JUDICIARY COMMITTEE VOTES TO SEND IMPEACHMENT TO HOUSE FLOOR

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By Miriam Raftery

December 13, 2019 (Washington D.C.) – The House Judiciary today voted to send two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the full House. The causes for impeachment listed are abuse of power and obstruction of Congress including the President ordering the White House, executive branch agencies and officials to defy subpoenas and withhold documents and records. 

“In the history of the Republic, no President has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate `High Crimes and Misdemeanors’, the obstruction of Congress article state, noting that federal agencies including State, Defense, and others “refused to produce a single document or record.” Trump also banned witnesses from testifying. “This abuse of office served to cover up the President’s own repeated misconduct and to seize and control the power of impeachment – and thus to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives,” the article continues.

The other impeachment article, abuse of power, accuses Trump of ”conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal benefit” that “compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process,” also injuring the interests of the nation. Specifically, the article accuses Trump of soliciting interference in the 2020 election by pressuring the Ukraine to announce investigations of his rival’s son, Hunter Biden.  Trump suspended $381 million in military aid approved by Congress in a bipartisan vote to help Ukraine oppose Russian aggression. The vital military funds were withheld, along with a promised visit  with the Ukrainian president at the White House, according to the article.

 Judiciary Chairman Gerald Nadler stated, “Today is a solemn and sad day.  For the third time in a little over a century and a half, the House Judiciary has voted articles of impeachment against the President for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.  The House will act expeditiously.”

The articles were approved 23-17 on a party-line vote in the Judiciary Committee. The full House will likely vote next week, which will mandate that a trial be held in the Senate. If two-thirds of the Senators present during the vote support impeachment, then Trump would be removed from office and Vice President Mike Pence would become president. 

“There is no chance the president is going to be removed from office,” Mitch McConnell, Senate Pro Tem president of the Republican-controlled Senate, has told Fox News.

Trump called the impeachment vote “a sham, hoax.”

Republicans on the Judiciary Committee focused largely on criticizing the process, not disproving the actual allegations. They faulted Democrats for relying in part on hearsay despite the fact that witnesses to the President’s actions were prohibited by the President from testifying or turning over records, in violation of lawfully issued subpoenas.

A spokesperson for Vice President Pence called the testimony “one-sided,” the Washington Post reports, adding, “Democrats in Congress should heed the voice of the American people and reject this partisan impeachment that has been a complete waste of time. Democrats in Congress need to get back to work for the American people!”


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Comments

trump impeachment

Submitted by on

So sad today the way he and his projectors, the oligarchy, fool us. Perhaps again the educated young and old will rise and vote our conscious like we did before bringing the US society back to the truth of our Constitution and beautiful legacy of justice and equality for everyone again.

He did it

Submitted by on

I find it remarkable that we have become so tribal that much of the country can not parse or engage with facts-based reality. There was testimony from Trump's own people, once under oath. He did it, and Bribery is actually a word in the constitution. Look it up! And he obstructed congress , straight up no chaser. Any criminal jury would convict in five minutes. But this naked abdication of our great constitution is not only owned by Republicans. I remember Democrats excusing the perjury of William Jefferson Clinton, and I know many Democrats who still excuse his me-too-friendly (dripping with sarcasm there) predatory behavior. But it was the perjury, a crime that can lead to jail time. He did it too! If you are either a Democrat or a Republican, these dark histories are on you! You have put party over country and constitution, and younger generations will remember your words and deeds. And write the history. Shame on all of you! Especially if you are a just another partisan equivocator who ever took an Oath to defend the Constitution. Because you abandoned that oath defecated on our democracy. History will not forget.

Easy Tiger....

Submitted by on

I see, so then any registered Democrats or Republicans have earned criticism from you....an activist “art” teacher who wasted taxpayer money to write a cellphone app that would assist criminals in defeating our boarder security and put our law enforcement officers at risk? Taxpayers should be outraged at this use of funds Or the same guy who tried to make an app that would allow users to tag law abiding gun owners and put their home addresses in a database for retaliation by anyone who might be anti second amendment? Want to out your gun-toting neighbors? There's an app for that. You sir, are a hypocrite and a shining example of everything that is wrong with our once great educational institutions. Hard pass.

8East, who can not even use their real name...

Submitted by on

A) Pretty clear that you are actually hanging your head in shame, maybe you are even one of the oath breakers? B) Give my my trillions back for your needless, lost, glory-free wars from Viet Nam to Afghanistan, and trillions of future dollars back for the degraded climate, and then we can talk about hundreds of dollars spent on humanitarian efforts. So much losing for a generation of failed leaders from both parties. C) If you were constitutionally literate, you would understand that gun rights - of which I am a firm supporter - do not come with any privacy rights. (Read Heller, but please don't argle bargle back at me as, well, you can't understand Heller, even the argle bargle reference will be news to you! Hint: read Heller.) D) Yes, Democrats and Republicans - particularly of a certain generation - have to own the harm they have done to the nation. You may not like it, but it is real and takes not much more than an honest look around to realize it for yourself. The kids know it. I don't like it, but there is a real reason the slur "OK, boomer" has spread like wildfire. But you will not look around or wake up, or even give your own word the grace and dignity of using your real name to sign your message. Because? Party first and "we can't have been wrong" and gaslighting and yelling and doubling down on awful ideas that have failed the stern test of succeeding. Thankfully younger generations will write our history for us, Tiger! I'm man enough to apologize to them for our generations having failed the nation. You are not. I say that with my real name, not hiding from anyone. Like an American.

A solem sad day indeed....

Submitted by on

The big story around the world - from Brexit to the impeachment farce, from Hong Kong to Iraq - is political elites refusing to accept the outcome of elections that don't go their way, and electorates suddenly discovering they're not really allowed to vote on certain things. The Democrats are in trouble, the decision to pursue impeachment has backfired.....bigley. Anyone hear the interviews with Independents on C-SPAN last night? Canary in the coal mine people, believe it. What you are seeing in the UK right now, will be reflected in the US in 2020. I patiently soldiered on for 8 years under Obama, even though I didn't vote for him. I didn't cry, kick rocks, hope half the country would die, or tell my friends to go to hell. Elections have consequences people, you win some, you lose some, but either way life goes on. Trying to undo an election using impeachment was the political equivalent of stepping on a rake, repeatedly. Someone needs to tell these clowns to put the shovels down.

Rule of law?

Submitted by on

Yes, we have all heard the shrill Trump Media, Inc. talking points ad nauseum: “they’re trying to overtuuurrrnn the elecshun!!!”. If that is all that you want to say or think about our constitutional impeachment process, then you either have no respect for the rule of law, or cannot comprehend it. If Trump has a “D” after his name, you’d be all over the Senate to convict, and if you had the slightest bent towards introspection, you’d admit that in a New York minute.

Actually an impeachment would not overturn the election because

Submitted by on

Vice President Mike Pence, who was elected along with Trump, would step up to become President as the Constitution provides and if anything, might have a better chance of reelection because he has not had all of the negatives associated with Trump- the womanzing, racist remarks, self-enrichment, and inviting foreign leaders to influence our elections, to name just a few.  We have a Vice President of the same party as the President specifically for cases in which a President is no longer able to serve, either due to impeachment, death or disabiity.  Democrats would not benefit politically from impeachment and in fact could lose the election, but justified their actions as fulfilling their constitutional duty in many cases.  For those in swing districts, it also puts their own reelection at risk.

A wise politician once told me that if you couldn't look your biggest supporter or donor in the eye and tell them you must vote against their interests if something is bad for the public interest, then you shouldn't be holding public office.  Too many people today seem to think one should put party over country, or loyalty to a particular politician over the publlic interest or even our Constitution. 

It is a slippery slope when we fail to hold officials accountable, whether that's Bush for starting a war based on lies and approving war atrocities, Clinton for perjuring himself before Congress, or Trump for obstructing a Congressional impeachment inquiry.  If those prior presidents had been impeached, censured, or in some way held to account for their illegal actions, perhaps  Trump would not have felt emboldened to believe he is above the law, which by any impartial measure he has clearly done if not with his actions in Ukraine than clearly by telling his cabinet officials and department heads to defy Congressional subpoenas.  Even Clinton honored a subpoena and showed up to testify.  If Trump is innocent, why would he not allow a single witness to come testify to say so?  Perhaps because he is guilty and anyone saying otherwise would have to lie and commit perjury themselves.

 

Possibly

Submitted by on

Because Trump supporters believe the President (as long as he’s GOP), is completely above the law. Yes, Dems may suffer for this, but sometimes that happens when one has to uphold the principle of law. Pretty obvious for anyone with eyes to see that Trump has a long history of corrupt, cheating behavior that he has imported to the WH. With happy support from his followers, who unbelievably also admire Putin. If that’s the direction the country is headed, so be it. Shame on us if that’s the case. But it won’t take away the fact that some brave Dems put country before party to do the RIGHT thing.

I'm actually surprised Democrats are going this far

Submitted by on

For a fairly timid, snakebit political party it is fairly remarkable that the Democrats are actually standing up a little. Unfortunately, Tom Perez is clueless in terms of how to make Republicans play a price for voting to acquit a president who so obviously did it. Not to mention, Democrats now have to live with their own acquittal of a president who also actually did commit the crime. Perjury in the case of Bill Clinton, which Dems justified as mere lying about sex and ended up being a move that not only probably cost them the presidency in 2000 - imagine it had been President Al Gore running - but also has not aged well in the #metoo era. Maybe this party can be something someday, if it can learn to get out of its own way and abide by their own principles consistently. In the mean time, the country is left with a meek centrist party and a white supremacist party who locks babies in cages. Yay America.

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