After a long day of debate that many anticipated would end in a vote on articles of impeachment against President Trump, a ranking GOP member of the House Judiciary Committee tore into Chairman Jerry Nadler for postponing the vote.
“To be clear, the vote this committee just took is not a vote on the final passage of the article. It was a procedural vote, which proceeds for final passage of each of the articles,” Nadler said.
“It has been a long two days of consideration of these articles, and it is now very late at night,” he continued. “I want the members on both sides of the aisle to think about what has happened over these last few days and to search their consciences before we cast our final votes. Therefore, the committee will now stand in recess until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., at which point I will move to divide the question so that each of us may have the opportunity to cast up or down votes on each of the articles of impeachment. Until history be our judge, the committee is in recess.”
“This is the kangaroo court we were talking about,” an incensed Republican Georgia Rep. Doug Collins objected, as he ripped into Nadler for adjourning the evening’s hearing without a vote.
Collins continued to voice his objection to the abrupt termination of the day’s hearings, despite howls from the audience that “Nobody’s watching!”
Others shouted that the hearing was “Stalin-esque” and “unbelievable.” Another member could be heard on a hot mic saying, “This was a really sneaky move on their part. We would never treat them like that.”
In a subsequent press briefing, Collins continued to slam Nadler and the proceedings, which he characterized as “[the worst] violation of trust between a chairman and our ranking members I’ve ever seen.”
Explaining the chairman had failed to disclose his intention for adjourning the hearings, Collins asserted, “To do that right there shows that Chairman Nadler’s integrity is zero. His staff is zero. They have nothing that they can offer anymore except the kangaroo court that we’ve seen the past few days.”
“This chairman has made himself irrelevant,” Collins continued. “They don’t have anything to impeach this president on. They don’t have anything they can move on, except do bush league stuff like this.”
“This just shows the American people why this right here is wrong,” Collins further thundered, adding, “This president has been attacked for three years, and tonight, it showed it completely.”
