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Abuse of power, obstruction articles unveiled in Donald Trump’s impeachment
The judiciary committee plans to discuss the articles of impeachment later in the week and report it to the full House for a vote to impeach President Trump.
US Democratic lawmakers announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump Tuesday accusing him of abusing the power of his office for personal gains and obstructing congress’s investigation into it, making him only the fourth president in American history to face impeachment.
“We must be clear: No one, not even the president, is above the law,” Jerold Nadler, chairman of the House judiciary committee said, flanked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chairman of intelligence committee Adam Schiff and heads of other committees that worked on the impeachment inquiry.
“Today, in service to our duty to the Constitution and to our country, the House Committee on the Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment, charging the president of the US with committing high crimes and misdemeanors,” he added
The judiciary committee plans to discuss the articles of impeachment later in the week and report it to the full House for a vote to impeach President Trump. Democrats, who control the House, plan to wrap up the process before Christmas. Republican-led senate will hold a trial to remove Trump from office, in January, and is expected to acquit him.
Trump is only the fourth US president to face impeachment. Two of the others, Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached by the House but were acquitted by the senate. President Richard Nixon resigned before the articles of impeachment were reported to the full House.
Trump responded to the announcements in real time. “WITCH-HUNT,” he wrote in one of the posts on twitter, and then went on to lash out against Nadler and Schiff in other posts as he also defended himself, claiming, as he has before, he did nothing wrong.
But Schiff said, laying out the case against the president, “The evidence of the president’s misconduct is overwhelming and uncontested.”
The first article of impeachment, abuse of power, is about Trump’s efforts to coerce Ukraine into launching investigations against his political rivals, former vice-president Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic ticket to take on the president in 2020, his son and the Democratic party, by withholding $391 million in military aid and a status-boosting White House meeting with Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
At the heart of the case is a July phone conversation in which Trump had pressed Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. White House officials who were tasked to listen in on the call told impeachment investigators later they were concerned by what they heard, and found the reference to politics “inappropriate” and “improper”. A whistleblower’s complaint about the call became the basis for the impeachment inquiry launched by House Democrats in September.
The second article of impeachment is about obstructing congress’s investigation into efforts to force Ukraine. The White House blocked officials from testifying — some still did — and refused to hand over documents and records sought by impeachment investigators.
Democrats did not include findings, mostly of obstruction of justice, from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in 2016, as had been speculated about in recent days. But pundits said that the articles of impeachment unveiled Tuesday were so broad — specially the abuse of power — there was scope still for including Mueller’s findings.
