Dems weigh formal impeachment vote
WASHINGTON — House Democrats are gauging support for a vote to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry as another official testified Tuesday in the deepening probe of President Donald Trump's efforts to have Ukraine investigate Joe Biden.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to meet privately with Democratic lawmakers later Tuesday to survey attitudes about a possible vote, according to people granted anonymity to discuss the planning.
She told reporters she'd have more to say “later,” after the evening meeting with House colleagues.
Trump, who calls the impeachment inquiry an “illegitimate process,” has pressured Pelosi to take a formal vote. Republicans want to test politically vulnerable Democrats with a roll call that could be difficult in areas where Trump remains popular. But Pelosi has so far resisted, saying Congress is well within its power to conduct oversight of the executive branch as part of the Constitution's system of checks and balances, and no vote is needed.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opened the chamber on Tuesday suggesting Democrats were trying to“cancel out” Trump' s election with the march toward impeachment.
The inquiry is moving quickly as a steady stream of officials, largely from the State Department, are appearing behind closed doors this week, some providing vivid details about the events surrounding the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Vol odym yr Zelenskiy, in which Trump urged Zelenskiy to investigate a firm tied to political rival Joe Biden's family and Ukraine's own involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
In 10 hours of testimony Monday, a former White House aide, Fiona Hill, recounted that national security adviser John Bolton was so alarmed by Rudy Giuliani's back-channel activities in Ukraine that he described Trump's personal lawyer as a “hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up.”
The former White House aide detailed Bolton's concerns to lawmakers and told them that she had at least two meetings with National Security Council lawyer John Eisenberg about the matter at Bolton's request, according to a person familiar with the testimony who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential interview.
Hill, a top adviser on Russia, also discussed U.S. ambassador Gordon Sondland and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, the person said, telling the three committees leading the investigation that Bolton also told her he was not part of “whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” an apparent reference to talks over Ukraine.