2019.
>> House Judiciary approves articles of impeachment, paving way for floor vote
The vote sets up just the third presidential impeachment in U.S. history, which is expected Wednesday.
Kyle Cheney and Andrew Desiderio
Politico
Thursday December 13, 2019
politico.com
Articles of impeachment are headed to the House floor.
It took three days of meetings, marked by inflamed rhetoric and increasingly personal disputes, but the Judiciary Committee on Friday voted along party lines to approve charges that President Donald Trump abused his power and obstructed a congressional investigation.
The move marks the first vote at any level of the House on articles of impeachment since 1998. And it sets up just the third presidential impeachment in U.S. history — expected Wednesday, according to Democratic aides.
The articles allege that Trump put his personal interests above U.S. national security by pressuring Ukraine to open investigations into his Democratic adversaries. Then, the articles state, Trump waged an unprecedented campaign to block impeachment investigators from obtaining witness testimony and documents as they sought to probe the allegations.
Next week’s impeachment vote will then lead to a Senate trial, presided over by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, in January. Trump’s allies expect the GOP-controlled chamber will acquit him swiftly — it takes a two-thirds vote of the 100-member body to remove a sitting president — but Republican senators are still deciding whether to ultimately allow Trump to call witnesses.
The committee abruptly paused its proceedings just after 11 p.m. Thursday night, after a 14-hour session during which Republicans offered several amendments aimed at chipping away at the articles — all rejected by Democrats. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) postponed the final votes until Friday morning, a move that aides said reflected a preference to vote during the light of day.
The three-day Judiciary Committee proceedings were largely an exercise in grandstanding, speechifying and at times monotonous repetition — an endurance exercise in which each side appeared to be baiting the other to trip over their arguments or commit procedural offenses that could resonate outside Washington.
But one dynamic was clear throughout the process: Republicans were unmoved by the evidence Democrats arrayed before them — and Democrats showed no signs of second-guessing their impeachment push.
Trump’s request of Ukraine — an ally in an active war with Russian invaders — to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden was an impermissible exercise of power that prioritized the president’s political benefit over the country’s interests, Democrats argued. And his outright refusal to provide documents to Congress would fast-track the nation toward an unaccountable monarchy, they added.
Republicans countered that Democrats overstated their case, relying on hearsay evidence, a thin factual record and a desire to cast ambiguous facts in a light least favorable to Trump. They portrayed the president as genuinely concerned with corruption in Ukraine — an assertion Democrats called “laughable” — and said he was simply protecting the separation of powers by fighting Democrats’ requests and subpoenas. <<
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- Eric L. - |
