Democrats are constructing a case against President Trump that will allow them to draft at least two articles of impeachment based on obstruction of justice and abuse of power.
“At some point in time obviously, we will conclude the information gathering phase and make a determination whether they rise to a place where no one is above the law,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said Tuesday, describing the impeachment process. “Abuse of power, as Hamilton pointed out, was a high crime and misdemeanor.”
Democrats believe Trump misused his office to try to convince Ukraine government officials to investigate his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.
They also believe Trump has worked to obstruct their investigation by denying access to documents and witnesses subpoenaed by House Democrats in an impeachment investigation they began in late September.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California has repeatedly warned the Trump administration that failure to cooperate would help Democrats built a case to impeach him for obstruction. Several witnesses have been no-show and the White House is refusing to turn over emails and other documents Democrats are seeking that relate to Ukraine.
On Monday, former Deputy National Security Adviser Charles Kupperman followed White House orders and did not show up for a deposition House Democrats had scheduled.
Schiff called Kupperman’s refusal to testify, “very plain additional and powerful evidence of obstruction of Congress in its lawful function by the president that yet again, and even after a court decision affirming the right of Congress to proceed with this impeachment investigation, the White House has obstructed the work of a coequal branch of government.”
Schiff has not yet drafted impeachment articles.
Democrats continue to call current and former Trump administration officials to testify behind closed doors inside a secure hearing room that is located in the Capitol basement.
While some have refused to testify, others have shown up for daylong questioning that will continue at least for the rest of this week.
The House is slated to vote Thursday on a resolution outlining the process for holding public hearings and for transmitting impeachment articles to the House Judiciary Committee, which will be tasked with advancing them to the House floor.
There is no timeline yet for starting public hearings or drafting impeachment articles, Hoyer said Tuesday.
“The consensus of our caucus that we have this responsibility, and we’re not going to shirk it but we haven’t put a time-frame on it,” said Hoyer. “But we would like to do it as expeditiously as possible and that will be informed by the facts, by our conclusions, and where we think we need to go.”
Democrats who are part of the closed-door inquiry say the witness testimony has provided evidence Trump used his office for political gain.
“Basically that this is about trading our national security for personal political favors from a foreign leader,” Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said after more closed-door testimony Tuesday. “It’s substituting personal political interest for the national interest.”
Tuesday’s deposition featured Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman who listened to the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Vindman said he thought it was not proper for Trump to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen.
“There is not anything I have heard that is dramatically different,” Malinowski said. “It absolutely corroborates what other witnesses have told us and provides additional details that are interesting and of reinforcing the narrative of inappropriate intrusion of politics into a bilateral relationship.”
President Trump has denied wrongdoing and said there was no “quid pro quo” in exchange for billions in security aid that was delayed but eventually provided to Ukraine.
The last time the House impeached a president, it settled on two impeachment articles.
The House voted on Dec. 19, 1998, to send two articles of impeachment to the Senate, one for perjury and the other for obstruction of justice in the Monica Lewinsky investigation. Lawmakers rejected a third article based on perjury and a fourth article accusing the president of abuse of power when he tried to conceal his relationship with Lewinsky, who was a White House intern.
The Senate voted against convicting Clinton.
Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina said Democrats may also cite Trump for recalling U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who the president said was bad-mouthing him in Ukraine.
Yovanovitch testified that Trump removed her based on “unfounded and false claims,” and that she believes she was recalled because her anti-corruption work was getting in the way of the “personal financial ambitions” of Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
Meadows, similar to most Republicans who have participated in the closed-door depositions so far, said he has not learned anything that would lead him to support impeachment articles.
The U.S. ultimately delivered the security aid to Ukraine and Trump’s call to Zelensky has been largely transcribed and released to the public, Meadows said.
“They can impeach him over anything, whether it’s justified or not,” Meadows told the Washington Examiner. “Really what they are trying to do is impeach him over what he said and what he may have thought, versus what he actually did.”
