WASHINGTON (AP) — The speaker of the House Legal Affairs Committee asked President Donald Trump on Friday to say whether he will send his lawyers to participate in impeachment proceedings before the panel. Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who chairs the commission, also called on the Commission’s Republicans to report which witnesses for whom they want permission to summon them.
Nadler sent his letters just as the House impeachment investigation enters a new phase with a hearing scheduled for next week about whether Trump’s actions could constitute offenses that warrant such a trial. The central theme in the impeachment of impeachment is whether Trump abused his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate the would-be Democratic presidential nomination Joe Biden and his son, and accusations that Ukraine intervened in the 2016 U.S. election, which has not been proven. Two weeks of hearings before the Lower House Intelligence Commission generated a lot of testimony, but apparently they did not make big changes in the Capitol, where not a single Republican representative supported the impeachment process. Nadler asked Trump and the panel’s chief Republican, Doug Collins, to present their response by the end of next week. The Committee on Legal Affairs will meet on Wednesday at an information hearing to review the “constitutional foundations for a presidential impeachment,” and shortly thereafter could hold hearings in which witnesses would give their testimony about Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.The representative says the process driven by Democratic representatives is a sham, partly because he was unable to get his lawyers to question the intelligence committee’s witnesses during the hearings and testimonies. The intelligence panel plans to issue a report of its findings next week, which is intended to form the basis for hearings in the Committee on Legal Affairs, which is responsible for drawing up any justification for a impeachment in order to put it to a vote in the middle of the lower house. The panel may also try to obtain other testimonies. Nadler has the ability to repel the presence of witnesses requested by Republicans, who will likely want to summon Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, and the anonymous informant whose complaint slammed the impeachment.
