White House tells Democrats to end impeachment inquiry By Seung Min Kim and John Wagner

White House counsel indicates Trump won’t send lawyers to hearing.

WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday appeared to reject the latest entreaties from the House to participate in the rapidly accelerating impeachment inquiry, decrying proceedings as “completely baseless” as Democrats continued with their push to impeach the president by the end of the month.

What happened

Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, indicated to the House Judiciary Committee on Friday that President Donald Trump would not be sending attorneys to its hearing Monday, when the main panel charged with drafting articles of impeachment will hear evidence from Intelligence Committee lawyers on its investigation into the president’s conduct toward Ukraine.

The two-paragraph letter reiterated the White House’s protests that the Democrats’ impeachment investigation violated Trump’s due process rights. Cipollone did not explicitly say the White House would not participate, but he inferred it.

“House Democrats have wasted enough of America’s time with this charade,” Cipollone wrote on Friday to the Judiciary chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. “You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings.

Why it matters

The response came as little surprise; throughout the impeachment proceedings, the White House has blocked witnesses from testifying, declined to provide documents and did not send lawyers to the Judiciary Committee’s first impeachment hearing Wednesday.

Instead, the White House has looked to the Republican-controlled Senate to wage a defense of Trump, who is accused of abusing the powers of the presidency when he pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as an unfounded theory that Kyiv conspired with Democrats to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

What’s next

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has directed key committees to begin writing the articles, which could include an array of impeachable offenses such as bribery and obstruction of Congress. Members of the Judiciary Committee are slated to meet this weekend to discuss those articles — as Democrats remain locked in debate over expanding them to cover Trump’s behavior outlined by special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia inquiry.

DREW ANGERER / GETTY IMAGES The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Jerry Nadler (left), D-N.Y., confers Wednesday with committee ranking member Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., during an impeachment hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.