Trump hits back after charges laid
● President tweets House move is driven by rivals’ ‘political madness’
Donald Trump has tweeted that it would be “sheer political madness” to try to impeach him, as the Democrat Party moved closer to trying to remove him from office over alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the family of presidential rival Joe Biden.
The Democrats accuse Mr Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
US Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump – for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – pushing toward historic votes over charges he corrupted the election process and endangered national security in his dealings with Ukraine.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, flanked by the chairmen of the impeachment inquiry committees, announced the move yesterday, describing it as a “solemn act.”
Voting is expected in a matter of days in the judiciary committee, and by Christmas in the full House. Mr Trump insisted he did nothing wrong and his re-election campaign called it “rank partisanship”.
“He en dangers our democracy; he en dangers our national security ,” said the judici impeachment, ary committee chairman, Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic representative from New York, announcing the charges before a portrait of George Washington. “Our next election is at risk. That is why we must act now.”
Mr Trump tweeted ahead of the announcement that impeaching a president with a record like his would be “sheer Political Madness!”
The outcome, though, appears increasingly set as the House prepares for voting, as it has only three times in history against a US president. Approval of the charges would send them to the Senate in January, where the Republican majority would be unlikely to convict Mr Trump.
Democratic leaders say Mr Trump put his political interests above those of the nation when he asked Ukraine to investigate his rivals, including Democrat Joe Biden, and then withheld $400 million in military aid as the US ally faced an aggressive Russia. They say he then tried obstructed Congress by stonewalling the House investigation.
In drafting the articles of Ms Pelosi faced a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors”.
Some liberal lawmakers wanted more expansive charges encompassing the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Centrist Democrats preferred to keep the impeachment articles more focused on Mr Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. Asked if she had enough votes to impeach the president, Ms Pelosi said she would let House lawmakers vote their conscience.
“On an issue like this, we don’t count the votes. People will just make their voices known on it,” she said. “I haven’t counted votes, nor will I.”
Mr Trump, who has declined to mount a defence in the actual House hearings, tweeted just as the six Democratic House committee chairmen prepared to make their announcement.
“To imp each a president who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness!” he wrote on Twitter.
The president also spent part of Monday tweeting against the impeachment proceedings. He and his allies have called the process “absurd”.
“I think there’s a lot of agreement,” representative Eliot Engel of New York, the Democratic chairman of the foreign affairs committee, told reporters as he exited Ms Pelosi’s office.
“A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to.”
At the judiciary hearing, Democrats said Mr Trump’s push to have Ukraine investigate Mr Biden while withholding military aid ran counter to US policy and benefited Russia as well as himself.
The announcement of the first charges of impeachment against Donald Trump – accusing him of the “high crimes and misdemeanours” of abuse of power and obstructing Congress – should serve as a warning to all those involved in government in the UK.
It should, most importantly, act as a deterrent to those in this country who see Trump as a winner whose political strategies should be copied. That should be already obvious because his wheeler-dealer style of politics is ultimately hollow.
He attacks those who criticise him, rather than responding to the substance of what they are saying, he dismisses news he doesn’t like as “fake” despite sometimes taped evidence that it is true, he seeks “loyalty” from officials to the extent that former FBI director James Comey likened him to a mafia boss, and he whips up nationalist sentiment as a substitute for good policies.
On the world stage, he has undermined Nato and, spurning the benefits of free trade, thrown up new tariffs in an attempt to bully other countries. Added to his numerous lies, half-truths and mistakes, his racism and his despicable attitudes towards women, this should be a politician that no-one would seek to emulate. The first impeachment charge accuses him of using his powers as president “to “obtain an improper personal benefit while ignoring or injuring the national interest” after he allegedly pressured Ukraine’s president to open an investigation into Democrat nomination contender Joe Biden’s son. The supposed “quid pro quo” included more than £300 million in military aid that Ukraine desperately needed to fight its ongoing war with Russian-backed separatists.
It remains to be seen whether Republicans in the Senate will stomach this kind of “deal” if they are required to put Trump on trial. Given the strength of the evidence against him, they may face a more difficult decision than their current attitudes suggests. The UK does not have a Us-style impeachment process, but the prime minister, Cabinet ministers and MPS must still answer to the court of public opinion. Just as the Democrats leading the impeachment drive needed hard evidence of wrongdoing, so too would the British public. This means civil servants should be inspired by their US counterparts and blow the whistle if necessary. And British Trump wannabes should be wary, lest they fall foul of their judge – the people.