By Joshua Caplan
The party-line 24-17 vote occurred after two hours of debate between Democrats and Republicans about the so-called inquiry’s parameters.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) tried to clear up any misconceptions as the committee approved guidelines for impeachment hearings on President Trump. Some of Nadler’s fellow Democrats — including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) — have stumbled over how to explain what they’re doing.
“Some call this process an impeachment inquiry. Some call it an impeachment investigation. There is no legal difference between these terms, and I no longer care to argue about the nomenclature,” Nadler said as he opened the meeting. “But let me clear up any remaining doubt: The conduct under investigation poses a threat to our democracy. We have an obligation to respond to this threat. And we are doing so.”
Republicans disagree with Nadler and they argue that the House has never voted to open an official inquiry. Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), the top Republican on the committee, said the committee “has become a giant Instagram filter … it’s put in there to look like something, but it’s really not.”
Collins said Democrats are trying to have it both ways.
“My colleagues know very well they don’t have the votes to authorize impeachment proceedings on the House floor, but they want to impeach the president anyway,” Collins said. “So, they are pretending to initiate impeachment.”
Impeachment has divided Democrats who control the House. Democrats on Nadler’s committee, including some of the most liberal members of the House, have been eager to move forward with the process. But moderates, mostly first-term lawmakers who handed their party the majority in the 2018 election, are concerned about the committee’s drumbeat on impeachment and the attention that comes with that continued action.
With regard to impeachment, the biggest elephant in the room is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has long opposed Congress taking the lead on ousting the president. Instead, Pelosi has insisted that committees continue their investigations into President Trump and his associates in search of possible wrongdoings. Earlier this week, the speaker dismissed concerns that Nadler’s recent maneuvers exhibit how she’s losing control over her caucus. “I think you should characterize it [the resolution] for what it is,” Pelosi told Fox News. “It’s a continuation of what we have been doing. You know, we all work together on these things”
Not only is Pelosi unwilling to move the ball forward on impeachment, but the speaker also believes the American people do not want to see lawmakers take up the matter at this time.
“The public isn’t there on impeachment. It’s your voice and constituency, but give me the leverage I need to make sure that we’re ready and it is as strong as it can be,” Pelosi said during a caucus-wide conference call last month.
“The equities we have to weigh are our responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution and to be unifying and not dividing. But if and when we act, people will know he gave us no choice,” she added.
Meanwhile, President Trump took to Twitter following the vote to seemingly underline the political motivations behind an impeachment inquiry and quoted Rep. Al Green (D-TX), who introduced articles of impeachment in June.
““We can’t beat him, so lets impeach him!” Democrat Rep. Al Green,” the president recounted the lawmaker proposing earlier this year.
AUGUST 20, 2019
The optics weren’t great.
“Waters visited the desolate on the corner of 5th and San Pedro in the heart of the city’s Skid Row, where she touted a $13 billion bill known as the “Ending Homelessness Act,” reports the American Mirror.
Along with Rep. Al Green and a gaggle of her staff, Waters visited a “tent protest” organized by homeless activist Stephanie Arnold Williams.
“I put all these tents here, with my own money,” Williams said. “Free sewing for the community. I do high-blood pressure readings. I give shade … and a place to sit.”
After purchasing a book from Williams and forgetting her name, Waters seemed overly concerned about getting back the $10 she was owed by the homeless person.
“And she’s so creative. She set up a really nice environment here, but she’s got all these educational books. And guess what? I bought the … Langston Hughes book, $10,” Waters said, waving around a $20 bill. “I need change.”
Well, that was awkward.
By Joshua Caplan
On Sunday, Washington state Democrat Reps. Denny Heck, Kim Schrier, Suzan DelBene and Derek Kilmer came out in favor of the measure. The group’s announcement comes after over 10 Democrats voiced support for impeachment. The handful of lawmakers included Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA), who serves of the Vice Chair of the House Democrat Caucus, citing former special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony on Wednesday.
The number of Democrats backing impeachment stands at 107, just 11 lawmakers away from the majority of the House Democrat caucus.
The latest tally House Democrats backing impeachment comes after the chamber’s judiciary panel announced the launch of its so-called “impeachment investigation.” On Friday, the committee asked a judge to allow access to secret grand jury material underlying the Mueller report.
The House Judiciary Committee is also expected to go to court this week to try to enforce a subpoena against former White House counsel Donald McGahn, a key Mueller witness. That suit is expected to challenge the White House’s claim that former White House employees have “absolute immunity” from testifying before Congress.
Appearing Sunday on ABC’s This Week, Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) explained his committee is “investigating whether to approve articles of Impeachment before the committee.”
“We have impeachment resolutions before the committee. We are conducting investigations to determine whether we should report those impeachment resolutions to the House or whether we should draft our own and report them to the House,” said the New York Democrat.
“We’re considering those resolutions. we’ll make a determination after we get more evidence as to the president’s crimes that we had from the Mueller report and also from other things, violations of the emoluments clause, his failure to defend the constitution against repeated Russian attacks,” he added. “We’re investigating whether to approve articles of Impeachment before the Committee.”
Despite fresh support to launch impeachment hearings, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) appears unmoved by the efforts.
“No, I’m not trying to run out the clock,” Pelosi told reporters last week.“We will proceed when we have what we need to proceed — not one day sooner.”
“Everybody has the liberty and the luxury to espouse their own position and to criticize me for trying to go down the path in the most determined, positive way,” she added. “Again, their advocacy for impeachment only gives me leverage.”
Moreover, some political observers believe Mueller’s testimony likely took the wind of the of sails regarding impeachment.
“I think the candidates on the stump are being politically realistic; the people back in Washington aren’t. Nancy Pelosi, who is a wintry eyed realist, is having none of it: she thinks impeachment is a fools’ errand and I have to say I agree with her,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
“Mueller’s lackluster testimony likely gave Speaker Pelosi the ammunition to withstand calls for impeachment inquiries, or hearings, from the left flank of her party,” said Brown University political science professor Wendy Schiller. “She has always maintained it is a losing political proposition even if the House voted to impeach Trump because the Senate will not vote to convict Trump and remove him from office.”
Earlier this month, the House voted 332-95 to table a resolution launching an impeachment inquiry introduced by Rep. Al Green. (D-TX).
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Published on Jul 22, 2019
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By Jim Hoft
To this day Green still wants President Trump impeached, he will find the crime later.
In May President Trump blasted liberal hack Rep. Al Green (D-TX) over his continued threats of impeachment.
Trump tweeted, “You can’t impeach a president for creating the best economy ever.”
But kook Al Green still wants President Trump impeached.
On Wednesday Al Green tweeted that it is time to remove President Trump due to “racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia…”
Green is a dummy.
So now Democrats are going to waste time on this latest impeachment nonsense instead of helping the people of the US.
By JOSH HAMMER
In December 2017, The Daily Wire reported that Green “brought dead-on-arrival articles of impeachment against Trump” to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. At the time, the House voted overwhelmingly against Green’s attempt to commence impeachment.
In May 2018, The Daily Wire reported that Green changed his tune, instead vowing to commence impeachment proceedings after Democrats regained the House. Per The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti:
“There’s a good likelihood there will be articles of impeachment” brought against the President, Rep. Green said. “Here is a point that I think is salient, and one that ought to be referenced. Every member of the House is accorded the opportunity to bring up impeachment. This is not something the Constitution has bestowed upon leadership. It’s something every member has the right and privilege of doing.”
Green’s impeachment advocacy has indeed continued unimpeded since his party took over House leadership. In March 2019, Green discussed his continued efforts with C-Span:
Since then, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Democratic leadership has actually forsworn impeachment — as has the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
But this past weekend, Green seemed to let the cat out of the bag when it comes to his own impeachment motives. On MSNBC on Saturday, Green conceded that his impeachment efforts are a transparent ploy to help defeat Trump in 2020.
Here is the relevant portion of the underlying exchange, per RealClearPolitics:
MSNBC HOST: You have been calling for starting articles of impeachment since 2017, but a new Quinnipiac poll taken after the release of the redacted Mueller report said 66% say Congress should not start impeachment proceedings, there’s a sharp partisan divide, with only 4% of Republicans favoring impeachment. Are you afraid this talk will help the president’s re-election?
REP. AL GREEN: I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected. If we don’t impeach him, he will say he’s been vindicated. He will say the Democrats had an overwhelming majority in the House and didn’t take up impeachment. He will say we have a constitutional duty to do it if it was there and we didn’t. He will say he’s been vindicated.
Published on Mar 14, 2019
By Hank Berrien
Tlaib blustered, “We saw record turnout in an election year, where people wanted to elect a jury that would begin the impeachment proceedings to Donald Trump. We want to work on these economic justice issues, racial justice issues and everything. But guess what? There is a wall there, and a constitutional crisis that is not going to [let us] do our jobs as American Congress members to push a lot of these agendas forward,” according to The Hill.
Bragging about the new Democratic members of Congress, Tlaib added, “This is the largest class since Watergate. This is a class — a diverse class — that comes … with a sense of urgency to act. To act to hold corporations accountable, to act in holding President Trump accountable, to act to really try to see real reforms, even within our congressional process. This is an emergency for many of us.”
On the night after she joined the House of Representatives, Tlaib cried, “People love you and you win. And when your son looks at you and says, ‘Momma, look you won. Bullies don’t win.’ And I said, ‘Baby, they don’t, because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the mother***er.’”
President Donald Trump is a direct and serious threat to our country. On an almost daily basis, he attacks our Constitution, our democracy, the rule of law and the people who are in this country. His conduct has created a constitutional crisis that we must confront now …
We already have overwhelming evidence that the president has committed impeachable offenses, including, just to name a few: obstructing justice; violating the emoluments clause; abusing the pardon power; directing or seeking to direct law enforcement to prosecute political adversaries for improper purposes; advocating illegal violence and undermining equal protection of the laws; ordering the cruel and unconstitutional imprisonment of children and their families at the southern border; and conspiring to illegally influence the 2016 election through a series of hush money payments …
We are also now hearing the dangerous claim that initiating impeachment proceedings against this president is politically unwise and that, instead, the focus should now shift to holding the president accountable via the 2020 election. Such a claim places partisan gamesmanship over our country and our most vulnerable at this perilous moment in our nation’s history. Members of Congress have a sworn duty to preserve our Constitution. Leaving a lawless president in office for political points would be abandoning that duty …
This is not just about Donald Trump. This is about all of us. What should we be as a nation? Who should we be as a people? In the face of this constitutional crisis, we must rise. We must rise to defend our Constitution, to defend our democracy, and to defend that bedrock principle that no one is above the law, not even the President of the United States. Each passing day brings more pain for the people most directly hurt by this president, and these are days we simply cannot get back. The time for impeachment proceedings is now.
Tlaib is not the first House Democrat to pursue impeaching Trump. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) has introduced articles of impeachment; Rep. Al Green (D-TX) has promised to reintroduce a motion to impeach the president.
READ MORE: DONALD TRUMP RASHIDA TLAIB
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