They’re just so unfair to Trump: GOP
WASHINGTON — The Republican defense of President Trump on Tuesday amounted to complaining that the House probe of his Ukraine scandal just isn’t fair.
Entering a fourth day of depositions in the impeachment inquiry being led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Republicans insisted it would not be fair unless the full House votes for the inquiry and it’s all in the open, including unmasking the whistleblower whose revelations sparked the probe.
“Why don’t we know who this individual is?” asked Rep. Jim Jordan (ROhio), appealing to reporters to dig out the identity of the whistleblower.
“They’re basing an impeachment process — trying to remove the president of the United States — based on an anonymous whistleblower with no firsthand knowledge who has a bias against the president,” Jordan (inset) said while admitting he didn’t know who the person is. “The only people who know — Adam Schiff, his staff and a handful of other people.”
Republicans have accused the whistleblower of some sort of collusion because the person contacted Intelligence Committee staff on how to proceed with the complaint. Democrats have answered that staff referred the whistleblower back to the intelligence community’s inspector general.
In a similar vein, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, argued that the Trump probe can’t be fair unless the House votes for it, as happened in the impeachment cases against Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.
“If Congress is going to proceed on this very important measure, which is probably the most important thing Congress can do, is remove a president from office, it should do so with a spirit of fairness and a spirit of due process,” McCaul told reporters.
He claimed that his own committee chairman, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Bronx, Westchester), had already said there should be a full House vote. However, Engel only said he is open to it.
Asked about it recently on CBS, Engel answered, “I’m not troubled by it, but there’s no reason to do it. There’s no rule that says you have to do it. It’s perfectly all right the way it is.”