Tag: Trump impeachment inquiry

First House Republican backs impeachment inquiry

The Hill logoRep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.) on Friday became the first House Republican to voice support for an impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

In a conference call with reporters, Amodei made clear he wouldn’t vote to impeach Trump, but he also expressed concern over the president’s dealings with Ukraine, adding that the House should “put it through the process and see what happens.”

“I’m a big fan of oversight, so let’s let the committees get to work and see where it goes,” he said, according to audio of the call released by The Nevada Independent.

View the complete September 27 article by Tal Axelrod on The Hill website here.

Trump, the TV president, finally meets a media story he can’t control

Washington Post logoDonald Trump’s presidency would have been impossible without his reality-TV fame from NBC’s “The Apprentice.”

And he is skilled at dominating the visual medium that still matters so much — even in our digital age — from his raucous rallies to his impromptu media gaggles outside a whirring helicopter to his symbiotic relationship with Fox News.

But not this week.

View the complete September 27 article by Margaret Sullivan on The Washington Post website here.

Support for Trump impeachment rises 12 points in new poll

The Hill logoA new Hill-HarrisX survey on Friday found support for impeachment proceedings against President Trump has risen 12 points compared to a similar poll conducted three months ago.

The survey was conducted on Sept. 26-27, just days after House Democrats started a formal impeachment inquiry over a whistleblower complaint involving Trump’s communications with Ukraine.

The poll showed 47 percent of respondents support that decision, up 12 points from a similar survey in June, which asked whether Democrats should begin impeachment proceedings.

View the complete article with video and embedded poll results on The Hill website here.

Trump calls on Schiff to ‘immediately resign’ over his portrayal of Trump’s call with Zelenskiy

President says longtime thorn in his side tried to ‘defraud the American Public’ in Thursday hearing

Donald Trump on Friday called for House Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff to resign over his portrayal of Trump’s message to Ukraine’s president in their phone call that the president called an attempt to “defraud the American public.”

Schiff has long been a thorn in Trump’s side and now Speaker Nancy Pelosi has placed him in charge of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, which is centered on the July 25 telephone conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskiy. During the call, Trump asks Zelenskiy for a “favor” after the incoming Ukrainian leader noted his intention to purchase more U.S.-made military hardware. That favor was Trump’s desire for an investigation of 2020 Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden.

During a Thursday hearing about an intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint about that call and White House aides’ coordinated effort to “lock down” the records, Schiff kicked off the hearing by summarizing Trump’s request of Zelenskiy, saying what he was about to recount was “the essence of what the president communicates.”

View the complete September 27 article by John T. Bennet on The Roll Call website here.

Rep. Schiff says he’s ‘flattered’ by Trump’s attacks over Ukraine inquiry

President Trump and Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and one of the Democrats’ point people on impeachment, got into a war of words Thursday.

Moments after acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified about his handling of a whistleblower complaint against Trump, Schiff told reporters on Capitol Hill that it was “hard to imagine a more serious set of allegations than those contained in the complaint,” which deals with the president’s attempts to enlist the government of Ukraine in gathering damaging information about Joe Biden, his potential political rival.

Schiff said his committee would continue to investigate the president through a 14-day recess scheduled to begin on Friday.

View the complete September 26 article by David Knowles on the Yahoo News website here.

Founders: Removal from office is not the only purpose of impeachment

As Congress moves toward a possible formal impeachment of President Donald Trump, they should consider words spoken at the Constitutional Convention, when the Founders explained that impeachment was intended to have many important purposes, not just removing a president from office.

A critical debate took place on July 20, 1787, which resulted in adding the impeachment clause to the U.S. Constitution. Benjamin Franklin, the oldest and probably wisest delegate at the Convention, said that when the president falls under suspicion, a “regular and peaceable inquiry” is needed.

In my work as a law professor studying original texts about the U.S. Constitution, I’ve found statements made at the Constitutional Convention explaining that the Founders viewed impeachment as a regular practice with three purposes:

    • To remind both the country and the president that he is not above the law
    • To deter abuses of power
    • To provide a fair and reliable method to resolve suspicions about misconduct.

View the complete September 26 article by Clark D. Cunningham, W. Lee Burge Chair in Law and Ethics; Director, National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism, Georgia State University.

Trump demands Schiff resign over account of Ukraine call

The Hill logoPresident Trump on Friday demanded House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) “immediately” resign from Congress for reading what the congressman described as a parody of the president’s phone call with Ukraine’s leader that is at the center of a whistleblower complaint.

In a series of tweets early Friday, Trump accused Schiff of lying to Congress and “fraudulently” reciting a version of the call that made it “sound horrible” and made the president appear “guilty.”

He was supposedly reading the exact transcribed version of the call, but he completely changed the words to make it sound horrible, and me sound guilty,” Trump tweeted.

View the complete September 27 article by Morgan Chalfant on The Hill website here.

Republicans Say Impeachment Will Backfire. History Says It Won’t

  • Nixon’s resignation boosted Democrats in the next election
  • Clinton impeachment helped Republicans win back White House

Citing their experience in the 1990s, Republicans warned Democrats this week that an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine would backfire politically.

History, however, doesn’t back up that assertion.

Only three U.S. presidents have ever faced a serious threat of removal by Congress – Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton — and in each case the party that initiated the inquiry ended up benefiting in the next election.

View the complete September 26 article by Ryan Teague Beackwirth on the Bloomberg website here.

How Donald Trump Triggered an Unprecedented Impeachment Fight

Abigail Spanberger didn’t go to Washington to impeach the President.

Over the course of her first nine months in Congress, she said so over and over. She was there to serve her constituents near Richmond, Va., who wanted safe streets and health care and good-paying jobs. As her colleagues ranted about Russia and racism, she kept saying she was focused elsewhere–until Donald Trump did something she felt she couldn’t ignore.

Spanberger, a former CIA officer, was elected as a Democrat last November to represent a House district that went for Trump by a 7-point margin in 2016. Supporting impeachment could hurt her image as a moderate more focused on getting things done than on partisan crusades, and put her re-election at risk. But on Sept. 23, she joined other centrist colleagues and, for the first time, endorsed impeachment proceedings after a whistle-blower reportedly complained that the President had pressured a foreign leader to investigate one of Trump’s top rivals in the 2020 election. “It wasn’t that my mind was changed, it’s that we were presented with new information,” Spanberger told TIME as she cut across the Capitol lawn the next day.

View the complete September 26 article by Molly Ball on the Time website here.