As final impeachment vote nears, swing-district Dems fall in line

With just hours to go until the House Rules Committee meets at 11 a.m. ET Tuesday for a marathon session to set the ground rules on this week's final impeachment vote, many of the moderate Democrats in districts President Trump won in 2016 have started to fall in line in favor of impeachment.
Other than New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who has mulled switching to the Republican Party, and Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, no other Democrat occupying one of the 31 House districts that Trump won in 2016 has announced opposition to impeachment. All Republicans in Congress and the Senate have opposed impeachment.
At the same time, New York Rep. Max Rose, whose district backed Trump by 10 points in 2016 and who has long campaigned on bipartisanship, announced Friday he would support impeaching the president.
“A president coercing a foreign government into targeting American citizens is not just another example of scorched earth politics, it serves as an invitation to the enemies of the United States to come after any citizen, so long as they disagree with the President,” Rose said in a statement.
Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb, Arizona Rep. Tom O’Halleran and Nevada Rep. Susie Lee, all Democrats representing Trump-won districts, have also said they will back impeachment.
And, Texas Rep. Colin Allred, a Democrat who flipped a GOP seat in 2018, called Trump's actions an “unacceptable violation of his oath of office and constitute an impeachable abuse of power.” Allred's district went to Hillary Clinton by just 1.9 points.
Not all moderate Democrats have weighed in, with several saying the vote will be a challenging decision. The House is comprised of 431 members, meaning Democrats would need 217 yeas to impeach Trump. There currently have been 233 Democrats, so they could lose only 16 of their own and still impeach the president.
The indications from moderates strongly suggested, though, that the president will be impeached by a floor vote of the full House this week, either on Wednesday or Thursday -- setting up an all-but-certain acquittal by the GOP-controlled Senate.
Meanwhile, support for impeachment has flatlined in several battleground-state polls.  However, a Fox News poll this week showed that nationally, 50 percent wanted Trump impeached and removed from office. Only 4 percent wanted Trump impeached but not removed by the Senate, and 41 percent opposed impeaching him altogether.
On Monday, House Democrats laid out their impeachment case against Trump in a sweeping report accusing him of betraying the nation and deserving to be ousted.
What Democrats once likely hoped would be a bipartisan act, only the third time in U.S. history the House will be voting to impeach a president, is now on track to be a starkly partisan roll call Wednesday.
Before that can happen, the Rules Committee will weigh in, in a break from recent history. During the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton, the House did not look to the Rules Committee to set up debate. Instead, the articles of impeachment came up on the House floor through a parliamentary phenomenon known as “privilege.” The House then secured a unanimous consent agreement, meaning all 435 members agreed to continue to consider the articles of impeachment over a two-day period. Such unanimous agreement was not considered feasible in this hyper-partisan environment. (An eye-popping 283 members of the House participated in the impeachment debate on the floor in 1998.)
After the Rules Committee concludes testimony Tuesday, the panel will present a “rule” for the actual floor debate on Wednesday. After a committee debate, the panel votes on the rule and sends it to the floor. House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern, D-Mass., told Fox News he wasn’t sure how long the debate would be on Wednesday or if they would tie together debate on both articles of impeachment or set up separate debate on each article. McGovern doubted the debate, and thus vote on the articles of impeachment, would drift into Thursday.
The Rules Committee usually has to produce a rule for debate one day in advance. That’s why the Rules Committee is meeting Tuesday, so the actual impeachment debate will unfold on the floor Wednesday.
Tension has remained high outside Washington. A raucous town hall Monday in the Detroit suburbs, for example, put on display the nation's wrenching debate over the unconventional president and the prospect of removing him from office. Freshman Rep. Elissa Slotkin was both heckled and celebrated as the Democrat announced her support for impeachment.
“There’s certainly a lot of controversy about this,” Slotkin told the crowd of 400. “But, there just has to be a moment where you use the letter of the law for what they were intended.”
And, a California town hall meeting featuring House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., descended into chaos after jeers led to clashes among attendees. Schiff was discussing how recognition of the Armenian genocide was a significant bipartisan issue at the event hosted by the Armenian National Committee of America on Saturday when members of the crowd began shouting at him.
"You will be going to jail for treason!" one man could be heard shouting in videos from the event that were posted online. The man acknowledged the outburst was unrelated to the purpose of the event, stating, "No disrespect to you all, I'm glad you guys are getting recognized for your genocide, but this man is a f-----g liar!"
"Liar!" at least one attendee at the Glendale event yelled.
The commotion escalated from there, with a number of people present bearing signs or shirts supporting President Trump and opposing the impeachment process. Schiff is one of the leaders of the impeachment inquiry, which is expected to lead to a vote by the full House later this week.
Democrats have introduced two articles of impeachment against Trump. They said he abused the power of his office by pressuring Ukraine to investigate 2020 election rival Joe Biden and obstructed Congress by trying to block the House investigation and its oversight duties as part of the nation's system of checks and balances.
Republicans have countered that Hunter Biden was engaged in corrupt business dealings in Ukraine while his father oversaw Ukraine policy as vice president, and argued that separation-of-powers principles counseled against impeaching the president for failing to comply with congressional demands.
Under former Attorney General Eric Holder, Republicans noted, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to cooperate on various probes, including Congress' review of the "Fast and Furious" gunrunning scandal. Republicans eventually held Holder in contempt of Congress.
Fox News' Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Rudy Giuliani says he was key player in Yovanovitch ouster, has proof of Dem impeachment a 'cover-up'

Rudy Giuliani, a personal attorney for President Trump, said Monday that he played a key role in forcing ex-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch from her post earlier this year, and claimed that he has evidence the Trump impeachment inquiry is a "cover-up" of Democratic malfeasance.
Giuliani, one of Trump's most loyal defenders, told Laura Ingraham on "The Ingraham Angle" that he helped forced out Yovanovitch because she was corrupt and obstructing the investigation into Ukraine and the Bidens.
Giuliani raised eyebrows recently after an interview was published in the New Yorker where he was quoted saying that he needed her "out of the way" because she would make the investigation into the Bidens "difficult for everybody."
He told Ingraham that he needed her out of the way because she was corrupt. Giuliani said he was not the first person to go to the president with concerns about the diplomat.
Yovanovitch, 60, a career diplomat and daughter of immigrants who fled the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, claimed that she was ousted from her role due to a smear campaign by Trump allies. Trump's tweets about her were shown during her testimony in front of Congress and she called them "very intimidating."
Yovanovitch “clearly is somebody who’s been a public servant to the United States for decades and I don’t think the president should have done that,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., at the time.
Giuliani said others voiced their concerns about the diplomat, including [former Texas Republican U.S. Congressman] Pete Sessions, and a number of congressmen.
He added that he interviewed several individuals who claimed Yovanovitch was "holding up" their U.S. visas "in order to obstruct the investigation of collusion in the Ukraine and specifically to obstruct the Biden investigation."
"It is a cover-up, a cover-up," Giuliani claimed.
The law firm representing Yovanovitch did not immediately respond to an after-hours email from Fox News for comment. Yovanovitch and others have described Giuliani as leading what one called an "irregular channel" outside the diplomatic mainstream of U.S.-Ukraine relations. Ingraham asked the former mayor why Trump didn't go to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about concerns with Yovanovitch.
"I have that testimony under oath. I gave it to the State Department. They never investigated a single witness. When they say that she is innocent, it is innocent-without-investigation," he added.
Regarding the Bidens, Giuliani has claimed that former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter should be investigated -- relating to the younger Biden's position on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was serving in the Obama administration.
Giuliani further told Ingraham that Trump was simply asking new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky -- in a July phone call -- to investigate crimes at the "highest levels" of both Kiev and Washington.
"So, he is being impeached for doing the right thing as president of the United States," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report

Democrats 2019 Debate Cartoons

Turbulence shakes Democrats going into final debate of 2019

CLINTON, Iowa (AP) — Seven Democratic presidential candidates will stand on stage this week in Los Angeles, a pool of survivors who have withstood almost a year on the campaign trail, sustained attacks from rivals in both parties, and five rounds of high-pressure debates.

And while the field has been effectively cut down from more than 20 in the span of six months, a deepening sense of volatility is settling over the Democratic primary on the eve of the sixth and final debate of 2019. The remaining candidates, those in the debate and some trying to compete from outside, are grappling with unprecedented distraction from Washington, questions about their core principles and new signs that the party’s energized factions are turning against each other.

Lest there be any doubt about the level of turbulence in the race, it’s unclear whether Thursday’s debate will happen at all given an unsettled labor union dispute that might require participants to cross a picket line. All seven candidates have said they would not do so.

The Democratic dilemma is perhaps best personified by Elizabeth Warren, whose progressive campaign surged through the late summer and fall but is suddenly struggling under the weight of nagging questions about her health care plan, her ability to compete against President Donald Trump and her very authenticity as a candidate.

Boyd Brown, a South Carolina-based Democratic strategist who recently decided to back Joe Biden only after his preferred candidate, Beto O’Rourke, was forced from the race, likened Warren’s position to that of someone falling down a mountain grasping for anything to slow her descent.

“She’s got real problems,” Brown said.

Warren has avoided conflict with her Democratic rivals for much of the year, but she has emerged as the chief antagonist of the leading candidates in the so-called moderate lane, former Vice President Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana. Seven weeks before Iowa’s Feb. 3 caucus, the Massachusetts senator is attacking both men with increasing frequency for being too willing to embrace Republican ideas and too cozy with wealthy donors.

Those close to Warren hope the strategy will allow her to shift the conversation away from her own health care struggles back to her signature wealth tax and focus on corruption. Yet she could not escape questions about her evolving position on Medicare for All as she campaigned in Iowa over the weekend.

When asked about health care, Warren told a crowd of roughly 180 people in the Mississippi River town of Clinton, Iowa, about a plan to expand insurance coverage without immediately moving to a universal, government-run system. She promised that those who wanted government health insurance could buy it before finally concluding, “At the end of my first term, we’ll vote on Medicare for All.”

The next question came from a man who said he was on Medicare and mostly happy about it, but had lingering issues.

“You call it Medicare for All and it’s better. Can’t you change the name?” he asked of her proposal.

“I like your suggestion,” Warren responded, in a tone suggesting she wasn’t entirely joking. “Let’s call it health care for everybody.” She later added, “Let’s call it better than Medicare for All. I’m in.”

Even entertaining a name change seemed to mark yet another shift for Warren, who first co-sponsored Medicare for All in 2017, but began pivoting away from the proposal after experts questioned the plan she released in October to pay for it without raising middle-class taxes. She subsequently released a “transition plan” promising to get Medicare for All approved by Congress by the end of her third year as president while relying on existing insurance plans, including those established by Obamacare, to expand health coverage in the interim.

Warren’s Democratic critics suggest her evolution on the issue has stalled her momentum because it goes beyond a policy dispute and raises broader questions about what may be the most important personal quality in politics: authenticity.

Indeed, Buttigieg, Biden and other rivals have seized on her shifts. Even Bernie Sanders, Warren’s progressive ally and Medicare for All’s author, seemed to pile on by promising to send a full bill to Congress implementing the measure during the first week of his administration.

Without naming any of his rivals, Biden adviser Symone Sanders said candidates would not succeed in shifting the conversation away from health care this week even if they wanted to. She said to expect another “robust exchange” on the issue, which “is not going away and for good reason, because it is an issue that in 2018 Democrats ran on and won.”

Tough questions for Warren haven’t just come from her rivals.

Since Thanksgiving, she’s shortened her typically 30-minute and more stump speech to around 10 minutes and used the extra time to take more audience questions — only to be forced further on the defensive about health care.

Barton Wright, a 69-year-old technical writer, pressed Warren on Medicare for All at a recent event in Rochester, New Hampshire, noting after the event that he wants a deeper explanation.

“It just sounds awful,” Wright said. “It sounds ‘like Hemlock for All’ for people who don’t like Medicare. And that’s a lot of people.”

Even after questioning Warren, however, Wright said he was helping her campaign and still plans to vote for her.

Meanwhile, Buttigieg, the surprise member of the top-tier, is grappling with issues of his own that expose another fissure between the moderate and progressive wings of the party.

Protesters aligned with Warren and Sanders tracked him across New York City last week banging pots and pans and calling him “Wall Street Pete” as he continued his aggressive courtship of wealthy donors. The 37-year-old seemed genuinely confused by the protests, which he was forced to acknowledge during at least one Manhattan fundraiser because the noise outside was so loud.

As he faced supporters in Seattle over the weekend, Buttigieg acknowledged that the intra-party attacks will almost certainly continue, although he tried to downplay the intensity of the infighting.

“There’s gonna have to be some fighting,” Buttigieg said, “but I’m never gonna let us get to where it feels like the fight is the point.”

The fighting is almost certain to be on display at Thursday night’s debate, especially among the four candidates in the top-tier: Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren. The three others on stage — Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, billionaire activist Tom Steyer and entrepreneur Andrew Yang — only narrowly hit the polling threshold needed to qualify and have an obvious incentive to make waves of their own as well.

Voters don’t want a public fight, even if they sense one is coming.

Steve Wehling, a 43-year-old University of Iowa employee, said he doesn’t like Democrats feuding with each other, but he won’t hold it against Warren or anyone else. He said he understands that, with the caucuses looming, “all of the campaigns are really starting to put the squeeze on.”

“Voters turn on the debates and still see 10 people on stage and I think a lot would of them would like to see the field narrowed down,” said Wehling, who plans to vote for Sanders and says Warren is his second choice. “The pressure is really on.”

___

Peoples reported in New York. Associated Press writer Hunter Woodall in Rochester, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.

AP Exclusive: Thousands of Ohio absentee applications denied

FILE - In this Nov. 6, 2018, file photo, voters cast their ballots, in Gates Mills, Ohio. An Associated Press review has found that thousands of Ohio voters were held up or stymied in their efforts to get absentee ballots by mail in 2018's general election because of a missing or mismatched signature on their ballot application. (AP Photo/Tony Dejak, File)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Thousands of Ohio voters were held up or stymied in their efforts to get absentee ballots for last year’s general election because of missing or mismatched signatures on their ballot applications, an Associated Press review has found.

The signature requirement on such applications is a largely overlooked and spottily tracked step in Ohio’s voting process, which has shifted increasingly to mail-in ballots since early, no-fault absentee voting was instituted in 2005.

To supporters, the requirement is a useful form of protection against voter fraud and provides an extra layer of security necessary for absentee balloting.

To detractors, it’s a recipe for disenfranchisement — a cumbersome addition to an already stringent voter identification system.

Susan Barnard, of Dayton in Montgomery County, said her 78-year-old husband, Leslie, who has cancer, missed a chance to vote last year because of a delay related to the signature requirement.

“We had planned a cruise last fall to give him something to look forward to,” said Barnard, 73. “It fell at the time of the election, and we were going to vote the absentee ballot. We got right down to the wire and we didn’t have one for him, and so he did not vote because of that.”

She said he had hoped to vote in the election, which included races for governor, state Supreme Court and Congress. Barnard suspects her husband simply forgot to sign his ballot application.

Figures provided to the AP through public information requests to Ohio’s 88 county boards of elections show 21 counties rejected more than 6,500 absentee ballot applications because a signature was either missing or didn’t match what was on file. That requirement is not for the ballot itself, which faces a different battery of requirements, but merely for an application requesting one. Another five counties reported rejecting about 850 applications combined, for various reasons that the boards didn’t specify.

The few counties that tracked what happened to applications after they were rejected said issues were largely addressed before or on Election Day.

Twelve responding counties recorded encountering no signature issues with the absentee applications. The remaining responding counties said they didn’t track how many applications they rejected.

It’s a statistic conspicuously absent from all the official data collected by the state, making it all but impossible to compare the issue across years or multiple states.

Signatures and other verification requirements are there to safeguard Ohio’s elections, said state Rep. John Becker, a southwestern Ohio Republican. He said if a voter fails to sign the application form, “that’s on them.”

Ï’m a big believer in personal responsibility,” Becker said. “You’ve got the form in front of you. If you forget to sign it, there are consequences.”

But Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said the AP analysis highlights a largely unexamined step in a process her organization already views as inefficient and subject to uneven enforcement.

“So a person can register to vote online, but if you go online to request an absentee ballot, a form is mailed to you that you have to mail back,” Miller said. Her organization supports allowing people to request absentee ballots online.

About 1.4 million of Ohio’s roughly 8 million registered voters cast absentee ballots last year.

Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose advocated as a state lawmaker for Ohio to allow voters to apply for absentee ballots online. A version of legislation he first proposed in 2013 is now before Ohio’s Legislature.

“While Ohio has long been a national leader in early voting, there is certainly more that can be done to prevent issues like these from occurring,” LaRose said. “Election integrity and voter access can certainly coexist, so let’s work together to modernize the process so we can improve the antiquated system currently in place.”

LaRose’s predecessor mailed absentee ballot applications to 6.6 million of Ohio’s 8 million registered voters in 2018. And state law actually says a request for an absentee ballot “need not be in any particular form” — meaning it could conceivably arrive on a cocktail napkin or the back of an envelope.

Still, the signature requirement is one of eight or nine pieces of information, depending on the type of election, that a successful request must contain.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, three states — Oregon, Washington and Colorado — conduct all-mail elections, eliminating the ballot application process by automatically mailing a ballot to every registered voter before Election Day.

Miller said Ohio has not shown the political will to move in this direction, but her organization is pushing establishment of a permanent absentee list for those voters who meet certain criteria that require help, such as illness, permanent disability or illiteracy. Seven states and the District of Columbia have just such a system.

Judiciary Committee’s minority blasts articles of impeachment report, ‘anemic case’

The House Judiciary Committee's minority blasted the committee's rush to impeach President Trump and wrote that history will not look kindly on how exculpatory evidence was ignored to meet a "self-imposed December deadline," according to the full articles of impeachment report released early Monday.
The minority, which is comprised of Republicans, blasted the Democrat-led majority for not making the case for impeachment and simply employing "holdover" arguments from other investigations to make their case. Despite the divide, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the chairman of the committee, wrote for the majority that Trump is a threat to the Constitution and should be removed from office.
The committee released a 658-page report on the impeachment resolution that lays out the case against Trump. Democrats have raised two articles of impeachable offenses, including abuse of power by soliciting Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election and then obstructing  Congress during its investigation.
The minority wrote that both articles are supported by assumptions and hearsay. The minority, headed by Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the ranking member of the committee, wrote that the majority decided to “pursue impeachment first and build a case second.”
The majority ignored exculpatory evidence but proclaimed the "facts are uncontested,” the minority wrote.
"The facts are contested, and, in many areas, the majority's claims are directly contradicted by the evidence," the minority wrote.  They continued that "not one of the criminal accusations leveled at the president over the past year—including bribery, extortion, collusion/conspiracy with foreign enemies, or obstruction of justice—has found a place in the articles. Some of these arguments are just holdovers from an earlier disingenuous attempt by the majority to weaponized the Russia collusion investigation for political gain."
The majority's actions were "unprecedented, unjustifiable, and will only dilute the significance of the dire recourse that is impeachment," they wrote.
The minority also claimed procedural missteps by the majority by not allowing a "minority day of hearings," despite several requests to Nadler. They called the denial “blatant” and “intentional.” They claim Nadler also refused a request to subpoena witnesses.  They wrote that there was a complete absence of “fact witnesses” and the case rested with the testimony from four academics and another with a panel of Congressional staffers.
The majority claimed that they were transparent. The majority wrote that the minority wanted to hear testimony from the whistleblower, but the majority stressed the importance of protecting the person’s identity. The minority's request to hear from Hunter Biden—the son of  Joe Biden—was "well outside the scope of the inquiry," the majority wrote.
At the heart of the first charge, is Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Democrats have relied on a whistleblower’s complaint that claimed that there was at least an implied quid pro quo during the phone conversation. Trump was also accused of using agents "within and outside" the U.S. government to compel Kiev to investigate the Bidens and their business dealings in the country. The claim is that Trump withheld $391 million in essential military funds to pressure Kiev on the investigations.
Both Trump and Zelensky deny there was ever any implied or explicit quid pro quo.
The newly released report also claims that Trump directed key players in the inquiry from participating.
Trump "interposed the powers of the Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House of Representatives, and assumed to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the ‘‘sole Power of Impeachment’’ vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives,” the report said.
The report listed John “Mick” Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff, and Robert B. Blair, a senior adviser to Mulvaney, as officials who have denied subpoenas.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Sunday proposed in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that Mulvaney be subpoenaed to testify in an impeachment trial. McConnell told Fox News last week that the chances of Trump being removed from office are zero.
Republicans say Democrats are impeaching the president because they can’t beat him in 2020. Democrats warn Americans can’t wait for the next election because they worry what Trump will try next.
The House is expected to vote on the articles next week, in the days before Christmas. That would send the impeachment effort to the Senate for a 2020 trial.
The majority claimed that the impeachment inquiry was performed in a fair manner and pointed out that the purpose of the inquiry was to determine if Trump “may have committed an impeachable offense.” Trump was offered the opportunity to participate, but he declined, the majority wrote. The president has refused to participate in the proceedings.
At about the time the impeachment report was being released, Trump was on Twitter touting his record and slamming the allegations. He wrote that despite the impeachment and "obstruction," he had one of the most successful presidencies in history.
The Associated Press and Bradford Betz contributed to this report

Nadler calls for Trump's removal in committee's 658-page report on articles of impeachment

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote that President Trump is a threat to the Constitution and should be removed from office, according to the committee's 658-page report on the articles of impeachment resolution against Trump that was submitted early Monday.
The majority wrote that President Trump abused his office by soliciting the interference of Ukraine in the 2020 election and then obstructed the impeachment inquiry into his conduct.
The report was released at 12:30 a.m. ET., and included a dissent from the committee's minority that called the case for impeachment "not only weak but dangerously lowers the bar for future impeachments."
Trump is accused, in the first article, of abusing his presidential power by asking Ukraine to investigate his 2020 rival Joe Biden while holding military aid as leverage, and, in the second, of obstructing Congress by blocking the House’s efforts to probe his actions.
The president insists he did nothing wrong and blasts the Democrats’ effort daily as a sham and harmful to America.
Nadler wrote that Trump should be removed and "disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”
No Republicans have so far signaled that they will support the articles of impeachment, but a small handful of Democrats who represent GOP-leaning districts have said they may join Republicans in voting against them.

Townhall Cartoons 2019