With testimony over, work begins on report
The witnesses have spoken, politics are largely settled. Impeachment investigators will make the case public.
WASHINGTON >> The witnesses have spoken, the politics are largely settled. Now impeachment investigators will make the case for public opinion.
On Monday, hundreds of pages from Democratic Chairman Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee were being compiled into an exhaustive report that will begin to outline whether President Donald Trump engaged in “treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors” by withholding $400 million in aid as he pushed Ukraine to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden. The report may come as soon as next week.
There are rising political stakes for all sides. Americans remain deeply split over the impeachment question, despite hours of sometimes riveting testimony, and the country’s polarization now seems to foreshadow an outcome: Democrats are poised to vote to impeach the president while Republicans stand firmly with Trump.
Sending the case on to the Judiciary Committee, which is ready to start its own round of hearings in December, provides yet another chance to sway public opinion before a House vote expected by Christmas and a Senate trial in 2020.
“The evidence of wrongdoing and misconduct by the President that we have gathered to date is clear and hardly in dispute,” Schiff told colleagues in a letter Monday. “What is left to us now is to decide whether this behavior is compatible with the office of the Presidency, and whether the Constitutional process of impeachment is warranted.”
Republicans are not necessarily disputing the evidence, but insist the president did nothing wrong. While Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani pursued the political investigations with Ukraine in what witnesses described as an irregular foreign policy channel, Republicans argue it’s not clear the president directly intervened to withhold the money to Ukraine. Besides, they say, the military aid for the Eastern European ally countering Russian aggression was eventually released.
Some Republicans, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham, prefer to keep digging into unfounded claims that Ukraine was involved in 2016 election interference, a theory that contradicts the findings of U.S. intelligence. They also see reason to scrutinize the work of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, for a gas company in Ukraine.
“The whole Ukraine issue, particularly the way the House of Representatives is doing it, is a joke,” Graham tweeted Monday. “We’re less than a year away from the 2020 election. If you don’t like Trump — vote against him.”
When Congress resumes next week, Schiff is expected to send the report, compiled from 17 closeddoor depositions and five public sessions, to the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Jerrold Nadler will soon begin hearings that are expected to result in articles of impeachment against Trump.
Rather than gather additional testimony, Nadler’s panel is likely to drill down into the questions surrounding impeachment and whether Trump’s actions toward Ukraine meet the bar.
For many Democrats, Trump already proved the case when he released a rough transcript of a July call in which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a “favor” — the investigations of Biden and the Democrats.