Nancy Pelosi Asks House Of Representatives To Draft Articles Of Impeachment Against Donald Trump
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has asked the chairs of key House committees to officially draft articles of impeachment against President Trump, Politico reports. The speaker says that there is now enough evidence to move forward with the next phase of the impeachment process.
Following weeks of testimony from key witnesses, both behind closed doors and broadcast publicly in front of millions of Americans — which this week included testimony from Constitutional scholars — Pelosi has deemed it time to formally draft articles of impeachment.
“Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders, and a heart full of love for America, today I am asking our chairmen to proceed with articles of impeachment,” she said.
Pelosi declined to put a timeline on when the document will be written, discussed, and possibly voted on by the full House, in keeping with her practice of not attaching dates to the various parts of the impeachment process. However, as reported previously by The Inquisitr, some analysts expect a vote on the matter by Christmas.
She also didn’t mention, specifically, which purported wrongdoings by Trump would be included in the document. Some options on the table reportedly include abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and obstruction of Congress.
“The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security,” Pelosi said.
The next step will be discussing the text of the articles of impeachment, a job that will be undertaken by the chairs of the six House committees investigating Trump, which includes Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler. A full document could be available for discussion within the House by as early as next week.
Once the vote on articles of impeachment takes place, a simple majority vote would be all that’s required to officially make Trump the third president to be impeached. From there, he would go on trial in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority vote — 67 votes — would be required to remove him from office.
Trump, for his part, defiantly challenged Democrats to impeach him in a series of tweets Thursday morning. In his tweets, he claimed that impeaching him would only blow up in Democrats’ faces.
“We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is. I was elected to ‘Clean the Swamp,’ and that’s what I am doing!” he tweeted.
