On Friday, the first House Republican lawmaker to publicly support the official impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump told reporters in a conference call that he’s willing to see what the process reveals, but stopped short of backing a full-blown impeachment.
According to Vox , Nevada Rep. Mark Amodei made headlines with his announcement after a week of turmoil surrounding the Ukraine phone call in which critics say the president exerted pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up political dirt on Trump’s primary 2020 presidential opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.
But the GOP representative made it clear that while he supports the inquiry passed earlier this week by the House and announced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at this point he’s not supporting full-blown impeachment of the sitting president.
He did, however, stress that if it’s found to be true that Trump used a quid pro quo strategy to force the Ukrainian president to give him something on Biden in return for much-needed military aide, that it would be an entirely different ballgame.
“Using government agencies to, if it’s proven, to put your finger on the scale of an election, I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “If it turns out that it’s something along those lines, then there’s a problem,” Amodei said on the conference call.
“In no way, shape, or form, did I indicate support for impeachment,” he added.
Amodei is the first Republican to back the House’s impeachment inquiry, though former Republican-turned-Independent Justin Amash has long-supported Trump’s impeachment, even before the revelations of potential foul play in the Ukraine phone-call controversy.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr , Amash, who’s not been shy about criticizing Trump since he left the Republican party, claimed that the Republicans defending the president in the Ukraine controversy are “denying reality.”
In a Friday tweet , Amash blasted Republicans for their defense of the president, claiming it’s nothing more than an effort to “gaslight America.”
The list of Republican lawmakers and senators who have publicly expressed concern over Trump’s Ukraine situation is also a short one. Sen. Mitt Romney called the situation “troubling in the extreme,” and Sen. Pat Toomey labeled the situation as “inappropriate.”
Rep. Mike Turner issued a slightly stronger statement concerning the issue, stating, “I want to say to the president, ‘This is not okay. That conversation is not okay.’”
For obvious reasons, Trump has a different take on the matter, using his far-reaching Twitter account to push out his opinion that the entire debacle is nothing more than a mainstream media and Democrat-led “witch hunt.”
Vox reported that the impeachment inquiry — which involves six House committees simultaneously investigating the matter — is the first step to gather evidence and decide if House Democrats will eventually draft articles of impeachment.