After weeks of avoiding the issue, House Democrats finally passed a resolution Thursday to authorize their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump and establish rules for the proceedings. But not everyone is on board with their plans.
The Washington Examiner is reporting that Republicans in Washington want answers on why the Dems opted to break with tradition and put the House Intelligence Committee, headed by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), in charge.
Schiff and impeachment
“Under normal circumstances, the House Intelligence Committee would not have jurisdiction over the string of witnesses who have filed into the impeachment proceedings in the Capitol basement or the subject matter they are talking about,” the Washington Examiner‘s chief congressional correspondent, Susan Ferrechio, wrote in a piece published Saturday.
According to Ferrechio, “none of the material is classified, and those who have appeared before the [Intelligence] panel are mostly diplomats whose testimony about a July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would more suitably be scrutinized by the House Foreign Affairs Committee or the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.” Moreover, it is the Judiciary Committee that “has traditionally handled the impeachment process,” Ferrechio writes.
But while members of both the Oversight and Foreign Affairs panels “have been invited to participate in the closed-door meetings,” according to Ferrechio, “it is Schiff and the Intelligence Committee staff Democrats who run the proceedings and who will write the final report that will determine whether the House votes on articles of impeachment.”
Sounding the alarm
Schiff can thank House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for putting him at the head of the table, according to National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy, who wrote in an op-ed for Fox News that Pelosi “wrested control” of the inquiry from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, “placing the matter in the hands of Schiff, her protégé on the Intelligence Committee on which she used to serve.”
“That is irregular, to say the least,” McCarthy noted. And he wasn’t the only one to sound the alarm.
“There is absolutely nothing whatsoever in the whistleblower complaint that has any kind of intelligence component at all,” one GOP aide told the Washington Examiner, referring to the still-anonymous complaint that has formed the basis of Dems’ inquiry. “A presidential phone call with a foreign leader is not an intelligence matter.”
Still, Schiff has spent weeks interviewing witnesses behind closed doors.
“I call it faux impeachment,” California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Examiner last month. “By running it in the House Intelligence Committee, they’re trying to keep all of the information from the American public. And I understand why, because every witness we have that comes in bombs out for them.”
Leaks and lies
That sentiment was later echoed by GOP Rep. Steve Scalise (LA), who told Breitbart on Thursday that keeping the proceedings behind closed doors might be “the only way that [Democrats] can get their false story out.”
“If this was open to the public, my goodness, all the things that we’re hearing about what happened in that room completely go against all the reports that we’re reading in the media, because the media is only getting the things that Adam Schiff leaks to them,” Scalise added.
Indeed, Schiff and his Intelligence Committee have been running rampant to keep their impeachment inquiry under wraps, while the media continues to somehow gain access to bits and pieces of information that do nothing but make President Trump look bad. And if the leaks weren’t bad enough, the House’s resolution allows Schiff himself to cherry-pick information from his secret hearings for a report that he will eventually send to the House Judiciary Committee, which will then draw up the articles of impeachment.
The deck certainly appears stacked against President Trump. All he can do now is hope that the truth prevails.
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