WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said Sunday that he expects a committee vote soon on charges against President Donald Trump, focusing on allegations that he abused his power in a bid to get an unfair advantage in U.S. elections.
"We'll bring articles of impeachment presumably before the committee at some point later in the week," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.
Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., instructed the committee to draft articles of impeachment -- formal charges -- against Trump over allegations that he pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate. Committee approval of the articles by Friday would set up a House impeachment vote in the days before Christmas.
"There's a sense of urgency because [Trump] will do anything -- judging from his past conduct -- that he can to get interference and to rig the next election," Nadler said on NBC's Meet the Press.
On Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy criticized Democrats for what he said was an attempt at preventing the nation's voters from making their own choices in the 2020 election.
"Two-thirds of those Democrats have already voted for impeachment before they heard anything," said McCarthy, R-Calif. "If they do not impeach him, they cannot beat him at the polls."
Democrats were working through the weekend as articles were being drafted, and Judiciary Committee members prepared for a hearing today to hear evidence from the House Intelligence Committee, which investigated Trump's dealings with Ukraine.
Democrats say Trump abused his power in a July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor in investigating Democrats. They also accuse Trump of engaging in bribery by withholding nearly $400 million in military aide that Ukraine depends on to counter Russian aggression.
"There is overwhelming evidence that the president sought to coerce Ukraine into interfering in our election, essentially sought to cheat in our next election," said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the Intelligence Committee chairman.
"That is an ongoing threat to the country, and one that simply can't wait for an election that the president is seeking to prejudice with foreign intervention," Schiff said on CBS' Face the Nation.
Schiff's arguments address Republican complaints that the attempt to impeach the president is based on a slip-shod case being rushed out before Christmas for political reasons. Appearing on CNN, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said the House hearings so far amounted to a highly partisan process based mainly on "hearsay."
Pelosi and other Democrats leading the inquiry note that they have repeatedly invited Trump to produce exculpatory evidence or present a defense, and he has done neither. Republicans, they argue, are trying to pervert the concept of fairness to disrupt and delay the inquiry, not to meaningfully participate in the process.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone informed the Judiciary Committee late Friday that the administration would not be participating in upcoming House hearings. He said the proceedings were "completely baseless."
Trump and his aides have made clear that they now see his impeachment in the House as inevitable, and they have shifted their focus to the Republican-controlled Senate, where Trump allies remain confident that Democrats will not have the votes to convict and remove Trump from office. A conviction requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate, where Republicans hold 53 of 100 seats.
The Senate proceeding, however, is also full of unknowns. At a meeting with senior White House officials and senators in the Roosevelt Room of the White House almost three weeks ago, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, made clear that there are not enough Senate votes to approve some of the edgier witnesses that Democrats and Republicans want to call, The New York Times reported.
DEMOCRATS' DECISIONS
Nadler, speaking Sunday on Meet the Press and CNN's State of the Union, declined to say how many articles of impeachment Democrats will present, but he said they will involve "certainly abuse of power" and likely "obstruction of Congress." He said final decisions will come after today's hearing and after discussions with House leadership and the Democratic caucus.
Nadler pointed to a "pattern" of conduct by Trump in seeking foreign interference in elections, but the Judiciary Committee chairman would not commit to including the evidence of obstruction of justice in former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
In his report, Mueller did not find that Trump's campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in the 2016 election. But Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the investigation, and he left it for Congress to determine.
"The central allegation is that the president put himself above his country several times, that he sought foreign interference in our elections several times, both for 2016 and 2020, that he sought to cover it up all the time," Nadler said.
"We have a very rock-solid case. I think the case we have if presented to a jury would be a guilty verdict in about three minutes flat," he said.
SIDES' STRATEGIES
Impeachment charges will be brought without lawmakers hearing from key witnesses, including acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer. Those participants and other important witnesses have refused to testify in the House inquiry, citing White House orders not to.
Some Republicans have expressed concerns with the White House's approach. "It would be to the president's advantage to have people testify who can exculpate him," Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said on ABC's This Week.
Democrats from moderate districts have called for sticking to the most direct evidence and leaving the question about the president's actions during the Mueller investigation for another day -- probably after Trump has left office.
"We should proceed only on those items where we have direct evidence," Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said on This Week. "And there's a lot of direct evidence relative to the abuse of power and Ukraine and the Russians, relative to the Biden investigation."
"We'd be on firmest ground to move forward where we have direct evidence," Lofgren said.
Trump said over the weekend that Giuliani wants to take to the U.S. attorney general and to Congress the information gathered from his own investigations and a recent trip to Ukraine. But Gaetz called Giuliani's trip "weird," coming as House investigators review allegations that Giuliani improperly worked on behalf of Trump to pressure Ukraine to pursue investigations into Biden and Biden's son, as well as a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.
"It is weird that he's over there," Gaetz said on This Week. It's "odd having him over there at this time."
Schiff said he had "little idea" what Trump was talking about regarding Giuliani, "except that the president is only too happy to have his personal attorney continue to seek foreign interference in the next election."
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by Michael D. Shear, Nicholas Fandos and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times; and by Michael Riley, Billy House and Steve Geimann of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 12/09/2019