When The Articles Reach The House Floor
FRED WERTHEIMER’S WEEKLY NOTE | NOVEMBER 21, 2019
“When the Articles reach the House floor, we can expect President Trump to be impeached.”
The testimony today by witnesses before the House Intelligence Committee in the Trump Impeachment inquiry concludes the current schedule of public testimony from witnesses.
The current and former Trump Administration witnesses we have heard testify before the Intelligence Committee have presented highly credible evidence.
These witnesses, along with other evidence, have established beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in extortion and bribery, abused and misused his office for personal political gain, endangered our national security by withholding military assistance funds for Ukraine for his personal benefit, and engaged in multiple examples of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry.
These and other transgressions may well end up in the Articles of Impeachment that will be considered by the House Judiciary Committee, likely in December.
The next key action in this process will occur on Monday, November 25, when Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is expected to issue an opinion in a case that deals with former White House counsel Don McGahn and whether he must comply with a subpoena to testify in the House impeachment inquiry.
This decision could be relevant to other current and former officials in the Administration who, like McGahn, have refused to comply with congressional subpoenas to testify in the impeachment inquiry. If appealed, the decision will not be decided in time for this impeachment process.
On December 9, the long-awaited DOJ Inspector General’s report on the origins of the Mueller investigation will be made public. Regardless of the IG’s findings, the investigation clearly proved to be required, as shown by the irrefutable documentation of Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, the indictments and criminal convictions obtained by special counsel Mueller, and the numerous examples of apparent obstruction of justice by President Trump.
Sometime in December, Articles of Impeachment will be considered by the House Judiciary Committee. It is still not clear whether the Articles will be acted on by the House before the New Year.
But when the Articles reach the House floor, we can expect President Trump to be impeached.
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Fred Wertheimer is the Founder and President of Democracy 21, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to strengthen our democracy and ensure the integrity and fairness of government decisions and elections. See previous Notes from Fred here.
