Silicon Valley Rep. Zoe Lofgren has a special role in impeachment trial.
Veteran San Jose legislator has been part of past inquiries
San Jose Rep. Zoe Lofgren made House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seven-member Trump impeachment team Wednesday.
It’s not a surprise why:
Lofgren, who has served in the House since 1995, is the only member of Congress who participated in the last three impeachment inquiries: From President Richard Nixon to President Bill Clinton to Trump.
“It is with honor and determination that I accept this responsibility to fulfill my oath of office to hold the president accountable,” Rep. Lofgren said in a statement Wednesday.
The team of House Democrats, which will be led by Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff of Pasadena and Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, includes lawmakers from across the country, particularly with courtroom experience. And in Lofgren’s case, impeachment experience.
“As the only member of Congress who has participated as part of the Judiciary Committees for all three modern impeachment proceedings, I must be clear that this is not something I sought or relish,” she said Wednesday. “Impeachment is a grave and solemn matter. It’s a stress test for our democracy. I hope every senator is prepared to seriously consider and vote honestly with an open mind for the future of our democ
racy.”
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel criticized the team’s membership Wednesday on Twitter as stacked with lawmakers who hate the president.
“Zoe Lofgren has been consumed by impeachment for years,” McDaniel tweeted. “This is just more evidence of the incredibly biased and unfair process led by Nancy Pelosi.”
As a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, Lofgren was deeply involved in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. She was among the House Democrats who voted last month to impeach Trump on charges of abuse of power for allegedly pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son’s ties to a Ukrainian energy company. The House also charged Trump with obstructing Congress’ impeachment inquiry. The House sent the articles Wednesday to the Senate.
Biden’s son Hunter served as a paid board member of energy company Burisma, though he had no experience in the country or the field, while Biden represented U.S. policy with the former Soviet republic. Critics have suggested the arrangement represented self-dealing by the former vice president, now a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden openly bragged about applying pressure for Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating corruption.
But Lofgren has said it was “improper” for Trump to use the office of the presidency to push another country to investigate a political rival.
The House voted 230197 to charge Trump with abuse of power and 229198 to charge him with obstruction of Congress, with the votes largely split along party lines. Two Democrats voted against both articles, Reps. Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey. A third, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, voted for one impeachment article, and Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii voted present for both.
Trump called the impeachment a Democratic “con job.”
Before the Trump impeachment, Lofgren was a member of Congress during the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice stemming from his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The votes were 223-206 and 221-212, with five Democrats joining the Republicans who then controlled the House.
Lofgren was not among them. She argued recently that “it was a whole different thing,” with Clinton because “he lied about a sexual affair, but he didn’t use presidential powers in an effort to subvert the government.”
Before she was elected to Congress, Lofgren was a Santa Clara University law student in 1974 and worked for former Democratic Rep. Don Edwards, a member of the Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment hearings in 1974.
She recalled that her contribution in the final days of the hearings was to write an article of impeachment involving expanding the Vietnam War into Cambodia to destroy enemy sanctuaries in 1969 and 1970.
“So I wrote that one, which was way above my pay grade,” Lofgren recalled recently.
The Judiciary Committee rejected that article she authored — Congress had authorized funding for Nixon’s actions in Cambodia. The committee approved three articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice, abuse of power and contempt of Congress were approved by the committee, but Nixon resigned before the full House could vote.
Only one other U.S. president has been impeached. Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat opposed to secession, was elected vice president on a bipartisan unity ticket for President Abraham Lincoln’s reelection during the Civil War, and became president upon Lincoln’s 1865 assassination. He was impeached in 1868 for violating a law aimed at preventing him from replacing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and survived removal from office in the Senate by one vote.