As they rush to impeach President Trump, Democrats have failed to recruit a single House Republican or to link the president’s offense clearly to an actual crime.
Those aren’t their only troubles. They’ve had to send the case against Trump back to Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t trust to handle the initial impeachment hearings. She turned the duty over to Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. But now Nadler is back in charge, whether Pelosi likes it or not. The Constitution requires the Judiciary Committee to recommend articles of impeachment for the full House to vote on.
Another problem for Democrats is convincing the public to favor the impeachment of Trump and his removal from office. Schiff failed to deliver on that, even after handpicking the witnesses at his hearings. If Nadler now finds a way to boost support for driving Trump out of the White House, that would be a surprise. Democrats especially need help with independent voters, with whom the idea of impeaching Trump appears to have lost favor.
Then there’s the matter of skittish Democrats whose House seats were captured by Trump in 2016. There are 31 of them, 21 of whom are in their first term. “They are not happy,” a GOP official insists. Republicans are already putting campaign-like pressure on them to oppose impeachment or abstain.
Losing even a handful of votes would be an embarrassment for Democrats, all the more so because Republican House members are united against impeachment. Democrats were hopeful that Will Hurd, 42, a respected congressman and the lone African American in the GOP caucus, would desert Trump. Hurd, who is retiring at the end of his term, has been a critic of Trump’s foreign policy, notably in Ukraine. At the final Schiff hearing, he said the president’s now-famous comments in his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were “inappropriate” and “not how the executive should handle such things.” Trump had asked Zelensky to investigate the Ukraine-related business activities of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. At the time, $391 million in military aid to Ukraine was being withheld.
But Hurd said he did not believe the president had committed either a crime or an impeachable infraction. “An impeachable offense should be compelling, overwhelming, clear, and unambiguous,” Hurd said. “And it’s not something to be rushed or taken lightly. I’ve not heard evidence proving the president committed bribery or extortion.”
A special blow to Democrats was Hurd’s point about the lack of evidence of bribery by Trump. The notion that the president sought to bribe Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden by threatening to cut off aid — that’s the centerpiece of the Democratic case. Bribery is cited by name in the Constitution as an impeachable offense.
But it’s unclear if Trump’s asking for a favor from the Ukrainian leader while holding back aid reflected an actual crime. An impeachable offense doesn’t have to be a crime. But the articles of impeachment against both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton included crimes. If Trump’s prime offense is not connected to a crime, that would likely become a significant political issue when (or if) the full House votes and sends the case to the Senate. And Trump’s allies would harp on the question, “Where’s the crime?”
Carissa Byrne Hessick, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, wrote in the Atlantic: “The law generally defines bribery as the ‘corrupt payment, receipt, or solicitation of a private favor for official action.’ That definition appears in one form or another in criminal laws across the country.” In other words, the offense of “bribery” cited in the Constitution is consistent with actual crimes.
Adam White, the director of the Center for the Study of the Administrative State at George Mason University and a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, described an impeachable offense this way: “If Trump leveraged USA aid to convince a foreign power to investigate his political rival, then it would be impeachable.” But would that offense be a crime? “I don’t think so,” he told me.
Fred Barnes is a Washington Examiner senior columnist.
