WASHINGTON (AP) — The closed doors of the Trump impeachment investigation are swinging wide open.
When
the gavel strikes at the start of the House hearing Wednesday morning,
America and the rest of the world will have the chance to see and hear
for themselves for the first time about President Donald Trump’s actions
toward Ukraine and consider whether they are, in fact, impeachable
offenses.
It’s a remarkable moment, even for a White House full of them.
All on TV, committee leaders will set the stage,
then comes the main feature: Two seasoned diplomats, William Taylor,
the graying former infantry officer now charge d’affaires in Ukraine,
and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in Washington, telling
the striking, if sometimes complicated story of a president allegedly
using foreign policy for personal and political gain ahead of the 2020
election.
So
far, the narrative is splitting Americans, mostly along the same lines
as Trump’s unusual presidency. The Constitution sets a dramatic, but
vague, bar for impeachment, and there’s no consensus yet that Trump’s
actions at the heart of the inquiry meet the threshold of “high crimes
and misdemeanors.”
Whether
Wednesday’s proceedings begin to end a presidency or help secure
Trump’s position, it’s certain that his chaotic term has finally arrived
at a place he cannot control and a force, the constitutional system of
checks and balances, that he cannot ignore.
The
country has been here just three times before, and never against the
backdrop of social media and real-time commentary, including from the
president himself.
“These
hearings will address subjects of profound consequence for the Nation
and the functioning of our government under the Constitution,” said
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the
Intelligence Committee leading the inquiry, in a memo to lawmakers.
Schiff
called it a “solemn undertaking,” and counseled colleagues to “approach
these proceedings with the seriousness of purpose and love of country
that they demand.”
“Total impeachment scam,” tweeted the president, as he does virtually every day.
Impeachments
are rare, historians say, because they amount to nothing short of the
nullification of an election. Starting down this road poses risks for
both Democrats and Republicans as proceedings push into the 2020
campaign.
Unlike
the Watergate hearings and Richard Nixon, there is not yet a “cancer on
the presidency” moment galvanizing public opinion. Nor is there the
national shrug, as happened when Bill Clinton’s impeachment ultimately
didn’t result in his removal from office. It’s perhaps most like the
partisanship-infused impeachment of Andrew Johnson after the Civil War.
Trump
calls the whole thing a “witch hunt,” a retort that echoes Nixon’s own
defense. Republicans say Democrats have been trying to get rid of this
president since he first took office, starting with former special
counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference to help
Trump in the 2016 election.
Democratic
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was initially reluctant to launch a formal
impeachment inquiry. As Democrats took control of the House in January,
Pelosi said impeachment would be “too divisive” for the country. Trump,
she said, was simply “not worth it.”
After
Mueller’s appearance on Capitol Hill in July for the end of the Russia
probe, the door to impeachment proceedings seemed closed.
But the next day Trump got on the phone.
For
the past month, witness after witness has testified under oath about
his July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected president, Volodymyr
Zelenskiy, and the alarms it set off in U.S. diplomatic and national
security circles.
In
a secure room in the Capitol basement, current and former officials
have been telling lawmakers what they know. They’ve said an earlier
Trump call in April congratulating Zelenskiy on his election victory
seemed fine. The former U.S. reality TV host and the young Ukrainian
comedian hit it off.
But in the July call, things turned.
An
anonymous whistleblower first alerted officials to the phone call. “I
have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that
the President of the United States is using the power of his office to
solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election,” the
person wrote in August to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.
Democrats fought for the letter to be released to them as required.
“I am deeply concerned,” the whistleblower wrote.
Trump
insisted the call was “perfect.” The White House released a rough
transcript. Pelosi, given the nod from her most centrist freshman
lawmakers, opened the inquiry.
“The president has his opportunity to prove his innocence,” she told Noticias Telemundo on Tuesday.
Defying
White House orders not to appear, witnesses have testified that Trump’s
acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was withholding U.S. military aid
to the budding democracy until the new Ukraine government conducted
investigations Trump wanted into Democrats in the 2016 election and his
potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter.
It
was all part of what Taylor, the long-serving top diplomat in Ukraine,
called the “irregular” foreign policy being led by Trump’s personal
attorney, Rudy Giuliani, outside of traditional channels.
Taylor
said it was “crazy” that the Trump administration was withholding U.S.
military assistance to the East European ally over the political
investigations, with Russian forces on Ukraine’s border on watch for a
moment of weakness.
Kent,
the bowtie-wearing State Department official, told investigators there
were three things Trump wanted of Ukraine: “Investigations, Biden,
Clinton.”
On
Friday, the public is scheduled to hear from Marie Yovanovitch, the
former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who told investigators she was warned
to “watch my back” as Trump undercut and then recalled her.
Eight more witnesses will testify in public hearings next week.
“What
this affords is the opportunity for the cream of our diplomatic corps
to tell the American people a clear and consistent story of what the
president did,” said Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., a member of the
Intelligence panel.
“It takes a lot of courage to do what they are doing,” he said, “and they are probably just going to be abused for it.”
Republicans,
led on the panel by Rep. Devin Nunes, a longtime Trump ally from
California, will argue that none of those witnesses has first-hand
knowledge of the president’s actions. They will say Ukraine never felt
pressured and the aid money eventually flowed, in September.
Yet Republicans are struggling to form a unified defense of Trump. Instead they often fall back on criticism of the process.
Some
Republicans align with Trump’s view, which is outside of mainstream
intelligence findings, that Ukraine was involved in 2016 U.S. election
interference. They want to hear from Hunter Biden, who served on the
board of a gas company in Ukraine, Burisma, while his father was the
vice president. And they are trying to bring forward the still-anonymous
whistleblower, whose identity Democrats have vowed to protect.
The
framers of the Constitution provided few details about how the
impeachment proceedings should be run, leaving much for Congress to
decide. Democrats say the White House’s refusal to provide witnesses or
produce documents is obstruction and itself impeachable.
Hearings
are expected to continue and will shift, likely by Thanksgiving, to the
Judiciary Committee to consider actual articles of impeachment.
The House, which is controlled by Democrats, is expected to vote by Christmas.
That would launch a trial in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority, in the new year.
___
Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report.
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