DIRTY LIL’ SECRET
Lindsey rips House ‘star chamber’ impeach
Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday lashed out at the Democrats’ House impeachment inquiry, calling it a “star chamber” that’s operating in secret but leaking damaging information about President Trump to force him from office.
“What they’re doing is selectively leaking information to drive the president’s poll numbers down and to drive the momentum for impeachment up. Everything coming out of this star chamber process is being leaked by Democrats,” Graham told reporters as he introduced a nonbinding resolution demanding that the House take steps to make the proceedings more transparent.
Graham focused on prior impeachment efforts against Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, in which the full House eventually voted to launch the investigations.
“When you’re talking about removing the president of the United States, seems to me you’d want to have a process that is consistent with who we are as Americans and consistent with what Bill Clinton was allowed to do, Richard Nixon was allowed to do,” he said.
“The process in the House today, I think, is a danger to the future of the presidency because if you can drive down a president’s poll numbers by having proceedings where you selectively leak information, where the president, who’s the subject of all this is pretty much shut out, God help future presidents.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that nothing in the House rules requires a full vote before an inquiry can be launched and that public hearings will be held as early as next month, with more evidence released.
But Graham insisted that Democrats were acting in bad faith.
“A lot of people want to get Trump and they don’t give a damn about how they get him. I am not telling you what he did or didn’t do. I’m telling you what they’re doing in the House is dangerous to the country,” he declared.
The South Carolina Republican — one of Trump’s most loyal backers and one of the Senate’s managers in the 1999 impeachment trial against Clinton — described the president’s sense of grievance after they had lunch.
“He would like the process to be exposed for being basically unfair. He keeps telling us he did nothing wrong. He keeps telling me that the phone call was perfect,” he said about Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked him to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter and a conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that meddled in the 2016 election.
But Graham also hedged when asked about the president’s behavior, and took a shot at the shifting stories coming from the White House.
“I’m not here to tell you that Donald Trump’s done nothing wrong. I’m not here to tell you anything other than that the way they’re going about it is really dangerous for the country,” he said.
Asked about Team Trump’s inconsistent messaging, he cracked sarcastically, “Have you noticed?” before adding that acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told him the administration was working to mount a stronger defense.
Democrats scoffed at Graham’s claims, noting that Trump has withheld requested documents and tried to stop officials from testifying.
Earlier, Graham dismissed the testimony of Acting US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor.
“Did he talk to the president? Oh. That’s hearsay,” he said.
Taylor, a 50-year public servant and decorated US Army officer, told lawmakers that other administration officials told him that Trump had demanded that Ukraine open investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 election before he’d authorize the release of military aid and invite Zelensky to the White House.
Republicans drew attention to the secrecy Wednesday when around two dozen GOP lawmakers not directly involved in the investigation barged into a deposition of a Defense Department official.
Democrats said the closed-door meetings were necessary so that future witnesses couldn’t coordinate their stories.
Bipartisan members of the three House committees heading the investigation have been in the room as diplomats and other officials have testified.