White House slams ‘desperate charade’ of impeachment, Democrats fire back
By Bob Fredericks
New York Post
President Trump on Friday ripped the House Judiciary Committee’s vote to send two articles of impeachment to the full chamber, slamming it as a “witch hunt” and calling Nancy Pelosi “a liar.”
“It’s a witch hunt, a sham, a hoax. Nothing was done wrong. Zero was done wrong. I think it’s a horrible thing to be using the tool of impeachment which is supposed to be used in an emergency,” he said during a White House meeting with Paraguay’s president, Mario Abdo Benítez.
He said his call to Ukraine President Voldymyr Zelensky, in which he asked him to launch investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine’s role in the 2016 US election, was “perfect” and not grounds for impeachment.
“The president of that country said there was no pressure whatsoever, didn’t even know what we were talking about. It was perfect, the relationship is perfect. I’ve done much more for [Ukraine] than Obama did for them,” he said, adding in his first public remarks on the issue since the committee’s vote.
The effort also sets a dangerous precedent, Trump said.
“It’s a scam. It’s something that shouldn’t be allowed and it’s a very bad thing for our country, and you’re trivializing impeachment. And I tell you what, someday there will be a Democrat president and there will be a Republican House, and I suspect they’re going to remember it.”
The president then said Democrats were only using impeachment to score political points, but that the effort was backfiring because he was benefiting.
“My poll numbers, as you know, have gone through the roof. Fundraising for the Republican Party has gone through the roof. We’re setting records.
“Nobody has ever seen anything like it, because the people are disgusted. The people are absolutely disgusted,” he continued.
He said he tuned in to Thursday’s marathon hearing and was not impressed.
“I watched yesterday. I got to see quite a bit of it yesterday and I watched the Democrats and the committee make fools out of themselves, absolute fools out of themselves,” he said.
He also slammed House Speaker Pelosi, asserting that she had been working on impeachment for two years.
“So she was working on it two years before I ever spoke to Ukraine. She said, ‘We’ve been working on impeachment for two and a half years,’ and reporters were shocked when they got this answer because it shows she’s a liar,” he said.
Earlier Friday, the White House and congressional Republicans lit up House Judiciary Committee Democrats for ramming through two articles of impeachment against Trump on a party-line vote that morning.
“This desperate charade of an impeachment inquiry in the House Judiciary Committee has reached its shameful end. The President looks forward to receiving in the Senate the fair treatment and due process which continues to be disgracefully denied to him by the House,” Trump spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
The committee’s ranking Republican, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, bitterly criticized Democrats on the panel in a statement, asserting that they wanted to “kneecap our Democracy.”
“Today’s vote highlights the pettiness of last night’s delay and the folly of articles of impeachment that allege no crime and establish no case,” he said, referring to Chairman Jerry Nadler’s unexpected adjournment of Thursday’s 14-hour hearing.
“While it’s already clear that Democrats broke their own promises to rig this outcome, what will become more obvious in the coming days and years is that Democrats gravely abused their power,” continued Collins, a staunch supporter of the president.
“This abuse of power doesn’t just undermine the integrity of our chamber or the independence of future presidencies, Democrats have sacrificed core American tenets of due process, fairness, and the presumption of innocence on the altar of a 2016 election that they lost three years ago,” he said.
“Rather than help Americans move into the future with confidence, Democrats are attempting to kneecap our Democracy. They’re telling millions of voters that Democrats will work to overturn the will of the people wherever it conflicts with the will of liberal elites.”
A grim-faced Nadler offered a terse statement during a news conference on Capitol Hill, after which he took no questions.
“Today is a solemn and sad day. For the third time in a little over a century and a half, the House Judiciary Committee has voted articles of impeachment against the president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The House will act expeditiously. Thank you,” Nadler said before walking away from the podium.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a committee member, charged that Trump’s misdeeds were clear.
“When a president of the United States invites a foreign government to interfere in our elections and uses the office of the president, a White House meeting, and taxpayer military aid that was approved by Congress, if that is not impeachable, I do not know what is,” she told reporters.
Jayapal also fired back at Republicans for backing Trump despite what she called a clear-cut case against him.
“I think everybody is going to have to vote their conscience. And I think that if somebody votes no on these articles, I have a hard time understanding how they could look at the facts and do that,” she said.
“We all have to wake up and go to bed with ourselves every night and we’ll be remembered in history for this vote. That’s what I would remind all of my Republican colleagues who aren’t sure what they’re going to do is to think about the effect on history,” she continued.
“This idea that democracy can be saved or preserved without any effort, without any courage from us is an affront to the people who fought in the revolutions and on the battlefields to create the democracy.”
During Thursday’s raucous hearings, Republicans defended Trump and accused Democrats of a politically motivated farce, while Democrats have accused the president of endangering the Constitution, jeopardizing national security and undermining the integrity of the 2020 election by pressuring Zelensky in a July phone call to investigate the Bidens.
The committee approved charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress against Trump on Friday, making it almost certain he will become the third American president in history to be impeached.
The committee voted 23-17 along party lines to approve an article of impeachment charging Trump with abusing the power of his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden, a possible rival in the 2020 presidential election.
The panel also backed a second article by the same margin accusing Trump of obstructing Congress’ investigation of the Ukraine scandal by ordering administration officials not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.
The full House, where the Democrats hold a majority, is likely to approve the charges next week, completing that end of the impeachment process and sending Trump for trial in the Senate within weeks.
With Post wires