House committee to hold 1st impeachment hearing
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — As they investigate President Donald Trump, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee will hold their first official hearing in what they are calling an impeachment investigation.
Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s outspoken, loyal former campaign manager, is scheduled to appear Tuesday to discuss the report by former special counsel Robert Mueller. But it’s unlikely that Democrats will get much new information as they decide whether to draft articles of impeachment against the president.
“Excited about the opportunity to remind the American people today there was no collusion no obstruction,” Lewandowski, who is considering a Senate run in New Hampshire, tweeted in the hours before the hearing. “There were lots of angry Democrats who tried to take down a duly elected President. Tune in. #Senate2020”
Lewandowski is echoing Trump’s characterization of the Mueller report, a characterization that isn’t fully accurate. Mueller found that there was not enough evidence to establish a conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and Russia, and he also found that Trump could not be exonerated on obstruction of justice. Attorney General William Barr later made his own decision on obstruction, saying there was insufficient evidence.
A devoted friend and supporter of the Republican president, Lewandowski is likely to fiercely defend Trump — and he isn’t expected to elaborate much beyond what he told Mueller’s investigators last year. Mueller himself testified this summer, with no bombshells. Two other witnesses who were subpoenaed alongside Lewandowski — former White House aides Rick Dearborn and Rob Porter — won’t show up at all, on orders from the White House.
The hearing underscores what has been a central dilemma for House Democrats all year — they have promised to investigate Trump, aggressively, and many of their base supporters want them to move quickly to try to remove him from office. But the White House has blocked their oversight requests at most every turn, declining to provide new documents or allow former aides to testify. The Republican Senate is certain to rebuff any House efforts to bring charges against the president. And moderate Democrats in their own caucus have expressed nervousness that the impeachment push could crowd out their other accomplishments.
Still, the Judiciary panel is moving ahead, approving rules for impeachment hearings last week. Among those guidelines is allowing staff to question witnesses, as will happen for the first time with Lewandowski.
Lewandowski was a central figure in Mueller’s report. Mueller’s investigators detailed two episodes in which Trump asked Lewandowski to direct then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit Mueller’s investigation. Trump said that if Sessions would not meet with Lewandowski, then Lewandowski should tell Sessions he was fired.
Lewandowski never delivered the message but asked Dearborn, a former Sessions aide, to do it. Dearborn said he was uncomfortable with the request and declined to deliver it, according to the report.
Porter, a former staff secretary in the White House, took frequent notes during his time there that were detailed throughout the report. He resigned last year after public allegations of domestic violence by his two ex-wives.
In letters to the committee on Monday, the White House said that Dearborn and Porter were “absolutely immune” from testifying. White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote that the Justice Department had advised, and Trump had directed, them not to attend “because of the constitutional immunity that protects senior advisers to the president from compelled congressional testimony.”