Rep. Mark Meadows: Trump impeachment driven by Democrats’ evidence-free hysteria and wild allegations

From the moment Donald Trump was inaugurated, Washington Democrats have been myopically focused on politically targeting his administration and impeaching him.
Set aside their three separate impeachment votes before anything with Ukraine ever happened.
Recall the dissemination of a fake Russian collusion conspiracy theory, built on a debunked dossier and aided by rogue senior FBI officials.
Remember the failed attempt to convict President Trump on a baseless obstruction of justice allegation.
And, most recently, consider the evidence-free hysteria over a secondhand allegation about a call Democrats hadn’t heard and a transcript they hadn’t read at the time – culminating in an official impeachment procedure.
The impeachment began as it ultimately stayed: a disorganized kangaroo court. Secret depositions, manipulative leaks and wild allegations seized Congress.
Democrats began an effort to overturn an election behind the closed doors of a sensitive compartmented information facility used for classified information. They leaked only anti-Trump information and kept Americans in the dark from context for weeks.
And it’s certainly no wonder that Democrats guarded the full set of facts from the public as long as they could. In the weeks of open hearings, their case didn’t just render little evidence – it fell apart at the faintest sign of scrutiny.
Officials like America’s acting ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, admitted to never having been a party to any conversations, negotiations or discussions providing firsthand knowledge.
Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch didn’t finish her opening statement before acknowledging she could bring no testimony regarding any quid pro quo allegations against the president – or, the entire basis of the impeachment.
Even the “star witness” – Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland – admitted he had no evidence “other than his assumptions.” In other words: he had nothing at all.
This came even as Congress heard from multiple witnesses with firsthand accounts, directly undercutting the anti-Trump allegations.
Officials like former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and former National Security Council Russia specialist Tim Morrison were emphatic that there was no political quid pro quo, that the Ukrainians never communicated a belief otherwise, and that President Trump never ordered anything of the sort.
Remarkably, we even heard from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top aide, Andriy Yermak, disputing the allegations from Ukraine’s perspective.
While the Democrats had rumors and innuendo suggesting something was true, President Trump had direct witnesses testifying that the allegations were false.
Despite all this, Democrats pushed forward and introduced articles of impeachment Monday. It should be noted these articles came after Democrats made an 11th-hour rule change in the House Judiciary Committee, lowering the threshold for impeachment.
Democrats then quietly removed “bribery” from their list of allegations, after they had conducted polling that led them to allege it in the first place.
Through it all, President Trump and the White House were given virtually no rights – other than an offer to have an attorney present during the last week, when the cake had already been baked.
After a bungled process, a weak fact pattern, and a crumbling narrative, it’s now beyond any doubt: there is no policy priority too important and no lack of evidence too glaring that will prevent Washington Democrats from going after this president.
It has been the Democrats’ single-minded goal this entire Congress. They are an angry mob seeking validation. An impeachment machine in search of a cause.
But this effort to undermine the president will fail, just like their other attempts. Americans will see through it. And if Washington Democrats ever decide they’re ready to accept the results of the 2016 election, we’ll be ready to work with them on issues that matter to American families: creating more jobs, lowering health care costs, securing the border, fighting the opioid crisis and more.
Until then, while they focus on fruitless political investigations, we’ll keep working with the president to deliver on his commitments and improve everyday lives across the country. While Democrats check off impeachment votes, the president will keep checking off his promises.
And when all is said and done, it will be said of House Democrats: When they couldn’t bring themselves to support President Trump, they consoled themselves by making every effort to undermine those who did – the American voters.

Dems plow ahead with impeachment articles as initial vote looms

The House Judiciary Committee is poised to be the scene of another major partisan clash Thursday as lawmakers press ahead with two articles of impeachment against President Trump, ahead of an initial vote expected by day's end likely to advance the measures to the floor.
The final "markup" process began Wednesday evening, immediately breaking out into fiery disagreement. Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., argued that it would be unsafe to wait until the 2020 election to remove Trump from office.
"We cannot rely on an election to solve our problems when the president threatens the very integrity of that election," Nadler claimed during Wednesday's session.
Democrats from districts that supported Trump in 2016, however, have been less enthusiastic. Recent polls have shown declining support for impeachment in key swing states, with two polls released Wednesday indicating that most Americans did not want Trump removed.
Politico reported earlier this week that the numbers were making a "small group" of moderate Democrats, who have held seats in districts where Trump won in 2016, nervous about how to vote. They instead have suggested Trump be censured, which would prevent the GOP from holding a potentially damaging Senate trial and give them political cover in the upcoming election.
The House is now composed of 431 current members, meaning Democrats would need 217 yeas to impeach Trump. There are currently 233 Democrats, so Democrats could lose only 16 of their own and still impeach the president. Among the House Democrats, 31 represent more moderate districts that Trump carried in 2016.
Freshman Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich. – who flipped a GOP district in 2018 that Trump won by seven points in 2016 – told Fox News last month that she was tentatively weighing all the evidence. On Wednesday, she confirmed that she's still undecided.
"The phones are ringing off the hook," she told CNN. "We literally can't pick up the phones fast enough -- and it's people on both sides of it."
Republicans, meanwhile, have vociferously opposed the impeachment effort. The committee's ranking member, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, stated that Democrats have been trying to impeach Trump since he took office. He echoed the White House's argument that the impeachment was politically motivated theater, long in the works and foreshadowed openly by Democrats for months, if not years.
He and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., each argued that unlike previous presidents who have faced impeachment, Trump was not accused of an offense actually defined by law: neither "abuse of power" nor "obstruction of Congress" is a recognized federal or state crime. Those are the two offenses outlined in the articles of impeachment before the committee. (The separate charge of contempt of Congress, according to the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, exempts the president for separation-of-powers reasons.)
The markup is expected to go until Thursday afternoon. If the committee votes to approve the articles of impeachment, as expected, there will likely be an impeachment vote on the House floor in the middle of next week.
The articles center on Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch an investigation into his political rivals – namely, former vice president Joe Biden – while withholding aid. Democrats argue Trump wrongly used U.S. aid and the prospect of a White House meeting as leverage, but Trump denies doing so.
Fox News' Chad Pergram and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.

Town Hall Cartoons on Impeachment

Impeachment articles fuel deepening distrust and division

House Democrats avoided a political pitfall Tuesday, limiting themselves to two articles of impeachment rather than a kitchen-sink approach that included Russia, Putin, the Trump hotel, caustic tweets and whatever else they could conjure up.
But the brief appearance by Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, for all their efforts at solemnity, seemed like a predictable step on a predictable path toward impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate.
And that leaves us, as always, with roughly half the country believing that President Trump did commit high crimes and misdemeanors, and half who think Pelosi’s party is doing this solely to overturn the 2016 election.
So the question becomes who do you believe: the Democrats or the GOP? The media or the president? Inspector General Michael Horowitz or Attorney General Bill Barr?
For so many people, the answer is one side or the other, or…no one at all.
This goes beyond impeachment, beyond Ukraine and Russia, beyond the Carter Page FISA warrant. The Washington Post is running a series based on confidential documents, comparable to the Pentagon papers, showing how the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations lied about the war in Afghanistan by claiming progress as things kept getting worse.
And many years before Trump popularized the phrase fake news, confidence in the media began to slide, fueled by blunders and bias.
Ben Domenech, founder of the Federalist, told the New York Times there has been a steady decline in trust in the gatekeepers of American life:
“Everything from politics to faith to sports has been revealed as corrupted or corruptible. And every mismanaged war, failed hurricane response, botched investigation and doping scandal furthers this view.” That, he said, “allows individuals to retreat to their own story lines, fantasies and tales in which their tribe is always good or under attack, and the other always craven and duplicitous.”
A very concise snapshot of where we are.
Christopher Wray is either doing his job or, as Trump tweeted about the man he appointed, “with that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI.”
Despite the IG’s findings of no political bias, Barr continues to insist that the Trump campaign was “clearly spied upon,” telling NBC’s Pete Williams that the nation has been upended by a “bogus narrative” that’s been “hyped by an irresponsible media.” And they all work for the same administration.
Twitter is the modern embodiment of this tribal culture. Angry people on both sides will wave away this question and go on the attack, saying that Trump is innocent or guilty, that the deep state is insidious or fictitious, that FBI chief
What’s more, they will denounce the motives of reporters, analysts, columnists and anchors and declare them to be either Trump-haters or in the tank for Trump–or for just being horrible human beings. There is plenty of unfair journalism and commentary out there, to be sure, but also the demonizing of decent people trying to do their jobs.
And we have plenty of company.
As the Times piece by Peter Baker puts it: “Much of the public may not trust Mr. Trump, according to surveys, but it likewise does not trust his opponents all that much either — or the news media that he complains is out to get him. Americans have been down on banks, big business, the criminal justice system and the health care system for years, and fewer have confidence in churches or organized religion now than at any point since Gallup started asking in 1973.”
Public distrust in government, at least in the modern era, has its roots in Vietnam, and in Watergate (which led to the Nixon impeachment). Distrust in “the system” is nothing new: remember the racially divided furor over the O.J. verdict? And media malfeasance has a long history: Seven years after the Washington Post won a Pulitzer for its Watergate reporting, the paper had to return a Pulitzer for the phony Janet Cooke story about an 8-year-old heroin addict.
Even a party-line impeachment is familiar ground: Just 21 years ago, House Republicans brought articles against Bill Clinton in a sex-and-lies scandal that was followed by acquittal in the Senate.
If the Trump impeachment feels different, it’s because the battle is part of a culture war that transcends politics and plays out in an oversaturated media environment. It’s because this president uses his vast platform, and digital bully pulpit, to wage war on political rivals, critics and the media. It’s because some Democrats really have been trying to get him out of office since he was inaugurated. It’s because some in the press really do think he’s an illegitimate president and have a visceral animosity toward him.
There is a larger cost that will outlast the Trump presidency, a further erosion of trust and a deepening division that have come to define America.

Mexican cartels subject to terrorist-level sanctions under new GOP-sponsored bill

The Mexican cartels are coming under increased pressure from U.S. lawmakers.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is expected to introduce on Wednesday a bill to subject certain foreign criminal organizations – namely the cartels – to the same level of sanctions as terror groups. It comes after President Trump last month announced that plans were in motion to designate the drug-trafficking enterprises south of the border as foreign terrorist organizations, or FTOs.
“Criminal organizations and drug cartels like the one responsible for last month’s attack in Mexico ought to be treated just like terrorist groups in the eyes of the U.S. government,” Cotton told Fox News in a statement, referring to the early November slaying of nine U.S. citizens from the Mormon community in the northern state of Sonora.
“This bill would help stop cartel violence by ensuring these groups, and anyone who helps them, face dire consequences for their actions,” he added.
Referred to as the Significant Transnational Criminal Organization Designation Act, the legislation – an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act – enables the federal government to impose on the most significant Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) the same sanctions that apply to FTOs.
The sanctions include prohibiting organization members and their immediate families admission to the United States, freezing assets, and seeking civil and criminal penalties against individuals providing material assistance or resources to the organization.
Moreover, the bill mandates that the president submit a report to Congress with the government’s findings on the Nov. 4, 2019 attack on U.S. citizens in northern Mexico once the investigation is completed, including whether the organization responsible should be designated a significant TCO.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., participates in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, on Jan. 25, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

The bill is sponsored by GOP Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, John Cornyn of Texas, Ted Cruz of Texas, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Josh Hawley of Missouri, David Perdue of Georgia, Mitt Romney of Utah and Ben Sasse of Nebraska.
The act defines “membership in a significant transnational criminal organization” as direct members and/or their spouse and child. But it carves out an exemption for those “who did not know, or should not reasonably have known, that his or her spouse or parent was a member of a significant transnational criminal organization or whom the Attorney General has reasonable grounds to believe has renounced” to such membership.

Mexican national guardsmen patrol near Bavispe, at the Sonora-Chihuahua border, Mexico, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2019.  (AP)

The bill comes at a time when cartel violence is spiking and the U.S. is battling unprecedented levels of drug-related deaths and overdoses. New Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf has also vowed to go after cartels and other gangs fueling chaos at the border.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen if and when Trump's FTO designation on the cartels will come to fruition, a move that has generated both praise and criticism. Terrorist designations are handled by the U.S. State Department. Once a group has been slapped with such a designation, known members are prohibited from entering the country, and it is then illegal for those in the U.S. to intentionally provide support to them. Financial institutions are also barred from doing any type of business with the organization or its members.
“The FTO designation is an important step in a positive direction for U.S. national security. Too many Americans have died as the ruthless cartels have made billions by terrorizing communities and killing at unprecedented levels. It's clear President Trump always places the safety of Americans first,” noted Derek Maltz, a former special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration Special Operations Division in New York. “Designating the cartels as terrorists and implementing a focused operational plan will save a tremendous amount of lives.”
The FTO tag could also mean that an American in an inner-city gang selling street drugs that originated from south of the border could be prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws – possibly being given a life sentence.

A boy pauses as he speaks next to the coffins of Dawna Ray Langford, 43, and her sons Trevor, 11, and Rogan, 2, who were killed by drug cartel gunmen, during the funeral at a family cemetery in La Mora, Sonora state, Mexico, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019.(AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

According to the latest annual assessment from the DEA, Mexican drug trafficking organizations pose the greatest crime threat to the U.S. and are continuing to “expand their control of the opioids market” in conjunction with the deadly spike in overdoses in recent years. However, officials have also lamented that “the scope of violence generated by Mexican crime groups has been difficult to measure due to restricted reporting by the government and attempts by groups to mislead the public.”
Moreover, Mexico’s homicide rate – routinely driven by cartel-connected violence – is on the path to reaching record levels this year, even higher than the record numbers set in 2018 when more than 30,000 people were killed.

Bernie Sanders faced pushback from union members in Las Vegas

Bernie Sanders faced pushback from union members in Las Vegas on Tuesday over how the Democratic presidential candidate would fund a government-subsidized health care plan that would force union members to forfeit the benefits they’ve spent years bargaining for.
The 77-year-old independent U.S. senator from Vermont addressed a town hall meeting hosted by Culinary Union Local 226 and its parent union, Unite Here. Though union members in the crowd were widely supportive of Sanders – shouting “Bernie! Bernie!” as he wheeled out his stance on immigration, criminal justice and climate change – a group of about 12 people began to heckle the senator when he came to health care, according to the Washington Examiner.
“We have, in this country, a dysfunctional, broken and cruel health care system,” Sanders told the audience, according to the Las Vegas Sun. “We spend twice as much per person on health care as do the people of any other country.”
Elodia Muñoz -- one of 550 Culinary members to strike against the Frontier hotel for more than six years between 1991 and 1998 – questioned why she should vote for a candidate who supports Medicare-for-All after all her effort, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Under the government plan, all Americans, including union members, would lose private insurance plans.
During Sanders’ response, the crowd began to chant: “Union health care! Union health care!" One man also shouted: "How are you gonna pay for it?"
The same union hosted Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Monday and will host former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
In his bid for the party’s presidential nomination, Biden has called for allowing employees to keep their current health plans, positioning himself against Warren and Sanders who’ve both advocated for Medicare-for-All. The International Association of Firefighters, which has endorsed Biden, has called Medicare-for-All a non-starter, according to the Examiner.
"You'll be able to keep your negotiated plans," Biden told a group of union members in August. "You've worked like hell, you gave up wages for it."
Warren has recently backed away from her once-orthodox approach toward a government-run health care system after seeing her poll numbers deteriorate over the past month in national surveys and, more importantly, in polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states to hold contests in the primary and caucus presidential nominating calendar.
Speaking in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Sanders discussed his efforts to pass legislation throughout his career that aligns with union issues, including raising the minimum wage, forcing employers to recognize union elections and deterring corporate greed. He also cited his experience negotiating with companies that employ Unite Here workers, such as American Airlines. Still, union benefits remain the main factor that keeps membership high.
Culinary Union President Ted Pappageorge later chastised the crowd for heckling Sanders.
“We’re gonna let candidates speak without any kind of heckling. If you want to heckle, go outside and heckle. We want to learn. The town halls are to learn. Frankly, not to learn from the hecklers, but the candidates," Pappageorge told the crowd. "Second, I want to be very clear to everybody, this union stands very strongly that every American deserves to have good, quality health care. It’s a right, it should never be a privilege in this country.”
Fox News' Paul Steinhauser and Tara Prindiville contributed to this report.

Democrat Karen Bass says she's open to impeach Trump again if he gets reelected in 2020

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said Tuesday she's willing to impeach President Trump again if he wins reelection in 2020.
TMZ founder Harvey Levin presented Bass with a scenario in which Trump wins a second term but Democrats take over the Senate from the Republicans.
"There's no such thing, really, as double jeopardy in an impeachment trial because it's political," Levin said. "Suppose he gets reelected... and you win back the Senate in a big way. If you did that, would you be inclined to take a second bite at the apple and reintroduce the exact same impeachment articles and then send it through again a second if you have a Democratic Senate on your side?"
"So, you know, yes, but I don't think it would be exactly the same and here's why," Bass responded, "because even though we are impeaching him now, there's still a number of court cases, there's a ton of information that could come forward. For example, we could get his bank records and find out that he's owned 100 percent by the Russians."
She continued, "You are absolutely right in your scenario, but the only thing I would say slightly different is, it might not be the same articles of impeachment because the odds are we would have a ton more information, and then the odds of that, sadly enough, is that, you know, he probably has other examples of criminal behavior."
Earlier in the day, Bass spoke with Fox News' Neil Cavuto and expressed her "rock-solid" confidence that House Democrats had enough votes to pass articles of impeachment. The Democrats unveiled two impeachment articles earlier in the day: one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress.
Trump, at a rally in Pennsylvania Tuesday night, decried their efforts as "impeachment lite."

Jerrold Nadler Cartoons

Wray: Report on Russia probe found “unacceptable” problems

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Justice Department inspector general report on the early days of the Russia investigation identified problems that are “unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution,” FBI Director Chris Wray says in detailing changes the bureau plans to make in response.

In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Wray said the FBI had cooperated fully with the inspector general — which concluded in its report that the investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia was legitimate but also cited serious flaws — and accepted all its recommendations.

Wray said the FBI would make changes to how it handles confidential informants, how it applies for warrants from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, how it conducts briefings on foreign influence for presidential nominees and how it structures sensitive investigations like the 2016 Russia probe. He said he has also reinstated ethics training.

“I am very committed to the FBI being agile in its tackling of foreign threats,” Wray said. “But I believe you can be agile and still scrupulously follow our rules, policies and processes.”

President Donald Trump challenged his FBI director in a tweet Tuesday, claiming the bureau is “badly broken” and incapable of being fixed.

“I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!”

Wray was not FBI director when the Russia investigation began and has so far avoided commenting in depth on the probe, one of the most politically sensitive inquiries in bureau history and one that President Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced as a “witch hunt.” Wray’s comments Monday underscore the balancing act of his job as he tries to embrace criticism of the Russia probe that he sees as legitimate while limiting public judgment of decisions made by his predecessors.

He said that though it was important to not lose sight of the fact that Inspector General Michael Horowitz found the investigation justified and did not find it to be tainted by political bias, “The American people rightly expect that the FBI, when it acts to protect the country, is going to do it right — each time, every time.

“And,” he added, “urgency is not an excuse for not following our procedures.”

The report found that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation in the summer of 2016 into whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to tip the election in the president’s favor. But it also identified “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command, including 17 “significant inaccuracies or omissions” in applications for a warrant from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and subsequent warrant renewals.

The errors, the watchdog said, resulted in “applications that made it appear that the information supporting probable cause was stronger than was actually the case.”

Wray declined to say if there was one problem or criticism that he found most troubling, but noted, “As a general matter, there are a number of things in the report that in my view are unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution.”

“This is a serious report,” he added, “and we take it serious.”

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Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

Democrats poised to unveil 2 impeachment articles vs. Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats are poised to unveil two articles of impeachment Tuesday against President Donald Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump, meanwhile, insisted he did “NOTHING” wrong and that impeaching a president with a record like his would be “sheer Political Madness!”

Democratic leaders say Trump put U.S. elections and national security at risk when he asked Ukraine to investigate his rivals, including Democrat Joe Biden.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined during an event Monday evening to discuss the articles or the coming announcement. Details were shared by multiple people familiar with the discussions but not authorized to discuss them and granted anonymity.

When asked if she has enough votes to impeach the Republican president, Pelosi leader said she would let House lawmakers vote their conscience.

“On an issue like this, we don’t count the votes. People will just make their voices known on it,” Pelosi said at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council. “I haven’t counted votes, nor will I.”

The outcome, though, appears increasingly set as the House prepares to vote, as it has only three times in history against a U.S. president. 

Trump, who has declined to mount a defense in the impeachment proceedings, tweeted Tuesday just as the five Democratic House committee chairmen prepared to make their announcement.

“To Impeach a President who has proven through results, including producing perhaps the strongest economy in our country’s history, to have one of the most successful presidencies ever, and most importantly, who has done NOTHING wrong, is sheer Political Madness! #2020Election,” he wrote on Twitter.

The president also spent part of Monday tweeting against the impeachment proceedings. He and his allies have called the process “absurd.”

Pelosi convened a meeting of the impeachment committee chairmen at her office in the Capitol late Monday following an acrimonious, nearly 10-hour hearing at the Judiciary Committee, which could vote as soon as this week.

“I think there’s a lot of agreement,” Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the Democratic chairman of the Foreign Affairs committee, told reporters as he exited Pelosi’s office. “A lot of us believe that what happened with Ukraine especially is not something we can just close our eyes to.”

At the Judiciary hearing, Democrats said Trump’s push to have Ukraine investigate rival Joe Biden while withholding U.S. military aid ran counter to U.S. policy and benefited Russia as well as himself.

“President Trump’s persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security,” said Dan Goldman, the director of investigations at the House Intelligence Committee, presenting the finding of the panel’s 300-page report of the inquiry.

Republicans rejected not just Goldman’s conclusion of the Ukraine matter; they also questioned his very appearance before the Judiciary panel. In a series of heated exchanges, they said Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, should appear rather than sending his lawyer.

From the White House, Trump tweeted repeatedly, assailing the “Witch Hunt!” and “Do Nothing Democrats.”

In drafting the articles of impeachment, Pelosi is facing a legal and political challenge of balancing the views of her majority while hitting the Constitution’s bar of “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Some liberal lawmakers wanted more expansive charges encompassing the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Centrist Democrats preferred to keep the impeachment articles more focused on Trump’s actions toward Ukraine.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., was blunt as he opened Monday’s hearing, saying, “President Trump put himself before country.”

Trump’s conduct, Nadler said at the end of the daylong hearing, “is clearly impeachable.”

Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top Republican on the committee, said Democrats are racing to jam impeachment through on a “clock and a calendar” ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

“They can’t get over the fact that Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and they don’t have a candidate that can beat him,” Collins said.

In one testy exchange, Republican attorney Stephen Castor dismissed the transcript of Trump’s crucial call with Ukraine as “eight ambiguous lines” that did not amount to the president seeking a personal political favor.

Democrats argued vigorously that Trump’s meaning could not have been clearer in seeking political dirt on Biden, his possible opponent in the 2020 election.

The Republicans tried numerous times to halt or slow the proceedings, and the hearing was briefly interrupted early on by a protester shouting, “We voted for Donald Trump!” The protester was escorted from the House hearing room by Capitol Police.

The White House is refusing to participate in the impeachment process. Trump and and his allies acknowledge he likely will be impeached in the Democratic-controlled House, but they also expect acquittal next year in the Senate, where Republicans have the majority.

The president was focused instead on Monday’s long-awaited release of the Justice Department report into the 2016 Russia investigation. The inspector general found that the FBI was justified in opening its investigation into ties between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia and that the FBI did not act with political bias, despite “serious performance failures” up the bureau’s chain of command.

Democrats say Trump abused his power in a July 25 phone call when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor in investigating Democrats. That was bribery, they say, since Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in military aid that Ukraine depended on to counter Russian aggression.

Pelosi and Democrats point to what they call a pattern of misconduct by Trump in seeking foreign interference in elections from Mueller’s inquiry of the Russia probe to Ukraine.

In his report, Mueller said he could not determine that Trump’s campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia in the 2016 election. But Mueller said he could not exonerate Trump of obstructing justice in the probe and left it for Congress to determine.

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Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Laurie Kellman, Matthew Daly and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.