Hearing starts on articles to impeach

In pleas, parties invoke ‘history’

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (left) and ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., confer during the panel’s session Wednesday evening. More photos at arkansasonline.com/1212debate/.
(AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (left) and ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., confer during the panel’s session Wednesday evening. More photos at arkansasonline.com/1212debate/. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON -- The House Judiciary Committee took the first steps Wednesday evening toward voting on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, beginning a marathon two-day session to consider the charges.

Democrats and Republicans on the panel used the prime-time hearing to make final arguments for and against impeachment. Both sides appealed to Americans' sense of history -- Democrats describing a strong sense of duty to hold the president in check, and Republicans decrying the process and what it means for the future of the country.

Today, the committee is to consider amendments and likely hold a final vote to send the articles to the House floor. The two articles of impeachment that Democrats introduced Tuesday charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to his dealings with Ukraine.

The articles aren't expected to be changed, though, as Democrats are unlikely to accept any amendments proposed by Republicans unified against Trump's impeachment.

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Democrats have already agreed to the language, which spans only nine pages and says that Trump acted "corruptly" and "betrayed the nation" when he asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and the 2016 U.S. election. Hamstrung in the minority, Republicans wouldn't have the votes to make changes without support from at least some Democrats.

The Wednesday evening session of the 41-member panel lasted several hours, with opening statements from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler opened the hearing to make a final argument for impeachment and to urge his Republican colleagues to reconsider. He said the committee should consider whether the evidence shows that Trump committed these acts, if they rise to the level of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors, and what the consequences are if they fail to act.

"When his time has passed, when his grip on our politics is gone, when our country returns, as surely it will, to calmer times and stronger leadership, history will look back on our actions here today," Nadler said. "How would you be remembered?"

Republicans argue that the articles show Democrats are out to get the president. Most Republicans contend, as Trump does, that he has done nothing wrong, and all of them are expected to vote against the articles.

The top Republican on the panel, Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, argued that Democrats are impeaching the president because they think they can't beat him in the 2020 election.

Democrats think the only thing they need is a "32-second commercial saying we impeached him," Collins said.

"That's the wrong reason to impeach somebody, and the American people are seeing through this," Collins said. "But at the end of the day, my heart breaks for a committee that has trashed this institution."

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Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said Democrats are impeaching because "they don't like us," and he read out a long list of Trump's accomplishments.

"It's not just because they don't like the president, they don't like us," Jordan added. "They don't like the 63 million people who voted for this president, all of us in flyover country, all of us common folk in Ohio, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Texas."

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., one of the managers of the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton, had an appeal of his own to Democrats: "Put aside your partisan politics and don't listen to what Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler are telling you, because the future of our country and the viability of our Constitution as the framers decided are at stake."

Along with the committee chairman, he was referring to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has kept tight control over the impeachment inquiry, and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and led the investigation.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who participated in previous impeachment inquiries, said this one was unfolding against an uncommonly polarized backdrop, with lawmakers and the people they represented seemingly unable to agree on even the most basic truths. "It seems," she said, "like we live in an alternate reality."

Others warned of the political risks of the moment. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., predicted that voters would punish Democrats, particularly those whose victories in conservative districts in 2016 handed them control of the chamber.

"Say goodbye to your majority," Buck said. "And please join us in January of 2021 when President Trump is inaugurated again."

Lawmakers drew on their own experiences and backgrounds as they sought to frame their views on impeachment for the history books. Some reached for the words of the founders or the annals of the law. Others quoted from Scripture or spoke about loved ones. Many harked back to their unique biographies and the legacy of painful periods in American history.

"I'm a black man representing Georgia, born when Jim Crow was alive and well," said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga. "To me, the idea that elections can be undermined is not theoretical. I have constituents who remember what it is like to live in a democracy in name only."

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson also weighed in Wednesday on the impeachment case, saying Democrats have moved quickly through the process without establishing all of the facts.

"I think what we've learned from our experience 20 years ago is that the United States Senate and the American public have a very high bar before they'll ever remove a sitting president," he said, adding that "The founders set a high bar for a reason, and they [the Democrats] haven't met it yet."

Hutchinson, a former U.S. attorney and U.S. representative, served as an impeachment manager during the 1999 Senate trial of then-President Bill Clinton.

Earlier Wednesday, Collins said the GOP would offer amendments to the impeachment articles but said they'd mainly be about allowing more time to debate.

"Remember, you can't fix bad," Collins said. "These are bad, you're not going to fix it."

FORMAL ARTICLES

In the formal articles announced Tuesday, the Democrats said Trump enlisted a foreign power in "corrupting" the U.S. election process and endangered national security by asking Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, including Biden, while withholding U.S. military aid as leverage. That benefited Russia over the U.S. as America's ally fought Russian aggression, the Democrats said.

Trump then obstructed Congress by ordering current and former officials to defy House subpoenas for testimony and by blocking access to documents, the charges say.

Trump tweeted that to impeach a president "who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness."

The House is expected to vote on the articles next week in the days before Christmas. That could send them to the Senate for a 2020 trial.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that he would be "totally surprised" if there were the necessary 67 votes in the chamber to convict Trump, and signaled options for a swift trial. He said no decision had been made about whether to call witnesses.

Some Senate Republicans appeared to be eager for a streamlined trial without testimony by witnesses, ensuring that the spectacle of deciding on Trump's impeachment would be over quickly so that the chamber could move on to other issues in an election year.

McConnell hinted at that preference in comments to reporters Tuesday when he described the possibility that a trial could be brought to an end after the presentation of the charges by Democrats and a rebuttal by Trump's lawyers.

He said at that point, a majority of senators could decide that "they've heard enough and they believe they know what would happen and could move to vote on the two articles of impeachment sent over to us by the House."

On Wednesday, McConnell chastised the House for what he called "the least thorough and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history."

"The House Democrats' denigration of their solemn duty will not cause the Senate to denigrate ours," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "If the House continues down this destructive road and sends us articles of impeachment, the Senate will take them up in the new year and proceed to a fair trial."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, had a different warning. He urged the president to provide evidence he withheld from House investigators and make government officials who could shed further light on the events in question available for questioning.

"The House has made an extremely strong case," Schumer said. "The burden now lies on the president to rebut it if he can."

Information for this article was contributed by Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro, Alan Fram and Padmananda Rama of The Associated Press; by Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times; and by Dale Ellis of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, read a long list of President Donald Trump’s accomplishments as the House Judiciary Committee considered articles of impeachment and said Democrats are impeaching because “they don’t like us.” (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

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Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., one of the managers when President Bill Clinton was impeached, called on Democrats to “put aside your partisan politics,” saying “the future of our country and the viability of our Constitution as the framers decided are at stake.” (AP/Patrick Semansky)

A Section on 12/12/2019

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