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The House Judiciary Committee will meet tomorrow morning to debate and vote on the articles of impeachment, which is expected to be long and contentious.
Starting at 9 a.m. ET, the meeting will contain plenty of debate, theatrics and arguing over the procedure. Democrats hold a 24-17 majority on the committee, meaning they can vote down any GOP attempt to change the impeachment articles, making Republicans’ only real weapon in the proceedings the ability to extend the debate indefinitely.
Regarding the articles of impeachment: Democrats introduced two articles of impeachment against President Trump on Tuesday, charging that the President should be removed from office for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The House Judiciary Committee is expected to approve those articles of impeachment on Thursday after considering amendments, sending them to the House floor for a vote next week that could make Trump the third president in US history to be impeached.
The House Judiciary Committee meeting just ended.
The meeting will stand in recess until 9 a.m. ET when the committee is expected to continue considering the articles of impeachment against President Trump.
Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat from Florida, echoed sentiments shared tonight when saying she did not run for office to “impeach the President.”
Like other fellow Democrats, Mucarsel-Powell’s mind was changed after seeing Trump violate “his oath of office,” she said on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Greg Stanton, a Democrat from Arizona, threw his support behind the impeachment inquiry tonight on Capitol Hill, saying “President Trump grossly abused his power.”
Some more background on Trump and Ukraine: The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden.
To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical US military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.
Rep. Greg Steube, a Republican from Florida, said President Trump is being “accused of theories by the Democrats.”
Steube added: “The chairman and the members of this committee keep saying that history will judge our decisions. What I would offer, that your decisions and that of your colleagues in the majority, will be judged much sooner in history. They will be judged by the voters in 2020. I guess we will see who’s on the right side of history.”
Rep. Lou Correa, a Democrat from California, used part of his opening speech tonight to read his entire statement in Spanish, the first time tonight something was uttered in something other than English.
Correa went on to invoke former President Ronald Reagan, a fellow Californian: “Ronald Reagan once said, ‘America is a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.’ And I’m here today to ensure that America continues to be that shining city of democracy and rule of law.”
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Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, a Republican from Pennsylvania, called the impeachment inquiry a “political hit job” tonight as the House Judiciary Committee debates and considers the articles of impeachment against President Trump.
Rep. Val Demings, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, got personal tonight in her opening statement on Capitol Hill.
Demings shared the story of her parents as an example of America’s resolve. Her mother cleaned houses and her father was a janitor, She explained how America “is great and decent” with great promise and capable of navigating adversity like this impeachment inquiry.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, implored his colleagues to denounce President Trump’s actions with Ukraine during his opening speech tonight.
Following Rep. Cedric Richmond, who quoted Thomas Paine earlier tonight, Raskin quoted a founding father: “Ben Franklin said, ‘As long as I have known the world I have observed that wrong is always growing more wrong, till there is no bearing, and that right, however opposed, comes [out] right at last.’”
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Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz called the impeachment of President Trump an exercise in “partisanship and politics” during his opening statement.
The Florida lawmaker went on to criticize the Democrats’ case against the President.
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Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Democrat from Louisiana, said the case against President Trump is clear.
During his opening statement tonight, Richmond also shared a quote from political activist and revolutionary Thomas Paine in his denouncement of Trump.
“During our darkest days of the revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, ‘These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country,’” the congressman said. “To my Republican colleagues, fighting when it’s comfortable is easy. Running and hiding is easy but it doesn’t leave a legacy. How do you want to be remembered during this watershed moment in our nation’s history?”
Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Republican from Texas, criticized the speed of the impeachment inquiry while questioning its fairness and due process.
Rafcliffe continued: “The impeachment of President Donald J. Trump started with a hearing on Wednesday, Dec. 4th and handed with a markup that started seven days later on Wednesday, Dec. 11th. How does that sound for fairness? How does that sound for due process?”
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Rep. Ken Buck, a Republican from Colorado, said Democrats have “pre-judged” the President Trump and ignored his right to executive privilege.
Some background: On Tuesday, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said the courts can take months to decide cases about witness testimony, and that’s why the House hasn’t used the courts more to resolve its standoffs with the White House.
Following more than an hour of arguments Tuesday afternoon, federal Judge Richard Leon didn’t decide what to do with recalcitrant impeachment witness Charles Kupperman’s court case, leaving major questions about congressional subpoena power and White House immunity during impeachment still far from a judicial resolution.
The House subpoenaed Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser, in late October, and the White House told him not to testify. He went to court at that time, asking for the judge’s intervention. He never testified, and the House withdrew his subpoena.
Throughout the hearing, Leon, a George W. Bush appointee with a sometimes unpredictable streak, repeated at least three times that the House “might not be in a hurry to have this court address the merits of this case.”
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not expected to hold a vote on a motion to dismiss the impeachment articles against President Trump, but would instead move to a final vote acquitting the President when a majority of senators believe the trial has run its course, two GOP senators told CNN.
That’s significant because Republicans want to have an actual vote on acquittal — to clear the President of the charges against him — and not simply rely on a 51-vote threshold procedural motion to dismiss the hotly-disputed case.
The Constitution mandates 67 votes are required to convict the President and remove him from office, a barrier widely considered too high to be reached in this case.
One vote McConnell can’t rely on is that of Vice President Mike Pence who has “no role in impeachment,” according to an GOP leadership aide, despite being President of the Senate with the mandate to break ties.
But Pence’s power, which applies to legislation and nominations, doesn’t apply to when the Senate is weighing removing his boss, an obvious conflict of interest since he would ascend to replace Trump if he were removed. Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts would preside at the trial and any tie motions would fail.
One of the senators, speaking anonymously, said McConnell would not call a vote on the motion to proceed to the impeachment articles unless he knew he had the 51 votes needed to succeed.
The other senator, John Cornyn of Texas, said it “would make more sense” to move to vote on the actual articles of impeachment — with their 67-vote requirement — than a motion to dismiss and “decide this on a 51-vote threshold, with the potential tie and all the recriminations that would flow from that.”
McConnell hinted at this strategy when he spoke to reporters Tuesday and said the Senate would have two choices after hearing opening arguments from the House impeachment managers and the President’s defense counsel.
Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia, said he believes President Trump’s actions were too troubling to ignore and that’s why he has decided to support the impeachment inquiry.
Johnson added: “We are here because President Trump tried to sabotage that democratic process.”
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Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, called President Trump’s actions an “affront to our Constitution and free and fair elections” tonight during his opening statement.
Cohen added: “President Trump’s attempt to subvert an election was an attack on America.”
More context on Trump and Ukraine: The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical US military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.
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During his opening statement tonight, Rep. Steve Chabot, a Republican from Ohio, was unwavering in his support for President Trump, calling the impeachment inquiry the “most tragic mockery of justice in the history of this nation.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, shared a bit of American history tonight during her opening statement, claiming President Trump “perpetrated constitutional crimes.”
Lee added: “The founding fathers believe the Bill of Rights is a living document, freedom of speech, ending slavery. So today my case will rest on truth and trust.”
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Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin, blasted the Democrat-led impeachment inquiry tonight, calling it the “weakest case in history.”
Sensenbrenner went on to say the process could have been bipartisan, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler “blew their opportunity.”
“If they could have made it bipartisan, they blew their opportunity very early on with their trashing of the rules and the trashing of what is in the history of this committee,” he said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, did not mince words with her opening statement tonight on Capitol Hill, claiming the House Judiciary Committee has received “direct evidence about the President’s actions to threaten our national security, undermine the integrity of the next election and is a violation of his oath.”
Lofgren went on to add: “President Trump has not only abused his power for the upcoming election, he used a foreign power to do it. George Washington would likely be astonished since he warned against the insidious wiles of foreign influence.”
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