House Democrats announced on Tuesday that they will vote on Thursday to move forward with impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
The allegations are the same: Trump broke the law and engaged in quid pro quo corruption by withholding foreign aid from Ukraine and asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden.
The situation in Congress hasn’t changed, either. The House will impeach. The Senate will not.
What could change, however, is the way the House conducts its next steps. The past month has been one of secrecy — closed-door hearings and leaked testimonies, all hidden away from the public. This was a mistake. Impeachment is a political process, and, as such, it must rely on public opinion. The public should be allowed to see what their elected officials are up to, especially when it has to do with the man they put in the White House.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House Democratic leadership should tear down the blinds and give the public access to the hearings that will ultimately help Congress decide whether to remove the president from office. This has everything to do with the public, and yet the people know nothing.
Republicans have accused House Democrats of making the rules up as they go. This is a fair criticism. There might not be much impeachment precedent to go off of, but what little precedent there is Pelosi and Adam Schiff have shirked.
And for what?
Pelosi has claimed the House needs more time to build its case, more time to investigate the allegations against Trump. But the move was more likely politically driven than anything — delaying a floor vote shields vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in 2020 from potential fall-out among their constituencies.
We’ll see what the Democratic case holds on Thursday when the House introduces the resolution. It will issue subpoenas and requests for information, according to Pelosi. The resolution will also establish “the procedure for hearings that are open to the American people, authorizes the disclosure of deposition transcripts, outlines procedures to transfer evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment, and sets forth due process rights for the president and his counsel.”
If Pelosi were smart, she’d make every hearing open to the public, every deposition transcript available, as well as every witness testimony. We deserve to have a say in this process.
Trump, after all, works for us, as does Pelosi. It’s our job to keep them accountable.
