© Reuters/Loren Elliott/File
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) speaks at a news conference ahead of a vote on the Voting Rights Advancement Act, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 6, 2019.
The House Judiciary Committee released a new report Monday that is to accompany the articles of impeachment on which the full House of Representatives will be voting later this week.
The
report was released together with an 18-page statement of dissenting views by the committee's Republican minority. It also includes a 180-page statement of dissenting views by the broader House Republican minority, as represented by the ranking members of several House committees (Intelligence; Oversight and Reform; and Foreign Affairs) involved in the inquiry. The Judiciary Committee report also includes the House Intelligence Committee report from earlier this month as an appendix.
The Democrats' lengthy report and its attachments are unlikely to be read in the two-day window between the documents' release and the final impeachment vote. However,
it includes the following overarching assertions:
- "From start to finish, the House conducted its inquiry with a commitment to transparency, efficiency, and fairness." (Republicans argue that it departed from all previous precedent and violated due process.)
- The Framers of the Constitution, when prescribing impeachment for "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," also meant that "officials who abused, abandoned, or sought personal benefit from their public trust — and who threatened the rule of law if left in power — faced impeachment and removal." (Republicans argue that Democrats' standard violates the text of the Constitution and the Framers' intent.)
- When President Donald Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate possibly 2016 election interference, that was an attempt to "conceal the truth about the 2016 election," i.e. Trump's alleged solicitation of Russian interference. When Trump asked Zelensky to look into the circumstances under which former Vice President Joe Biden was able to force the dismissal of a prosecutor who may have been investigating corruption at Burisma, the company where his son, Hunter, held a lucrative board position, that "was designed to help him gain an advantage in the 2020 election." There was, Democrats allege in their report, no evidentiary justification for, or "legitimate national security or foreign policy interest" in, either of these two investigations. (Republicans note that the mainstream media documented Ukrainian interference, and that there is a legitimate national interest in uncovering the previous administration's corruption abroad.)
- "President Trump did everything in his power to obstruct the House's impeachment inquiry." (Republicans note he appealed to the courts, as the Constitution requires, and that members of the administration testified.)
The report justifies attempting to impeach the president
less than a year from the next election on preemptive grounds, citing a "pattern" of behavior
that presumes the Russia collusion allegations, though disproven by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigations, are true: "Trump has fallen into a pattern of behavior: this is not the first time he has solicited foreign interference in an election, been exposed, and attempted to obstruct the resulting investigation."
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