Speaker Nancy Pelosi has found a new way to satisfy the most liberal faction within her caucus and the Democratic base while pushing off impeachment of President Trump — for now.
Rather than jump into an impeachment inquiry, which many party lawmakers clamored for after special counsel Robert Mueller’s recent public statement about his collusion investigation, Pelosi has instructed Democrats to lay out their case against the president in a string of hearings. Democrats also plan to vote on contempt citations against two key Trump administration officials, opening the way to legal action in federal court.
Calling impeachment “an indictment” that many in the public misunderstand, Pelosi, D-Calif., explained the House should first hold hearings and contempt votes before proceeding with the ultimate effort to punish the president. She pointed out many in the public don’t realize that the House cannot eject a president. If impeached by the House, the president’s fate would rest with the Senate, which in this instance would never vote to throw Trump out of the White House.
“So when you are impeaching somebody, you want to make sure you have the strongest possible indictment,” Pelosi said last week, explaining the path House Democrats plan to follow. “Because it’s not the means to an end that people think.”
Democrats who have urged Pelosi to agree to launch an impeachment inquiry seem satisfied with this approach, though they would still prefer to start the impeachment inquiry now. Several liberal lawmakers said Pelosi has convinced them to wait.
“We are still doing what we wanted to do in the very beginning and that’s to make sure that the public has as much information as they possibly can, and we continue to lay out a case for impeachment proceedings,” Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., said.
The action begins this week, when the House votes on June 11 on contempt charges against Attorney General William Barr, whom Democrats have vilified as an agent for Trump. The House will also vote to cite Don McGahn, Trump’s former White House counsel whom Democrats want to question about Trump’s efforts to fire Mueller.
The contempt votes will shift the case to federal district court, which will decide whether Congress should gain access to materials and testimony sought by Democrats.
Democrats will also begin a series of hearings meant to highlight their belief that the president committed a crime by attempting to obstruct the Mueller investigation. The Senate Judiciary Committee begins this week with a hearing entitled “Lessons from the Mueller Report: Presidential Obstruction and Other Crimes.”
The hearing’s star witness won’t be Mueller, who does not want to testify in public about his 448-page report. Instead, Democrats have invited Watergate figure John Dean, who was President Richard Nixon’s White House counsel and served prison time after pleading guilty to obstruction of justice for his role in the Watergate cover-up. Dean is a frequent TV pundit and a critic of the president, calling him a “nitwit” and “evil.”
Democrats are still chasing their star witness, but Mueller is resisting a request to testify publicly. He said in a public statement last month that he won’t say anything beyond what he outlined in the report, which cleared Trump of colluding with Russians but left open whether the president tried to obstruct the investigation.
Party leaders, including Pelosi, say the panel may subpoena Mueller. Democrats believe he can tell them more about examples of obstruction outlined in the report, which could be used to make the case for impeachment.
“His report may speak for itself in one sense, but having an individual as a witness subject to question is a very, very important aspect of fact-finding,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said.
