Panel details its legal take on impeachment

It calls action a constitutional ‘safety valve’

President Donald Trump speaks Saturday at the Israeli American Council National Summit in Hollywood, Fla. Before leaving the White House for Florida, Trump told reporters that Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, “says he has a lot of good information” from his recent trip to Ukraine that he would present to Attorney General William Barr and Congress.
President Donald Trump speaks Saturday at the Israeli American Council National Summit in Hollywood, Fla. Before leaving the White House for Florida, Trump told reporters that Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney, “says he has a lot of good information” from his recent trip to Ukraine that he would present to Attorney General William Barr and Congress.

WASHINGTON -- The House Judiciary Committee released a report Saturday afternoon making the legal case for why President Donald Trump's conduct rises to the level of impeachment as Democrats race to finish the inquiry before the end of the year.

The 55-page document lays out the constitutional arguments that Democrats will make in drafting articles of impeachment against the president and seeks to undermine Republicans' main talking points against impeachment.

The findings from the House Judiciary Committee do not spell out the formal charges against the president, which are being drafted ahead of votes that could take place as soon as this week.

Instead, the report rebuts Trump's criticism of the impeachment proceedings, arguing that the Constitution created impeachment as a "safety valve" so Americans would not have to wait for the next election to remove a president. It refers to the writings of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and others in making the case that Trump's actions during his July phone call with Ukraine's president show the kind of behavior that would "horrify" the framers.

"Where the President uses his foreign affairs power in ways that betray the national interest for his own benefit, or harm national security for equally corrupt reasons, he is subject to impeachment by the House," the Democrats wrote. "Indeed, foreign interference in the American political system was among the gravest dangers feared by the Founders of our Nation and the Framers of our Constitution."

Democrats are working through the weekend as articles are being drafted and committee members are preparing for a hearing Monday.

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Democrats say Trump abused his power in the July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor and engaged in bribery by withholding nearly $400 million in military aid that Ukraine depends on to counter Russian aggression.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi says it's part of a troubling pattern of behavior from Trump that benefits Russia and not the U.S.

Trump has insisted that he did nothing wrong. "Witch Hunt!" the president tweeted Saturday morning.

The articles of impeachment are likely to encompass two themes -- abuse of office and obstruction -- as Democrats work to reach the Constitution's bar of "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

"The Framers worst nightmare is what we are facing in this very moment. President Trump abused his power, betrayed our national security, and corrupted our elections, all for personal gain. The Constitution details only one remedy for this misconduct: impeachment," House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said in a statement accompanying the report.

"The safety and security of our nation, our democracy, and future generations hang in the balance if we do not address this misconduct. In America, no one is above the law, not even the President."

The report released Saturday is an update of similar reports issued during the impeachments of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, and lays out the justification for articles under consideration, including abuse of power, bribery and obstruction.

It does not lay out the facts of the Ukraine case, but it hints at potential articles of impeachment and explains the thinking behind Democrats' decision to draft them. Without frequently mentioning Trump, it alludes to his requests that Ukraine investigate Democrats, saying a president who "perverts his role as chief diplomat to serve private rather than public ends" has unquestionably engaged in the high crimes and misdemeanors laid out in the Constitution. That is true "especially" if he invited rather than opposed foreign interference, the report says.

The report examines treason, bribery, serious abuse of power, betrayal of the national interest through foreign entanglements, and corruption of office and elections. Democrats have been focused on an overall abuse of power article, with the possibility of breaking out a separate, related article on bribery. They are also expected to draft at least one article on obstruction of Congress or obstruction of justice.

In laying out the grounds for impeachable offenses, the report directly rebuts several of the president's claims in a section called "fallacies about impeachment," including that the inquiry is based on secondhand evidence, that a president can do what he wants to do, and that Democrats' motives are corrupt.

"The President's honesty in an impeachment inquiry, or his lack thereof, can thus shed light on the underlying issue," the report says.

FOCUS ON RUSSIA

In pushing ahead with the impeachment inquiry, Democrats are steering the focus back to Russia.

Pelosi is connecting the dots -- "all roads lead to Putin," she says -- and making the argument that Trump's pressure campaign on Ukraine was not an isolated incident but part of a troubling bond with the Russian president that reaches back to 2016 election interference as outlined in special counsel Robert Mueller's report.

"This isn't about Ukraine," she said a day earlier. "'It's about Russia. Who benefited by our withholding of that military assistance? Russia."

It's an attempt to explain why Americans should care that Trump pushed Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden while withholding the military aid that Congress had approved.

At the same time, by tracing an arc of Trump's behavior from the 2016 campaign to the present, it stitches its claims together. That is seen as a way to help the speaker balance her left-flank liberals -- who want more charges filed against Trump, including ones stemming from Mueller's report -- and centrist Democrats who prefer to keep the argument more narrowly focused on Ukraine.

Pelosi and her team are working to convey a message that impeachment is about Ukraine, but also about a pattern of behavior intended to stoke renewed concern about Trump's attitude toward Russia ahead of the 2020 election.

Trump pushed back on the Democrats' message. "The people see that it's just a continuation of this three-year witch hunt," he told reporters as he left the White House on Saturday for Florida.

Trump on Saturday delivered the keynote address at the Israeli American Council's national summit in Hollywood, Fla. He also spoke at the Florida Republican Party's Statesman's Dinner in Aventura.

Late Friday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone informed the Judiciary Committee that the administration would not be participating in coming impeachment hearings, calling the proceedings "completely baseless."

And Trump's campaign announced new rallies to take the case directly to voters -- as well as a new email fundraising pitch that claims the Democrats have "gone absolutely insane."

"The Democrats have NO impeachment case and are demeaning our great Country at YOUR expense," Trump wrote in the email to supporters. "It's US against THEM."

Impeachment articles could include obstruction of Congress because the White House ordered officials not to comply with House subpoenas for testimony or documents during the impeachment inquiry. They could also include obstruction of justice, based on Mueller's report on the original Trump-Russia investigation.

There is still robust internal debate among House Democrats over how many articles to write and how much to include -- and particularly whether there should be specific mention of Mueller's findings from his two-year investigation into Trump's possible role in Russia's 2016 election interference.

The special counsel could not determine that Trump's campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia. However, Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice and left that for Congress to determine.

GIULIANI PROBE

Trump also indicated Saturday that his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani wants to take the information he has gathered from his investigations in Ukraine to the U.S. attorney general and to Congress.

Trump said Giuliani had not yet told him what information he has gathered, though the president said he's heard it was plentiful.

"He's going to make a report, I think, to the attorney general and to Congress," Trump told reporters outside the White House before he left for Florida. "He says he has a lot of good information. I have not spoken to him about that information."

During Giuliani's trip to Ukraine, the former New York mayor met with Ukrainians who have peddled unsubstantiated allegations of misdeeds by Biden in Ukraine and claims that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.

While in Kyiv, Giuliani tweeted that he had "compelling evidence of criminal conduct" by Biden. He also suggested that until a corruption probe in Ukraine is resolved, "it will be a major obstacle to the U.S. assisting Ukraine with its anti-corruption reforms."

Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Mary Clare Jalonick, Darlene Superville and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Colby Itkowitz of The Washington Post.

A Section on 12/08/2019

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