House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told lawmakers Monday that there are no plans to
immediately open impeachment proceedings against President Trump,
rejecting calls from several Democrats to initiate steps to try to oust
the president.
In a rare Monday night conference call, the California Democrat stressed
that the near-term strategy in the wake of special counsel Robert S.
Mueller III’s report is to focus on investigating the president and
seeing where the inquiries lead. Members of Pelosi’s leadership team
reaffirmed her cautious approach, according to four officials on the
call who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private
conversations.
“We have to save our democracy. This isn’t about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about saving our democracy,” Pelosi said.
But Pelosi’s message did not go over well with several Democrats, who
argued that Congress has a duty to hold Trump to account with
impeachment despite the political blowback Pelosi has long feared.
Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee,
argued that as someone with more than 25 years of experience in law
enforcement, she thought the House had enough evidence to proceed.
“While I understand we need to see the full report and all supporting
documents, I believe we have enough evidence now,” Demings said.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said the party has a duty to openly
discuss the downside of not impeaching Trump for his actions and the
precedent it could set for the future.
Mueller, in the 448-page redacted report released last week, identified
10 instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump but he did not
find that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the
2016 election.
The report has divided Democrats, with several clamoring for
impeachment, notably White House candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), while others argue such a step is futile with the GOP
controlling the Senate. Several Democrats maintain that impeachment
would embolden Trump and his Republican backers ahead of the 2020
election.
Despite leadership’s effort to tamp down impeachment talk, they did not
rule it out completely. In fact, after some of her members spoke up,
Pelosi clarified that “if it is what we need to do to honor our
responsibility to the Constitution — if that’s the place the facts take
us, that’s the place we have to go.”
“I wish you would just read my letter because it, I think succinctly,
presents some of the reasons, I think — whether it’s articles of
impeachment or investigations, it’s the same obtaining of facts,” she
said to her members. “We don’t have to go to articles of impeachment to
obtain the facts, the presentation of facts.”
The nearly 90-minute call with lawmakers scattered around the country
during the congressional recess came just hours after Pelosi appeared to
tap the brakes on impeachment discussions. She argued in a letter to
her colleagues that while Democrats would hold Trump accountable for his
actions in the Mueller report, “it
is . . . important to know that the facts regarding holding the
president accountable can be gained outside of impeachment hearings.”
“Whether currently indictable or not, it is clear that the president
has, at a minimum, engaged in highly unethical and unscrupulous behavior
which does not bring honor to the office he holds,” Pelosi wrote.
She added: “As we proceed to uncover the truth and present additional
needed reforms to protect our democracy, we must show the American
people we are proceeding free from passion or prejudice, strictly on the
presentation of fact.”
The speaker’s caution comes despite an impeachment push by some 2020
presidential hopefuls and even some of her Democratic chairmen, who
suggested on the Sunday talk shows that it might be an option.
But as they briefed lawmakers on the call Monday night, those same
chairmen appeared to push that notion to the side for now, suggesting
Democratic leaders — who spoke privately before the call — have decided it is not the time to start such proceeding.
Even House Financial Services Chairman Maxine Waters, who last week
warned that “Congress’s failure to impeach is complacency in the face of
the erosion of our democracy and constitutional norms,” did not push
the matter. Instead, the California Democrat, a vocal Trump critic who
is probing the president’s business practices before he won the 2016
election, made a point on the call of clarifying that she is not
pressuring lawmakers to join her effort.
Waters instead spoke of her latest effort to subpoena a bank that lent
money to Trump despite his bankruptcies. Just minutes before the call,
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) subpoenaed
former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who was a central witness in
Mueller’s probe into possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
Nadler also spoke on the call about his own next steps in investigating Trump.
According to an official on the call, leadership tried to emphasize that
impeachment is not a political decision and that they would let the
chairmen do what they need to keep investigating Trump.
But Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) challenged that assertion, telling
leadership not to “shy away from the notion that impeachment isn’t
political.”
“It is political,” he retorted.
But leadership had allies. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the leader of the
centrist New Democrat Coalition, said he was committed to ensuring Trump
doesn’t get reelected but also wondered if the party would guarantee
the Republican’s second term with an impeachment push.
Himes asked for impeachment data from leaders so Democrats knew where
the country was on the issue. Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) agreed.
According to a recent survey, roughly 6 in 10 Democrats said Congress
should begin impeachment hearings in a Washington Post-Schar School poll
conducted after Attorney General William P. Barr’s initial letter to
Congress about the investigation’s findings but before the release of
the final report. But the same survey found the public overall leaned
against impeaching Trump, with 41 percent saying Congress should begin
hearings and 54 percent saying lawmakers should not.
At one point on the call, a lawmaker brought up a question about whether
House Democrats could censure the president. Nadler explained how it
has no legal effect but would just be a simple expression of
disapproval.
Nadler said it was an option, though did not endorse it explicitly.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), one of the most liberal members in
leadership, said no option, including impeachment, should be taken off
the table. She asked leadership to give lawmakers messaging about how
House Democrats can both push for economic issues they ran on while also
holding up the rule of law by checking Trump.
Despite Democratic leadership’s move to down play the prospects of
impeachment at this time, they did not rule it out completely. Officials
following the House probes closely say that’s intentional.
Should Pelosi declare “no impeachment” flat out, she
probably would undercut her chairmen’s bid to sue the Trump
administration for the full Mueller report, including grand jury
information. To get those documents, impeachment probably would have to
be on the table, lawyers say, justifying the House move to get such
information.
Pelosi would also risk the ire of the far left, which has typically viewed her as an ally of their cause.
Before the Mueller report, Pelosi had argued that impeachment was too
divisive, politically costly and that Trump was “not worth it.” Pelosi
also set a high threshold for taking up impeachment, arguing it would
have to be bipartisan.
But after the Mueller report’s release, Republicans have largely gone
silent, even as Mueller detailed the Trump campaign welcoming Russia’s
interference in the 2016 election and Trump’s effort to thwart the
investigation.
Mueller, however, did not establish conspiracy and did not answer the
question of whether Trump obstructed justice, appearing to kick the
issue to Congress. Barr said the president did not obstruct justice.
Republicans control the Senate, and even if the Democratic-led House
voted to impeach Trump, it would take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to
convict the president and remove him from office. Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday dismissed the notion of
impeachment.
“Well, look, I think it’s time to move on. This investigation was about
collusion, there’s no collusion, no charges brought against the
president on anything else, and I think the American people have had
quite enough of it,” McConnell said when questioned during a stop in
Owensboro, Ky.
Pelosi in her Monday letter took a shot at the GOP for its muted reaction to the Mueller report.
“It is also clear that the congressional Republicans have an unlimited
appetite for such low standards,” she wrote. “The GOP should be ashamed
of what the Mueller report has revealed, instead of giving the president
their blessings.”
Pelosi also called on the GOP-controlled Senate to take up campaign
finance legislation that passed the House earlier this year, which
included sweeping ethics changes. On Sunday, the president’s legal team
argued that it was acceptable for the Trump campaign to seek to benefit
from Russia’s hacking of the Clinton campaign.
“[I]n light of the President’s defenders arguing in defense of receiving
and weaponizing stolen emails, we continue to press our Republican
House counterparts to take up our pledge to refuse to use stolen,
hacked, or falsified information in campaigns because the American
people deserve honest debate,” Pelosi wrote.
Meanwhile, White House officials taunted House Democrats as they considered their next steps.
“If they have to get a conference call together to figure out where
they’re going from here, they shouldn’t be in office in the first
place,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on “Fox and
Friends.” “I think it’s quite sad that they’ve got to have a conference
call with all of their members to figure out what they’re going to do
with themselves now that the Mueller report is out and proven that there
was no collusion and no obstruction.”
John Wagner and Scott Clement contributed to this report.
