McConnell: Impeachment is likely
WASHINGTON — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Republican senators Wednesday to be ready for an impeachment trial of President Donald Trump as soon as Thanksgiving, as the Senate began to brace for a political maelstrom that would engulf the nation.
An air of inevitability has taken hold in Congress, with the expectation that Trump will become the third president in history to be impeached — and that Republicans need to prepare to defend the president. While McConnell briefed senators on what would happen during a Senate trial, House GOP leaders convened what they expect will be regular impeachment strategy sessions.
In their closed-door weekly luncheon, McConnell gave a presentation about the impeachment process and fielded questions alongside his staff and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who was a manager for the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
Impeachment is the first step to remove a president, with the House voting on formal charges and the Senate holding a trial in which it either convicts or acquits him.
McConnell said the Senate likely would meet six days a week during the trial, lawmakers said.
“There’s sort of a planned expectation that it would be sometime around Thanksgiving, so you’d have basically Thanksgiving to Christmas — which would be wonderful because there’s no deadline in the world like the next break to motivate senators,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, RN.D., said.
During the meeting, Graham lobbied his colleagues to consider a public declaration in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., which would describe Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy seeking an investigation into a domestic political rival as “unimpeachable.” Some senators, however, pushed back against that idea, arguing that Trump would assume that those who did not sign the document would be persuadable on a vote to oust him.
Meanwhile, Trump has continued to lash out at Democrats over their impeachment inquiry. During a Wednesday afternoon White House meeting on Syria and the Turkish attacks on the Kurds, Trump called Pelosi a “third-rate politician,” according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Pelosi later clarified that Trump actually called her a “third-grade politician.”
It was the two party leaders’ first face-to-face meeting since Pelosi launched the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24, arguing that Trump betrayed his oath of office by pressuring Zelensky to dig up dirt on former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“He couldn’t handle it,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol, speculating that an overwhelming bipartisan House vote earlier Wednesday condemning Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria had set him off. “He just couldn’t handle it. … So, he just kind of engaged in a meltdown.”
The GOP’s internal reality check on Trump’s impeachment comes as House Democrats have had success securing damaging testimony from current and former State Department and National Security Council officials, many of whom are voicing long-held concerns about Trump’s actions on Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Michael McKinley, the former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, testified that he resigned from his post of more than 25 years last week because State Department officials were being mistreated — and because he disapproved of using foreign policy to advance political prospects.
“I was disturbed by the implication that foreign governments were being approached to procure negative information on political opponents,” he told lawmakers in an opening statement. “I was convinced that this would also have a serious impact on Foreign Service morale and the integrity of our work overseas.”
Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union — who is described in testimony as one of the “three amigos” designated to pressure Ukraine into investigating the Bidens — is scheduled to testify Thursday.