Pelosi urges narrow Trump probe
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and senior House Democrats agreed in a private meeting yesterday that they should narrow their impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump to his dealings with the president of Ukraine, according to five Democrats familiar with the conversation.
The closed-door meeting took place shortly after the White House released a rough transcript of a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump pressed Zelensky to work with Attorney General William P. Barr and personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, who is seeking to unseat Trump.
Democrats said the evidence was incriminating enough – and easy enough for voters to understand – to proceed with their impeachment inquiry and soon. ‘‘Strike while the iron’s hot,’’ said one individual in the meeting, summarising the sentiment. Democrats said they could move quickly on impeachment and act by the end of the year.
The Democrats spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe private discussions.
Inside the room, Democrats said, Pelosi, told colleagues that keeping the inquiry narrowly focused on the Ukraine allegations could also help keep the investigation out of the courts, where a slew of investigative matters have been bogged down for months – though she did not rule out ultimately including other episodes in potential articles of impeachment.
The meeting included multiple members of the House Judiciary Committee, which has been probing alleged obstruction of justice, self-dealing and other matters involving Trump, though not Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. It ended without a firm decision on whether to circumscribe those probes entirely but with consensus inside the room that narrowing the investigation, if only in terms of political messaging, made sense.
‘‘I think we need to focus on what this very clear threat to national security and to our Constitution is,’’ said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-mich., a member of Pelosi’s leadership circle who spoke generally about her own views but not about what was said inside the meeting. ‘‘I think a lot of the American people understand that ... and I think we need to focus on something that everybody understands.’’
Earlier yesterday, rank-andfile House Democrats had split on whether to keep the investigation narrowly focused on the Ukrainian affair or look at a much broader portfolio of alleged wrongdoing.
The question, according to conversations with more than a dozen lawmakers and aides yesterday, stands to be crucial to the unfolding probe. How it is resolved will dictate key decisions, such as how long the investigation will take, which committees and lawmakers will be involved and what witnesses will be brought before Congress.
Multiple Judiciary Committee members said that they expected probes of other matters to continue unabated and potentially contribute to impeachment articles drafted this year. Several liberal lawmakers also want to include multiple charges in any impeachment articles.
‘‘There’s clearly enough evidence before the Judiciary Committee, in my view, to support articles of impeachment on a number of issues,’’ said Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., a member of both the Judiciary panel and the House leadership team.
– Washington Post