Trump impeachment disrupted
Ukrainian Prez faced pressure from Trump, Dems target December
Washington, Oct. 24: A US House of Representatives impeachment inquiry devolved into chaos as Republican lawmakers, encouraged by President Donald Trump to get tougher in fighting Democratic efforts to impeach him over dealings with Ukraine, stormed into a high-security hearing room and delayed testimony by a witness.
The more than two dozen Republican lawmakers, who were not authorized to attend the hearing, entered before Laura Cooper, the US defence official who oversees Ukraine and Russia matters, was due to testify behind closed doors before Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
The Republicans yelled complaints that the Democrats in charge of the inquiry were conducting it in private, lawmakers and aides said. Republicans who are members of the three congressional committees conducting the inquiry have taken part in the process throughout.
After a delay of about four hours, Cooper began her testimony.
It was a dramatic confrontation in the House of Representatives inquiry that threatens Republican Trump’s presidency even as he seeks re-election next year.
Democrats are investigating whether there are grounds to impeach Trump over his July 25 request in a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate a domestic political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden is a front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Federal election law prohibits candidates from accepting foreign help in an election.
The content of the phone call was revealed by a whistleblower complaint against Trump by a person in a US intelligence agency.
The top Republicans on the three committees sent
■ UKRAINIAN PREZ Volodymyr Zelenskiy felt pressure from Trump months before July call on Biden investigation
a letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff calling on him to have the whistleblower testify publicly. They said Schiff had decided that the committees would not hear the whistleblower’s testimony. A Schiff spokesman declined to comment.
Trump had suggested the person committed treason, leading Democrats to worry that their testimony could put them at risk of exposure.
By having Republican lawmakers barge into the hearing room, Trump’s allies sought to put the focus on what they portray as unfair Democratic tactics rather than on the president’s conduct.
Meanwhile, more than two months before the phone call that launched the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, Ukraine’s newly elected leader was already worried about pressure from the US president to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his group of advisers on May 7 in Kyiv had a three-hour discussion talking about how to navigate the insistence from Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani for a probe and how to avoid becoming entangled in the American elections.
The meeting came before Zelenskiy was inaugurated but about two weeks after Trump called to offer his congratulations on the night of the Ukrainian leader’s April 21 election.
The full details of what the two leaders discussed in that phone call are not publicly disclosed.
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers hope to complete their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump by year’s end and are coalescing around two articles of impeachment, abuse of power and obstruction, lawmakers and aides said.
But some Democrats fear that a costly distraction may be the looming battle between the Republican Trump and Congress over funding the government when money runs out for many federal operations on Nov. 21, Democratic aides said.
Some Democratic lawmakers said they believed they already had gathered enough evidence from the testimony of current and former US officials to impeach Trump for asking Ukraine to investigate a political rival, Joe Biden, a leading contender for the presidential nomination in 2020.