THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019 | POLITICO | 15the floor?
“There are two competing pres-
sures here,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin
(D-Md.), a member of the Oversight
Committee, one of three panels
leading the impeachment process.
“One is that the president is a one-
man crime wave who has generated
virtually limitless impeachable
offenses and misconduct. On the
other hand, we need to develop
a process that will close within a
period of time that makes sense for
the legislative calendar.”
But Raskin said lawmakers are
not yet discussing how to make
that determination.
“We’re just not there yet,” he
said. “We really are still in the
throes of the fact investigation.”
Some Democrats say the in-
vestigation should continue until
the evidence is so overwhelming
it pries loose a few Republican
votes, delivering a symbolic vic-
tory as Democrats hold out hope
that impeachment isn’t a purely
party-line issue. Others believe
Democrats should exhaust the list
of willing witnesses before drafting
formal articles.
And still others say the House
already has enough evidence to
move forward with impeachment
immediately — from Trump’s own
admission that he wants Ukraine
and China to investigate Biden, to
the summary of his phone call with
Ukraine’s president to the text mes-
sages of senior ambassadors wor-
ried that Trump was withholding
military aid and a White House
visit to bend Ukraine’s leaders to
his will.
“What I think you have in the
public domain already is more than
sufficient for an article of impeach-
ment,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly
(D-Va.), an Oversight Committee
member.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her
top allies say they’re still firmly
in fact-finding mode and have
promised a deliberate approach to
the House’s Ukraine investigation
with no ironclad time limit. Senior
Democrats say they’re eyeing the
end of the year as an unofficial outer
limit for the House to craft and pass
articles of impeachment, but the
unpredictable investigation has
produced so many leads it’s hard
to solidify a deadline.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell told Republicans
Wednesday that he expects Pelosi
to approve impeachment articles
by Thanksgiving, paving the way
for the Senate to deal with a trial
by Christmas.
“Everyone’s conscious of the
calendar,” said Rep. David Cicil-
line (D-R.I.), a member of the Ju-
diciary Committee, which is ex-
pecting to handle the process of
drafting articles of impeachment
once the other panels conclude the
Ukraine probe. “Our expectation
should be to have our work done
by year’s end.”
Meanwhile, Democrats continue
to rack up testimony and evidence
from high-level officials who have
provided damaging accounts of
Trump and his allies’ handling of
Ukraine, some speaking to law-
makers even over the objections
of the White House and the State
Department.
The impeachment investigation
has netted nearly 50 hours of tes-
timony from current and former
State Department and White House
officials, with a long line of addi-
tional witnesses prepared to dis-
cuss claims that Trump used U.S.
diplomatic might to solicit foreign
interference in the 2020 election.
Members of the investigating
committees say it’s conceivable
that most interviews of willing
witnesses will be finished by next
week. Once that’s done, they intendto bring their secretive investiga-
tion into the open, and there are
early, internal discussions about
how to do that.
House Intelligence Chairman
Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is
leading the investigation, has said
he envisions a combination of pub-
lic hearings and transcript releases
to help shed light on the evidence
lawmakers are unearthing.
“We will get to open hearings,”
Schiff said Tuesday when asked
about GOP complaints that tes-timony was being taken behind
closed doors. Schiff has compared
the current phase of the investi-
gation to grand jury proceedings,
which are held in secret, before
charges are brought that can be
litigated publicly.
In that vein, an attorney for Gor-
don Sondland, Trump’s ambassa-
dor to the European Union and a key
witness in the probe, indicated that
Sondland would likely honor a re-
quest to testify in public but hasn’t
yet received one. And Kurt Volker, a
former Trump administration rep-
resentative to Ukraine, was in the
Capitol on Wednesday reviewing
the transcript of his earlier nine-
hour interview, a possible precursor
to its public release.
The bulk of private testimony,
according to sources who have
been in the depositions, has fo-
cused on Trump’s July 25 phone
call with Ukraine’s new president
Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as a
monthslong campaign by Trump’s
personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to
push Ukrainian officials to inves-
tigate Biden and his son Hunter on
unfounded charges. Leads from
these interviews continue to mul-
tiply, though, adding to the chal-
lenge Democrats face with trying
to accelerate their efforts.
For example, recent witnesses
have indicated that Trump’s acting
chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and
his former national security ad-
viser John Bolton played key roles
in the controversy — and neither
of them has been called to testify
yet. In addition, Democrats have
demanded, and so far been denied,
cooperation from Vice President
Mike Pence, Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary
Rick Perry, the White House bud-
get office and the Department ofDefense — signaling potentially
lengthy legal fights to resolve the
disputes.
At the root of Democrats’ di-
lemma is the origin of the Ukraine
investigation itself. The scandal
erupted in mid-September, follow-
ing an anonymous whistleblower
complaint, and quickly united
Democrats behind a narrow, speedy
impeachment process.
Respond ing to the sudden outcry,
the White House released a record
of Trump’s call to Zelensky, which
Trump has described as “perfect,”
even though it confirmed aspects
of the damning narrative that has
since been painted by diplomats and
administration officials. Each day,
witnesses filled in components of
a high-level scheme that ensnares
multiple members of Trump’s in-
ner circle and has rocked the entire
U.S. foreign policy establishment.
Yet the deeper the House gets
into the inquiry, the more Demo-
crats grow concerned about its
sprawling nature.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New
York, the No. 5 House Democrat,
quickly answered “no” when
asked by reporters on Wednesday
whether Trump’s abandonment of
the Kurds in Syria bolsters the case
for impeachment.
“I don’t think we’ve connected
one with the other,” added Jef-
fries, who leads the House Dem-
ocratic Caucus. “The actions to
the president as it relates to the
Trump-Ukraine scandal speak for
themselves.”
Pelosi, too, has repeatedly
stressed that other grievances
Democrats have with Trump — on
everything from inaction to address
gun violence to the president’s
hard-line immigration policies —
should be litigated at the ballot box.Their comments reflect a col-
lective effort by senior Democrats
to keep the impeachment inquiry
narrowly focused on the Ukraine
controversy, and not branch out to
include other scandals that have
ensnared Trump, his administra-
tion and businesses.
“At some point you realize to get
additional tranche of information
that’s going to take quite awhile,
and then you make a decision: Do
you wait that much longer or do you
go with what we have?” said Rep.
Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the
Judiciary Committee. “My view is
the most damning evidence basi-
cally already came out.”
House Majority Leader Steny
Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday
his “hope” is to wrap up the im-
peachment inquiry by the end of
the year but acknowledged White
House resistance has “made the
fact-finding phase more difficult.”
Still, the No. 2 House Democrat
said the decision by witnesses like
former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine
Marie Yovanovitch and former
White House Russia adviser Fiona
Hill to testify, despite the admin-
istration’s attempt to block them,
could lead to other reluctant wit-
nesses testifying.
“I think these two witnesses are
going to encourage others to come
forward and tell the truth, as pa-
triots,” Hoyer said.
“I want to emphasize this is no
rush to judgment,” he added when
pressed about a timeline. “Only in
the most serious circumstances,
where the Constitution and the
laws have been betrayed purport-
edly by a president, should the Con-
gress take action.”Andrew Desiderio and Sarah Ferris
contributed to this report.Clock management becomes key in impeachment drive
DEMOCRATS from page 1
EVAN VUCCI/AP
Democratic congressional leaders Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer face reporters after meeting with President Donald Trump at the
White House on Wednesday. Democrats face competing pressures to file impeachment charges soon or to wait until more evidence is examined.“At some point you
realize to get additional
tranche of information
that’s going to take
quite awhile, and thenyou make a decision:
Do you wait that much
longer or do you go
with what we have?”
— Rep. Ted Lieu