Impeachment heads into uncertain phase.
House Judiciary hearing may be more contentious
The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday will hold its first impeachment hearing, signifying a new — and unpredictable — step in the Democrats’ inquiry into President Donald Trump.
The Judiciary Committee took control of the inquiry Tuesday evening after the House Intelligence Committee voted to approve a report outlining the Democrats’ case that the president withheld military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine while demanding that the country ’s government announce an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
If the Intelligence Committee, led by Chairman Adam B. Schiff, D-calif., was staid and serious during weeks of closed-door depositions and nine long days of public hearings, the Judiciary Committee is expected to be more rambunctious.
Its membership is far larger than the Intelligence Committee and includes some of the most partisan Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
Several of Trump’s strongest allies sit on the Republican side, including Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, John Ratcliffe of Texas and Jim Jordan of Ohio, who was brief ly moved to the Intelligence Committee. At the helm for the GOP is another Trump ally: Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia.
The Democrats are just as partisan: Nearly the entire Judiciary Committee supported an impeachment inquiry during former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’S investigation into Russian interference and before the president spoke with the new president of Ukraine.
That combination could give the Judiciary Committee hearings a level of bombast the public hasn’t seen so far. That poses some risks for Democrats because the proceedings could give Republicans a lot of television time to muddy the Democrats’ presentation, pointing out f laws in a process that they view as unfair.
Republicans are expected to be more aggressive than they were in the Intelligence Committee hearings, hoping to knock Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., off his game. They are likely to force votes on procedural hurdles and hammer their defense of the president, outlined in a report released by Republican members of the Intelligence Committee on Monday.
“It ’s a bunch of brawlers sometimes on the Judiciary Committee, so it should get pretty, pretty hot under the collar as we go along,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-ariz., another Trump ally on the committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” He argued that Democrats had not adhered to precedent on impeachment, a view that “causes some rancor. And it should be much more feisty, I would say, than the Intel Committee was.”
Nadler’s allies insist he’ll be able to manage the process.
“I think that you’ll see Chairman Nadler is just not going to put up with nonsense,” said Rep. Karen Bass, D-calif., who also sits on the committee. “My Republican colleagues compete to be included in the Fox evening news clips. They are performing for an audience of one,” she added, referring to the president.
The Judiciary Committee is expected to hold at least two, but more likely three, hearings in the coming weeks, capped with a vote on whether to send impeachment articles to the House f loor.
The spotlight in Wednesday’s hearing is expected to be more focused on the lawmakers than the witnesses. The panel will hear from a series of professors who will explain why the founders put impeachment into the Constitution and what warrants removal from the White House. Democrats feel they need to make the case that Trump’s offenses warrant impeachment.
Like the Intelligence Committee hearings last month, the Judiciary Committee plans to have staff attorneys help conduct the first 45 minutes of questioning, followed by time for rank-and-file members. They are expected to have tightly prepared questions, similar to the way Democrats had prepared written questions when Mueller testified before the panel in July.
Nadler recently invited Trump and his law yers to participate in the process, an invitation they rebuffed, arguing that the process so far has been a sham and that the hearing was “purposely ” scheduled while Trump was in London for a NATO leaders meeting. But they left open the possibility that they could enter the process in the coming weeks.
“It is too late to cure the profound procedural deficiencies that have tainted this entire inquir y,” Pat Cipollone, the president ’s law yer, wrote in a letter to Nadler. “Nevertheless, if you are serious about conducting a fair process going forward, and in order to protect the rights and privileges of the president, we may consider participating in future Judiciary Committee proceedings if you afford the administration the ability to do so meaningfully.”