For Democrats, the hearings are a chance to present what they believe are incriminating facts as they seek to build support among the American people for impeaching Trump, a rare and politically divisive step ahead of the 2020 elections.
Democrats argue that the evidence will spell out how Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “initiate investigations to benefit the president’s personal political interests in the United States . . . leveraging an Oval Office meeting desired by the president of Ukraine or by withholding U.S. military assistance to Ukraine,” and tried later to “obstruct, suppress or cover up information to conceal” evidence of those actions from Congress and the public.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) spelled out the party’s arguments in the memo.
Republicans are adamant that the evidence to date does not support the allegations that “Trump pressured Ukraine to conduct investigations into the president’s political rivals” and does not support the allegations that “Trump covered up misconduct or obstructed justice,” the GOP wrote in its memo.
“To appropriately understand the events in question — and most important, assess the president’s state of mind during his interaction with President Zelensky — context is necessary,” they stressed.
At the heart of the impeachment probe is one chief piece of evidence: the rough transcript of the July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky, which the White House released in late September.
In the call, Trump asks Zelensky for a “favor,” pressing the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens and a widely debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. At stake at the time was nearly $400 million in congressionally appropriated military aid to Ukraine and a face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.
To Democrats, Trump’s mentions of Biden and “CrowdStrike” — a reference to a debunked conspiracy theory that the Democratic National Committee server hacked in 2016 ended up in Ukraine — is tantamount to catching Trump red-handed trying to push Ukraine into conducting investigations in exchange for releasing long-awaited security assistance.
Republicans, however, argue the transcript of that call is “fatal” to the Democrats’ argument, positing that the call not only “shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure,” but that Trump and Zelensky subsequently “have both said there was no pressure on the call.”
Plus, Republicans argue, the security assistance eventually was released and Trump met with Zelensky in September “without Ukraine investigating President Trump’s political rivals.”
“President Trump has a deep-seated, genuine and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine and U.S. taxpayer-funded foreign aid, independent of and preceding any mention of potential investigations of Ukraine’s interference in the 2016 elections or Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma, a notoriously corrupt company,” the GOP wrote in the memo.
The Republican document indicates that the GOP will be pursuing a dual strategy of trying to isolate Trump from any charges of wrongdoing, while establishing that the events Democrats argue are impeachable — namely, holding back aid and diplomatic engagement over concerns about Hunter Biden and 2016 election interference — were legitimate because of a “history of pervasive corruption.”
Schiff has in his memo issued a warning to Republicans, however, that he will not tolerate that line of defense, in his admonition that the hearings “will not serve as venues for any Member to further the same sham investigations into the Bidens or into debunked conspiracies about 2016 U.S. election interference that President Trump pressed Ukraine to undertake for his personal political benefit.”
Schiff also warned the GOP against using the process to “threaten, intimidate or retaliate against the whistleblower” — an individual that Republicans have sought, unsuccessfully, to call as a witness in the impeachment probe.
The dispute between Republicans and Democrats over what constitutes a legitimate line of argument will probably boil over into an overall public spat about the legitimacy of the impeachment inquiry, which Democrats have been defending against Republican accusations of unfairness since the process began.
In his memo, Schiff stated that “as chair, I will do my utmost during the hearings to safeguard the rights of the witnesses and all members of the committee, just as committee members should strive to conduct themselves with ‘dignity, propriety, courtesy and decorum.’ ”
