US Prez Trump Impeachment To Go Ahead, Says Speaker
WASHINGTON : US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said she has directed a House committee to draft articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over his effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political rival, a historic step that sets up a fight over whether to oust him from office.
Pelosi, speaking in somber tones in a televised statement, accused Trump of abusing his power and alluded to Britain’s King George III, the monarch against whom the American colonies rebelled informing the United States in 1776.
The focus of the inquiry is the July 25 telephone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to open an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter Biden and into a discredited theory promoted by Trump and his allies that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 U.S. election.
Hunter Biden had joined the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was U.S. vice president. Trump has accused the Bidens of corruption without offering evidence. They have denied wrongdoing.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats are injecting an urgent new argument into their already fast-moving impeachment drive: President Donald Trump poses such a flagrant threat to American governance and democracy that there is no time to waste.
“If we allow a President to be above the law, we do so surely at the peril of our republic,” Pelosi said in a televised address on Thursday morning. “Today, I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said. “The President leaves us no choice but to act because he is trying to corrupt once again the election for his own benefit.”
“Our democracy is what is at stake. The president leaves us no choice but to act because he is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit. The president has engaged in abuse of power, undermining our national security and jeopardizing the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi said.
The impeachment fight undertaken by Pelosi and her fellow House Democrats is unfolding even as the Republican president is running for re-election in 2020. At the heart of the battle is Trump’s request in July that Ukraine launch an investigation targeting former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, a top contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to face Trump.
“Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and our heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said, referring to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler.
Articles of impeachment represent formal charges against Trump and would originate in the Judiciary Committee before going to the full House. If the Democratic-led House passes articles of impeachment as expected, that would lead to a trial in the Senate on whether to convict Trump of those charges and remove him from office.
Trump reacted to Pelosi’s announcement on Twitter by writing, “The Do Nothing, Radical Left Democrats have just announced that they are going to seek to Impeach me over NOTHING.”
“The good thing is that the Republicans have NEVER been more united. We will win!” Trump added, while predicting that impeachment now “will be used routinely to attack future Presidents. That is not what our Founders had in mind.”
Pelosi acted after receiving overwhelming support to push forward with the impeachment charges in a meeting with House Democrats on Wednesday night, a source familiar with the meeting said.
On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee held a hearing in which three constitutional law experts called by Democratic lawmakers said Trump had engaged in conduct that represents impeachable offenses under the Constitution. A fourth expert called by Republican lawmakers called the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry rushed and flawed.
The three law professors chosen by the Democrats made clear that they believed Trump’s actions constituted impeachable offenses including abuse of power, bribery, obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice.
(With Agency Inputs ).
