USA TODAY International Edition
Report: The evidence is clear
Democrats conclude Trump sought foreign intervention in a U. S. election
WASHINGTON – Three House committees investigating the potential impeachment of President Donald Trump uncovered a months- long effort “to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election,” according to their draft report released Tuesday.
“The evidence of the President’s misconduct is overwhelming, and so too is the evidence of his obstruction of Congress,” the 300- page report said.
The three panels – Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight and Reform – spent weeks taking sworn testimony from 17 witnesses from the State Department and national security officials. The witnesses described Trump withholding a White House meeting and then military aid from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky unless he announced investigations of Trump’s political rival, Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter. The Intelligence Committee then held five days of public hearings with 12 of the witnesses.
Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, DCalif., said the investigation found that Trump withheld official acts such as a White House meeting and nearly $ 400 million in military aid in order to compel Ukraine to deliver two investigations to help his reelection campaign in 2020.
“This report chronicles a scheme by the president of the United States to coerce an ally, Ukraine, that is at war with an adversary, Russia, into doing the president’s political dirty work,” Schiff told reporters Tuesday. “We do not intend to delay when the integrity of the next election is at risk.
“We should care about this, we must care about this. And if we don’t care about this, we can be darn sure the president will be back at it, doing this all over again,” Schiff said.
He said that if Congress doesn’t act, it would be “begging for more of the same” where a president is “beyond accountability” and where future corruption “will be far more likely than it is today.”
“We will have to decide,” Schiff said. “Are we prepared to just get over it?”
Trump team’s response: ‘ Sham’
Trump’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, criticized the report and the process that yielded it.
“At the end of a one- sided sham process, Chairman Schiff and the Democrats utterly failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump,” Grisham said. “This report reflects nothing more than their frustrations. Chairman Schiff ’ s report reads like the ramblings of a basement blogger straining to prove something when there is evidence of nothing.”
The Intelligence Committee adopted the report Tuesday on a party line vote of 13 to 9 and allowed two days for Republicans to contribute a minority report. The Judiciary Committee will use the report as a foundation for possible articles of impeachment.
Schiff has already summarized the findings as a more serious abuse of power and obstruction than what drove former President Richard Nixon to resign during his impeachment inquiry.
“The President’s actions have damaged our national security, undermined the integrity of the next election, and violated his oath of office,” the three chairmen – Schiff, Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, D- N. Y., and Oversight Chairman Carolyn Maloney, D- N. Y. – said in releasing the report. “They have also challenged the very core of our Constitutional system of checks and balances, separation of powers, and rule of law.”
The report said Congress must now decide what remedy to seek. Schiff declined to say whether Trump’s actions merit impeachment but said lawmakers “have a very difficult decision ahead of us to make.”
“The question presented ... may be as simple as that posed by the President and his chief of staff ’ s brazenness: is the remedy of impeachment warranted for a president who would use the power of his office to coerce foreign interference in a U. S. election, or is that now a mere perk of the office that Americans must simply ‘ get over’?” the report said.
Republicans get their say
Trump has refused to participate in the inquiry he contends is a partisan “witch hunt,” including the first Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. Trump called the prospect of impeachment or censure “unacceptable” again Tuesday and questioned the patriotism of Democrats.
Republicans on the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight and Reform committees released their minority report Monday, which will also be sent to the Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R- Ohio, who serves on three of the investigating committees, said in a tweet that nothing in the report would change that Trump and Zelensky each said there was no pressure to begin investigations and that Ukraine never took action to get the military funding released. “Doesn’t matter what the Dems write,” Jordan said.
Another Judiciary member, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R- Fla., dismissed the report in a tweet.
“The Schiff report is a novella built on conjecture and presumption,” Gaetz said. “It offers no startling revelations, and nothing that fulfills Speaker Pelosi’s promise of a bipartisan impeachment process. The facts before the American people are clear: Donald Trump is innocent.”