As impeachment drama unfolds, here are 3 House members to watch
As the House Judiciary Committee holds its first hearing in the impeachment inquiry on Wednesday, three House members will have a special insight into the proceedings — they just finished serving on the other committee that’s been hearing testimony about the allegations.
Reps. Eric Swalwell, D-California, John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, and Val Demings, D-Florida, sit on both the Intelligence Committee, which heard testimony last month, and the Judiciary Committee, which now will consider whether to write articles of impeachment.
Swalwell and Ratcliffe were especially outspoken during the Intelligence Committee’s public impeachment hearings.
Ratcliffe is not only a vocal defender of President Donald Trump, but also has been a leader in the Intelligence Committee’s public hearings. Some GOP committee members, including top Republican Devin Nunes of California and Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, gave their questioning time to him.
“I see him as a major figure in the current proceedings,” Darrell West said of Ratcliffe. West is director of governance studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.
During his questioning time at the Intelligence Committee hearings, Ratcliffe argued that the alleged quid pro quo in Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was not grounds for impeachment, and spoke out against Democrats’ changing allegations against Trump.
A report from the Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees found strong evidence of misconduct.
“The evidence is clear that President Trump used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations into his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, and a debunked conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election. These investigations were designed to benefit his 2020 presidential reelection campaign,” they said in a statement.
“The evidence is also clear that President Trump conditioned official acts on the public announcement of these investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary,” the chairs added.
House Republicans released their own report Monday, saying Democrats had failed to establish any basis for impeachment.
At the Judiciary Committee, Ratcliffe will draw on his experience as an attorney, including the year he served as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas in 2007, to question witnesses and argue in favor of Trump.
“Ratcliffe will play an important role just because he’s already been part of the intelligence committee process,” West said. “That means he’ll be very knowledgeable about the issues coming in front of the Judiciary Committee.”
Republicans Tuesday accused Democrats of being obsessed with impeachment and largely ignoring other issues.
“Thus far during the 116th Congress, this Committee — and the Democratic House as a whole — have utterly failed in their duty to the American people,” the Judiciary Committee Republicans, including Ratcliffe wrote in a letter to Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-New York.
“This has happened because Democrats, beholden to a radical base, are determined to impeach the president, no matter the cost and by any means necessary,” the Republicans said. “This irresponsible, reckless behavior threatens to undermine the very credibility of this House.”
Swalwell is also passionate about impeachment, but from a very different angle. He summed up his view of the impeachment report:
“Donald J. Trump abused the power of the presidency and your taxpayer dollars — $391 million in military aid — to pressure a desperate ally to manufacture dirt on his political opponent,” he said.
Trump, Swalwell charged, “put his own interests above our national security, and has obstructed efforts to expose this by ignoring lawful subpoenas and preventing certain witnesses from testifying. There has been no plausible defense; assessing what happened here is a matter of plain facts and common sense.”
Swalwell, a former prosecutor, said the matter “might be one of the clearest-cut cases I’ve ever seen.”
Demings appeared on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday and discussed the committee’s invitation to the White House to participate in the hearings. The White House said it will not take part in Wednesday’s hearing, and has until Friday to decide whether it wants to participate after that.
“If (President Trump) has not done anything wrong, we’re certainly anxious to hear his explanation,” she said.
Judiciary plans to hear from four constitutional experts Wednesday. They include: Michael Gerhardt, University of North Carolina School of Law professor of jurisprudence; Noah Feldman, Harvard University Law School professor of law; Pamela Karlan, Stanford University Law School professor of public interest law and Jonathan Turley, George Washington University School of Law professor of public interest law.
This story was originally published December 3, 2019 at 12:53 PM with the headline "As impeachment drama unfolds, here are 3 House members to watch."