Pelosi asks committee to proceed with articles of impeachment against Trump
House speaker said inquiry revealed a failure by president to uphold the law and his actions are a ‘violation of the public trust’
House speaker said inquiry revealed a failure by president to uphold the law and his actions are a ‘violation of the public trust’
Quoting from the Declaration of Independence and the founding fathers about the danger of a president one day betraying the country’s trust to foreign powers, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced on Thursday that she
was directing the judiciary committee to draft articles of impeachment against Donald Trump.
“The president leaves us no choice but to act,” Pelosi said. “Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America, today
“The president leaves us no choice but to act,” Pelosi said. “Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and a heart full of love for America, today
I am asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment.”In a brief statement delivered from the House speaker’s balcony and invoking the history of the United States as a land free of kings, Pelosi said that the impeachment investigation must move forward after
revealing a failure by Trump to uphold the law and defend the constitution.“If we allow a president to be above the law, we do so surely at the peril of our Republic,” she said. “In America, nobody is above the law.”
About an hour later, Trump tweeted in reply. “The Do Nothing, Radical Left Democrats have just announced that they are going to seek to Impeach me over NOTHING,” he wrote in part. “This will mean that the beyond important and seldom used act of Impeachment will be used
routinely to attack future Presidents. That is not what our Founders had in mind. The good thing is that the Republicans have NEVER been more united. We will win!”Pelosi said that Trump had engaged in misconduct on a historic scale.
“The facts are uncontested,” Pelosi said. “The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security by withholding military aid and a crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange
for the announcement of an investigation into his political rival.“The president’s actions are a profound violation of the public trust. The president’s actions have seriously violated the constitution, especially when he says and acts
upon the belief that ‘article 2 says I can do whatever I want’. No.”If it has not already begun, the judiciary committee would now draft articles of impeachment for approval as early as next week.
A vote on whether to impeach Trump could follow on the floor of the House before a 20 December holiday break.Trump could become the second president in the last 150 years and only the third of 45 US presidents to be impeached.
In her somber delivery and methodical quotation of the founding fathers James Madison, George Mason and Benjamin Franklin, Pelosi hewed to a Democratic strategy of framing the impeachment inquiry as a joyless task made imperative by the historic dimensions of 🍊s abuse of power.
Republicans have sought to defend Trump by attacking the process by which Democrats have pursued impeachment and criticizing the swift pace of the inquiry, but they so far have not managed a defense of Trump on
the merits more substantive than the president’s repeated assertion that his conduct has been “perfect”.In recent days Pelosi, the most senior Democrat in Congress, had been surveying her caucus, especially moderate members from swing districts, on their views on impeachment.
Support for impeachment nationally jumped sharply after Democrats announced their inquiry in September and then settled to 48-44% support on average, according to FiveThirtyEight.
On Thursday, Pelosi, who has the unilateral power to move the impeachment process forward and to dictate its terms, indicated that Democrats in Congress had replied to her query with vocal support for impeachment.
“In the course of today’s events it becomes necessary for us to address, among other grievances, the president’s failure to faithfully uphold the law,” she said.
Pelosi spoke after the first day of public impeachment hearings in the judiciary committee, which took up the process after more than a month of work in chairman Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee.
