The White House announced that they will not participate in the House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings on Friday.
Pat Cipollone, the counsel to the president, sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, calling the investigation “completely baseless” and argued that it “violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness.”
White House responds to @HouseJudiciary …No participation in House impeachment. pic.twitter.com/NGp6Y3GfGC
— Kelly O’Donnell (@KellyO) December 6, 2019
He also called the House moving forward with articles of impeachment, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for on Thursday, a “reckless abuse of power” and claimed it would “constitute the most unjust, highly partisan, and unconstitutional attempt at impeachment in our nation’s history.”
Cipollone’s letter to Nadler came right before the 5p.m. deadline that Nadler set for the White House last week in his letter to them.
This is the second time the White House has declined to participate in the House Judiciary Committee hearings. According to the rules the House passed previously, the president and his lawyers are invited to attend committee presentations of the evidence, which are happening Monday, as well as ask questions, raise objections, request witnesses or make a concluding presentation.
“The American people deserve transparency,” Nadler said after the White House said it would not participate in the first Judiciary Committee hearing. “If the President thinks the call was ‘perfect’ and there is nothing to hide then he would turn over the thousands of pages of documents requested by Congress, allow witnesses to testify instead of blocking testimony with baseless privilege claims, and provide any exculpatory information that refutes the overwhelming evidence of his abuse of power.”
The White House has already stated that they want a full trial in the Senate should the House impeach the president, instead of having the GOP majority to just dismiss the articles of impeachment outright.
UPDATE: In response to Trump’s announcement, Nadler said, “The American people deserve answers from President Trump. The House invited, and then subpoenaed, his top advisers. The President ordered them not to show and continues to block key evidence from Congress. We are disappointment that the President has once again failed to provide those answers. We gave the President a fair opportunity to question witnesses and present his own to address the overwhelming evidence before us. After listening to him complain about the impeachment process, we had hoped that he might accept our invitation.”
He added, “If the President has no good response to the allegations, then he would not want to appear before the Committee. Having declined this opportunity, he cannot claim that the process is unfair. The President’s failure will not prevent us from carrying out our solemn Constitutional duty.”
