Pelosi: Impeachment inquiry to focus on whistleblower complaint against Trump
House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry will zero in on the whistleblower complaint against President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confi rmed Thursday.
She said allegations that spurred previous impeachment calls, including accusations the Trump 2016 campaign colluded with Russia and that the president obstructed justice with attempts to thwart special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, would take a back seat.
For now, congressional Democrats are focusing on a whistleblower allegation that Mr. Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and his son Hunter.
“The consensus in our caucus is that our focus now is on this allegation,” Mrs. Pelosi told reporters. “This is the focus of the moment because this is the charge. All of the other work that remains … those things will be considered later.”
News reports about the whistleblower complaint triggered a tidal wave of support for impeachment among Democrats, with dozens of moderate holdouts coming forward since Monday.
Mrs. Pelosi this week announced a “formal impeachment inquiry” that tasked six of her committee chairmen to investigate the president under an “umbrella approach.”
However, she did not set a timeline for the investigation and said the process would depend on the outcome of an Intelligence Committee investigation.
“The facts will determine the timeline,” she said.
Many of even the most ardent supporters of impeachment support the narrowed approach, arguing it was the watershed moment they were waiting for.
“I really think it takes the president’s lawlessness to a whole new level in the sense that we are watching it unfold in front of us,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Washington Democrat, told The Washington Times.
“It’s not something in the past. It’s not what happened as a candidate. It’s he as president doing it himself.”
Another key reason for the Democrats to go all +i--on on the Ukraine allegation
is that it has the best chance of getting most, if not the entire, caucus behind it.
“I think it’s definitely understandable as the right approach because the Ukraine complaint is arguably the complaint that unites the majority of the members of the caucus,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The Times.
Some are optimistic that the tight focus could speed along the investigation and bring lawmakers to a decision on articles of impeachment by the end of the year.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, however, argued Mrs. Pelosi owed the public an apology for rushing ahead on impeachment.
“She opened an impeachment inquiry without seeing one word of evidence. In what world is that responsible?” he said.
Other Republicans, while not jumping on the impeachment train, have said the whistleblower complaint brings up questions that need to be addressed.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a member of the Foreign Affairs committee, which also is looking into the Ukraine issue, said there are a number of questions that will be harder to answer in the chaos of an impeachment inquiry.
“Simply put, why was aid to Ukraine suspended? Secondly, what role, if any, did Mr. Giuliani play in foreign policy and what conversations and meetings did he have? Was he working independently or at the direction of the president?” the Illinois Republican asked.
Meanwhile, Mr. McCarthy rallied behind Mr. Trump, saying no other president has had to release a transcript of any of his calls and slammed the whistleblower complaint because the whistleblower did not witness the president’s phone call.
He also said the president’s request for a “favor” in the call was being misinterpreted — it was not a quid pro quo, Mr. Mc-Carthy argued, but a “perfectly legal” request for Ukraine to join an open investigation into the 2016 election.
Ultimately, Mr. McCarthy argued, the push to release all the documents hurt the country.
“That just weakened America’s national security for every president in the future,” he said.
