Impeachment charges sent to Senate
Trump calls it a ‘hoax,’ asks GOP lawmakers to rally to his defense
WASHINGTON >> A team of newly appointed House impeachment managers marched two charges against President Donald Trump across the Capitol on Wednesday, delivering them to the Senate along with a formal notification that they are ready to begin only the third presidential impeachment trial in American history.
The highly choreographed procession, just hours after the House voted almost entirely along party lines to send the articles and appoint the managers, marked the beginning of what promises to be a historic if partisan impeachment trial, a proceeding that has already opened divisions in the nor
mally staid Senate.
The tribunal, the first impeachment trial to play out in a presidential election year, has the potential to shape Trump’s legacy, to stoke the country’s political polarization and to inject new uncertainty into the 2020 elections.
The 228-193 vote to adopt the articles and appoint the managers came almost a month after the House impeached Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, formally accusing him of seeking foreign election assistance from Ukraine and then trying to conceal his actions from a House inquiry.
Only one Democrat, Rep. Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota, joined every Republican in voting “no.”
Now the trial is set to begin. Today the Senate will invite the impeachment managers to formally exhibit the articles. Once they do so, the Senate will summon Chief Justice John Roberts to preside and all senators will take an oath to administer “impartial justice.”
The Senate must promptly issue a summons to Trump informing him of the charges and requesting a response. At the White House on Wednesday, an irate Trump denounced the inquiry anew as a “hoax,” and encouraged Republican lawmakers to rally to his defense shortly before the vote.
“I’d rather have you voting than sitting here listening to me introduce you,” Trump told lawmakers during a signing ceremony for an initial trade deal with China, instructing them to leave if they needed to cast votes at the Capitol against moving forward with impeachment. “They have a hoax going on over there — let’s take care of it.”
The process could damage the president, exposing conduct that some voters find unacceptable, but Trump is almost certain to use his likely acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate as a complete exoneration and turn the considerable apparatus of his campaign to stoking public outrage over the process.
Democrats believe the proceeding will put pressure on Republicans — particularly those facing tough reelection challenges — to condemn Trump or risk being cast as an apologist for his misdeeds.
“We are here today to cross a very important threshold in American history,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said as she spoke on the House floor before the vote. Regardless of the outcome, she added, Trump would be “impeached for life.”
Earlier Wednesday, Pelosi introduced the lawmakers who would serve as prosecutors, or managers, of the case. Both chambers were also grappling Wednesday with a trove of new documents related to Trump’s pressure campaign that played into Democrats’ arguments that any trial must include new witnesses and evidence. More material was expected to be disclosed, according to an official working on the impeachment inquiry.
“Time has been our friend in all of this because it has yielded incriminating evidence, more truth into the public domain,” Pelosi told reporters, arguing that the emergence of new revelations had validated her strategy to delay pressing charges for weeks.
In the Senate, the contours of a trial were taking shape as crucial Republicans indicated they would soon debate the issue of whether to call witnesses during the proceedings.
Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate from Maine, said she had worked with a cluster of like-minded Republicans — Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah — to ensure a vote on the matter after opening arguments from each side, which Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has already proposed.
Pelosi announced a House prosecution team that will be led by Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee who led the Ukraine inquiry.
He will be joined by Reps. Jerrold Nadler of New York, chairman of the Judiciary Committee; Zoe Lofgren of San Jose; Hakeem Jeffries of New York; Val B. Demings of Florida; Jason Crow of Colorado; and Sylvia R.
Garcia of Texas.
Several of the lawmakers have courtroom experience of some kind, a quality Pelosi said she sought. Two, Crow and Garcia, are both first-term members.
The managers met for the first time as a group on Wednesday to discuss strategy in the basement chambers of the Intelligence Committee, where the impeachment inquiry unfolded last fall.
In the coming days, the managers will try to lift their arguments against Trump above partisan politics. Their task is twofold.
First they will aim to re-create the highlights of the two-month investigation into the Ukraine matter, relying on testimony from more than a dozen senior U.S. diplomats and White House officials who outlined a broad campaign by Trump to use the levers of his government to exert pressure on Ukraine to publicly announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and claims that the Democrats colluded with Ukraine in the 2016 election. The president, they said, ultimately withheld $400 million in military aid earmarked for Ukraine and a coveted White House meeting for its new leader as leverage.
“This trial is necessary because President Trump gravely abused the power of his office when he strongarmed a foreign government to announce investigations into his domestic political rival,” Nadler said during a brief debate on the House floor before the vote.
Republican leaders have said the proceeding will not begin in earnest until Tuesday.