WASHINGTON -- Top House lawyers on Monday testified in a hearing over the impeachment case against President Donald Trump, even as Democrats prepared formal charges.
In a daylong hearing by the House Judiciary Committee, Democrats outlined their case against the president by saying Trump pushed to have Ukraine investigate presidential candidate Joe Biden while withholding U.S. military aid, running counter to U.S. policy and benefiting Russia as well as himself. Trump and his allies railed against the proceedings, with Republicans defending the president as having done nothing wrong ahead of the 2020 election.
Dan Goldman, the director of investigations at the House Intelligence Committee, testified that "President Trump's persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security."
Republicans rejected not only Goldman's conclusions as he presented the Intelligence Committee's 300-page report on the investigation, but also his very appearance before the judiciary panel. In a series of heated exchanges, they said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, should appear rather than send his lawyer.
"Where's Adam?" asked Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "We want Schiff," echoed Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.
[Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8lacgfhqHE]
The presentations by Goldman and a Democratic lawyer for the Judiciary Committee will form the basis for a debate in the committee over articles of impeachment charging a president with high crimes and misdemeanors for only the fourth time in American history.
The lawyers suggested that despite Republican objections, the panel could charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
In ordering House Democrats to draft the articles of impeachment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is facing a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution's bar of "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."
Pelosi, D-Calif., met with her leadership team privately on Monday evening. Among the key decisions will be whether to include an obstruction charge from former special counsel Robert Mueller's findings, as some liberals want, or whether to keep the impeachment articles focused on Ukraine, as centrist Democrats prefer.
Describing Trump as a "continuing risk to the country," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., accused the president of using his office to pressure Ukraine to launch political investigations, and then trying to block Congress from investigating him.
"President Trump put himself before country," he said. "The president welcomed foreign interference in our election in 2016, he demanded it in 2020, and then he got caught."
Collins said Democrats are racing to jam impeachment through on a "clock and a calendar" ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
"They can't get over the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and they don't have a candidate that can beat him," Collins said.
In one testy exchange, Republican attorney Stephen Castor dismissed the White House memo detailing Trump's July 25 call with Ukraine's leader, citing "eight ambiguous lines" that did not amount to the president seeking a personal political favor.
Castor said there was "simply no clear evidence" that Trump had "malicious intent in withholding a meeting or security assistance," arguing that there was ample evidence that the president had legitimate concerns about corruption in Ukraine. And Castor accused Democrats of having gone "searching for a set of facts on which to impeach the president," essentially manufacturing a scandal.
Democrats argued that Trump during the call could not have been clearer in seeking political dirt on Biden, who is running to become the Democratic nominee for the 2020 presidential election.
Asked for his view, Goldman testified, "I don't think there's any other way to read the words on the page."
Republicans also revived criticism of Schiff's decision to expose phone records of members of Congress. The inquiry showed that Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was in frequent contact with Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Collins accused Democrats of engaging in a "smear" campaign against lawmakers by disclosing phone records. Goldman said investigators did not subpoena lawmaker accounts but simply matched them up once they appeared in the records.
The White House is refusing to participate in the impeachment process.
Trump and his allies acknowledge he likely will be impeached in the Democratic-controlled House, but they also expect acquittal next year in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority.
Democrats say Trump abused his power in the July phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor in investigating Democrats. That was bribery, they say, since at the same time, Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in military aid that Ukraine depended on to counter Russian aggression.
"Such conduct is clearly impeachable," Nadler said at the end of the nine-hour hearing. "This committee will proceed accordingly."
Republicans argued throughout the hearing that Trump eventually released the aid to Ukraine without any investigations into Biden, though the president made that move after a whistleblower came forward to allege wrongdoing. The Republicans said Trump was within his rights to block his top aides from testifying while the courts decide on the issue of executive privilege.
Republicans also sought to undercut the witnesses who did decide to testify publicly, including several Trump administration appointees who provided testimony about the president's Ukraine policy.
[Gallery not loading above? Click here for more photos » arkansasonline.com/1210impeachment/]
Several Republican lawmakers openly criticized Gordon Sondland, Trump's ambassador to the European Union, who said last month that there was a "quid pro quo" requiring Ukraine to announce investigations into Democrats before Trump would meet with Zelenskiy at the White House.
In his opening remarks Monday, Castor pointed out more than 600 references to Sondland in the Intelligence Committee report, suggesting that Democrats had leaned heavily on an unreliable witness in making their case.
"Sondland as a witness -- he's a bit of an enigma," Castor said. "He stated that he doesn't have notes because he doesn't take notes, and he conceded that he doesn't have recollections of a lot of these issues."
Trump has previously quoted from Sondland's testimony to defend himself, saying that he told the ambassador that he wanted "no quid pro quo" from Ukraine.
Pelosi and Democrats point to a "pattern" of conduct by Trump in seeking foreign interference in elections, including Russia's meddling in the 2016 campaign.
In his report, Mueller did not find that Trump's campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia. But Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the probe, and he left it for Congress to determine.
Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly, Eric Tucker, and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times; and by Rachael Bade, Mike DeBonis, Elise Viebeck, Toluse Olorunnipa, Colby Itkowitz, Devlin Barrett, Karoun Demirjian, John Wagner and Ashley Parker of The Washington Post.
A Section on 12/10/2019