A divided House of Representatives voted on Thursday to begin the next stage of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, taking the investigation from behind closed doors to Americans’ television screens with a series of public hearings.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers took to the House floor to engage in a bitter debate over the impeachment process before voting largely along party lines on the resolution.
Democrats focused on their constitutional duty; they talked about following the law and protecting national security interests.
Republicans railed against the process, echoing a White House argument there is no due process for the president and no Republican in-put into the proceedings, and accused their colleagues across the aisle of trying to overturn the 2016 election.
The contentious debate is likely a preview of the public hearings to come.
Thursday’s vote was 232 in favor with 196 lawmakers voting no.
‘The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!,’ Trump tweeted after the vote was finished, using his favorite phrase to describe any investigation into him.
There were two Democratic defections – Congressmen Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey and Collin Peterson of Minnesota. Both hold swing districts that Trump carried in the 2016 election. Trump carried Peterson’s district by over 30 points.
Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican who became an Independent, voted in favor of the resolution.
Four lawmakers did not vote. Three Republicans – Jody Hice of Georgia, John Rose of Tennessee, and William Timmons of South Carolina – and one Democrat: Donald McEachin of Virginia.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi gavels the vote on the impeachment resolution to a close
Speaker Nancy Pelosi presided over the vote and gaveled it to a close, announcing the final total.
She kept her words on the matter short: ‘On this vote the yeas are 232, the nays are 196. The resolution is adopted without objection.’
Democrats launched the formal impeachment inquiry in September after a whistleblower revealed concerns that President Trump asked the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe and Hunter Bidens, his political enemies, during a July 25 phone call.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and called the call ‘perfect.’
The weeks-long inquiry accumulated into Thursday’s five-minute vote. The House chamber was crowded with lawmakers as it took place. They chatted with each other on their respective sides of aisle.
After it was over, Democrats moved on to the next vote on the schedule while Republicans yelled in protest. ‘Order, order,’ they yelled, ‘we have rules.’
But Democrats, who control the chamber, moved on.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, as soon as the vote was over, charged House Democrats with an ‘obsession’ with impeaching the president.
‘The President has done nothing wrong, and the Democrats know it. Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats’ unhinged obsession with this illegitimate impeachment proceeding does not hurt President Trump; it hurts the American people,’ she said in a statement.
President Trump spent the morning before the House votes on an impeachment resolution into him tweeting and retweeting words from his supporters
Trump spent Thursday morning tweeting and retweeting words from his supporters, calling on Republicans to stand by him in the upcoming vote.
‘The Impeachment Hoax is hurting our Stock Market. The Do Nothing Democrats don’t care!,’ he wrote shortly before the House started voting on the resolution against him.
Earlier he called on Republicans to stand by him during the proceedings.
‘Now is the time for Republicans to stand together and defend the leader of their party against these smears,’ Trump tweeted, quoting conservative talk host Laura Ingraham.
Pelosi, meanwhile, gaveled the House into order on Thursday morning as lawmakers took to the floor to debate the resolution.
Democrats talked about following the law and protecting national security interests. Republicans railed against the process, echoing a White House argument there is no due process for the president and no Republican in-put into the proceedings.
‘It’s not a fair process. It’s not a transparent process. It’s not an open process. But instead it’s limited and a closed process with a pre-ordained outcome,’ argued Republican Rep. Tom Cole said on the House floor Thursday morning.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence panel, compared Democrats pursuing impeachment to a ‘cult,’ and their inquiry to a ‘show trial.’
‘They have always intended to transform the Intelligence committee into the impeachment committee,’ said Nunes, a California Republican who was himself accused of politicizing the Intelligence panel during the Mueller investigation.
‘Every one of their actions from the staff they hired to the Trump conspiracy theories they investigate … indicates this has been their plan from day one,’ he said on the House floor.
He accused Democrats of harboring a ‘bizarre obsession with overturning the results of the last presidential election.’
‘What we’re seeing among Democrats on the Intelligence Committees, down in the [secure Capitol facility] right now, is like a cult. These are a group of people loyally following their leader as he bounces from one outlandish conspiracy theory to another. And the media are the cult followers, permanently stationed outside the committee spaces, pretending to take everything seriously, because they too support the goal of removing the president from office,’ Nunes said.
Pelosi, like many of her colleagues, delivered floor remarks in front of a poster of an American flag where lawmakers often place visual aids.
The Speaker, who only occasionally speaks on legislation or procedures on the floor of the House, began her remarks by reading the preamble to the Constitution.
‘What is at stake is our democracy. What are we fighting for? Defending our democracy for the people,’ she said.
‘The genius of the Constitution, a separation of powers. Three coequal branches of government to be a check and balance on each other,’ Pelosi told colleagues.
‘Sadly this is not any cause for any glee or comfort. This is something that is very solemn that is something prayerful.’ Addressing arguments that the House was authorizing something that has already begun, she said: ‘We had to gather so much information to take us to this next step.’
‘I doubt anybody in this place … comes to Congress to take the oath of office … to impeach the president of the United States, unless his actions are jeopardizing our honoring our oath of office,’ said Pelosi, who earlier this month walked out of a meeting with President Trump after it grew heated.
‘Let us honor our oath of office. Let us defend our democracy. Let us have a good vote today and have clarity, clarity as to how we proceed,’ she said.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke on the House floor with a poster of a flag
Rep. Steve Scalise, the Number Two Republican in the House, called the proceedings ‘Soviet-style’
‘At the end of the day, this resolution isn’t about Donald Trump. It isn’t about any of us. It’s about our Constitution. It’s about our country. And so I urge my colleagues to not just think about the political pressures of the moment. These will pass. Please consider the heavy responsibility you have today, to this institution, the Constitution, and our country,’ said Rules Committee Chairman Rep. Jim McGovern on the House floor Thursday morning.
”I never wanted our country to reach this point. I do not take any pleasure in the need for this resolution. We are not here in some partisan exercise. We are here because the facts compel us to be here. There is serious evidence that President Trump may have violated the Constitution. This is about protecting our national security and safeguarding our elections,’ he added.
‘I support this resolution because it lays the groundwork for open hearings. The House and the American public must see all of the evidence for themselves,’ said Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler in his floor speech.
Nadler’s committee will hold some of those public hearings.
‘I support this resolution because I know we must overcome this difficult moment for the Nation. This resolution is necessary to ensure that our constitutional order remains intact for future generations,’ he added. ‘I support this resolution because we simply have no choice.’
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler spoke in support of the resolution; his committee will hold some of the public hearings
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy charged Democrats with trying to overturn the 2016 election
Republicans complained Democrats were trying to overturn the 2016 election.
House minority whip Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana tried to turn the table on Democrats, who have spent years focusing on Russian election interference and Trump campaign contacts with Russians.
He spoke next to a blow-up posture of the Kremlin, and accused the Democrats of conducting a Soviet-style inquiry.
‘If the chair chooses, at his whim, they can literally kick out the president’s legal counsel. This is unprecedented. It’s not only unprecedented, this is Soviet-style rules. Maybe in the Soviet Union, you’d do things like this, where only you make the rules, where you reject the ability of the person you are accusing to even be in the room to question what’s going on, for anybody else to call witnesses,’ said Scalise.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy blasted Democrats for ‘not working for the American people.’
‘This Congress has more subpoenas than laws,’ he said in his floor speech.
‘Democrats are trying to impeach the president because they are scared they cannot beat him at the ballot,’ McCarthy complained. ‘This impeachment is not only an attempt to undo the last election. It is an attempt to undo the last one as well.’
For both sides the vote will become a political weapon in 2020 with Republicans targeting Democrats who represent House districts that Trump won in 2016 and Democrats using it as a rallying cry for their base.
Tim Morrison, who was Trump’s top adviser for Russian and European affairs, arrives on Capitol Hill Thursday to testify
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said the administration is considering bringing aboard additional staff to combat the impeachment inquiry
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Thursday morning the administration is considering bringing aboard additional staff to combat the impeachment inquiry.
‘Possibly and if we do it’s because our portfolios are already over flowing,’ she told reporters in the White House drive way. ‘So possibly. Stephanie Grisham is the press secretary and communications director the president and to the first lady. She’s got a pretty busy portfolio already.’
She added that any additions would be temporary and single-focused on the impeach issue, comparing it to how the administration brought on small teams of extra staff to handle other key issues, such as Supreme Court nominations.
‘So if it’s something intense, but single focused albeit temporary, there’s an argument for bringing a few extra hands and minds on to the team. So I would analogize it to Kavanaugh Part II for example,’ she said. ‘You have a short window and somebody who is single-focused on just that which is, frankly, something the rest of us can’t do.’
She was quick to add: ‘It’s not a war room. The president has made it pretty clear he doesn’t need a war room.’
The vote comes as Tim Morrison, who was Trump’s top adviser for Russian and European affairs, arrived on Capitol Hill Thursday morning to testify in the inquiry.
Morrison recently left his White House post and Democrats will seek details from him on an allegation that president linked nearly $400 million in U.S. military aid to the Ukraine to officials there undertaking an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, along with probing an unproven theory that it was the Ukrainians who hacked the Democratic National Committee’s email server and blamed the Russians.
Trump has maintained he’s done nothing wrong.
The House resolution includes a package of rules for how the Intelligence Committee – now leading the investigation closed-door testimony from witness – would transition to public hearings.
It also details how Intelligence panel Chair Adam Schiff will have most of the power in the process – deciding who will testify in front of the cameras and for how long – before issuing a public report and handing the matter over to the House Judiciary Committee, which will compose any formal articles of impeachment against the president.
Republicans and the White House are objecting to how that process is laid out.
Under the resolution, GOP lawmakers can only issue subpoenas for witnesses if the entire panel approved them – in effect giving Democrats veto power over their requests. Democrats argue this was the same procedure Republicans used when they had the majority during Bill Clinton’s impeachment process in the 1990s.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bring a resolution to a vote that outlines how the investigation will proceed and what rights the president will have during it
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff will play a lead role in the public hearing phase of the investigation
Additionally, there is no role for President Trump’s lawyers when the Intelligence panel holds its public hearings – a time when the cable news networks will run wall-to-wall coverage and viewership is expected to be high.
Trump’s lawyers aren’t allowed into the process into the Judiciary committee phase but what rights they will have – such as the ability to question witnesses – are not outlined in the resolution.
The White House blasted the rules as ‘an illegitimate sham’ that lacks ‘any due process’ for President Trump.
‘The White House is barred from participating at all, until after Chairman Schiff conducts two rounds of one-sided hearings to generate a biased report for the Judiciary Committee. Even then, the White House’s rights remain undefined, unclear, and uncertain – because those rules still haven’t been written,’ White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham argued in a statement earlier this week on the resolution.
By the time the president gets to participate, most of the drama will have played out on television screens across the country.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell blasted the procedure as denying the president his ‘basic due process rights.’
‘It does not confer on President Trump the most basic rights of due process,’ McConnell complained in a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in the Ukraine whose closed-door testimony in the impeachment inquiry against Trump shocked Democrats with its details, is willing to testify in public when the hearings move to that stage.
No request has been made for his public testimony, CNN reports, but he is likely to be on the Democrats’ list when the time comes.
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell blasted House Democrats’ impeachment resolution on the Senate floor on Wednesday
Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in the Ukraine, is wiling to testify in public
Taylor testified last week that he was told that American military aid to the Ukraine was contingent on Kiev putting out a statement they were investigating the Bidens and the 2016 election.
Democrats believe he could be a star witness.
He’s rock solid, detailed notetaker and unimpeachable,’ Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN. ‘Fifty years given to his country — it doesn’t get much more ‘Top Gun’ than that.’
Taylor testified behind closed doors last week that Trump refused to release U.S. security aid or meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky until Zelensky agreed to investigate the president’s political rivals.
Trump wanted a public commitment from the Ukraine they would investigate Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company with Hunter Biden on its board, Taylor – a Vietnam veteran and career State Department official – told Congress, and said the president wanted Ukraine ‘put in a box.’
Trump and his allies have pushed an unproven theory Joe Biden, as vice president, demanded the Ukraine remove a prosecutor to the benefit of the company.
The president also pushed an unproven conspiracy theory that an email server belonging to the Democratic National Committee was hacked by Ukrainians during the 2016 election and they made it look as it were the Russians – a story, that if true, would indicate he won the 2016 contest without Russian interference.
Bolton was in meetings with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland on Ukraine policy
Taylor said he was told that Trump had made clear that military aid to help keep Ukraine safe from Russia would only be made available if Zelensky went public to order ‘investigations,’ otherwise there was a ‘stalemate.’
And Taylor testified that Sondland told another diplomat: ‘President Trump did insist that President Zelensky go to a microphone and say that he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelensky should want to do this himself.’
The bombshell testimony rocked Washington D.C. and left the White House reeling – after Trump had started the day by calling impeachment ‘a lynching.’
As Democratic lawmakers trickled out of the hearing, they called they evidence ‘damning,’ while Republicans had little to say.
Taylor called the involvement of Rudy Giuliani in a ‘parallel’ foreign policy ‘highly irregular’; confirmed that John Bolton had called linking military aid to Ukraine to a Biden probe a ‘drug deal’; implicated Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo and Mick Mulvaney in the scheme; and painted EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland as part of Giuliani’s scheme as well as an error-prone official lax on security and an unreliable witness – who one Republican conceded is likely to be recalled to the probe.
He recalled a phone call with Sondland, whom the president put in charge of Ukrainian affairs despite that country not being an EU member.
‘During that phone call, Amb. Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,’ Taylor said in his statement.
He added Sondland told him ‘everything’ – meaning U.S. military aid and a White House meeting – was contingent on the Ukraine publicly agreeing to the probe.
‘Amb. Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Amb. Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,’ Taylor said.
‘He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations,” he noted.
Taylor is considered the biggest threat to Trump to come before lawmakers.
He left his retirement to take up the top U.S. post in the Ukraine after Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was fired by Trump. He has no ties to the administration and no diplomatic career to worry about given his senior statesman status. He has worked in administrations for both political parties.