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Pelosi: 'Mr
President, you are not above the law'
The White
House has come up with its strategy to combat House Democrats’ impeachment
inquiry: denial. Of course, administration officials are not denying key
elements of Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president, which were
confirmed in the White House’s own memo on the conversation. Instead, they’re
denying that Congress has the right to investigate the president.
White House
counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to House speaker Nancy Pelosi: “You
have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates
fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.”
Legal
experts said the White House letter did not rely on any sound reading of the constitution,
and Pelosi warned in her own blistering statement that further efforts to block
the inquiry would be taken as more evidence of obstruction.
Nancy
Pelosi
✔
@SpeakerPelosi
.@realDonaldTrump,
you are not above the law. You will be held accountable. #TruthExposed
https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/10819-0 …
Pelosi
Statement on Trump Administration Refusal to Comply with House Subpoenas
For a
while, the President has tried to normalize lawlessness. Now, he is trying to
make lawlessness a virtue. The American people have already heard the
President’s own words – ‘do us a favor,...
speaker.gov
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The House
speaker said: “The White House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up
his betrayal of our democracy, and to insist that the President is above the
law ... Mr President, you are not above the law. You will be held accountable.”
Pelosi hits
back over letter and warns Trump: 'You will be held accountable'
House
speaker says Democrats will push ahead with inquiry
Trump
warned: ‘Mr President, you are not above the law’
David Smith
in Washington
@smithinamerica
Wed 9 Oct
2019 19.01 BSTLast modified on Wed 9 Oct 2019 19.40 BST
Nancy
Pelosi said: ‘The White House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up his
betrayal of our democracy, and to insist that the president is above the law.’
The leader
of congressional opposition to Donald Trump has declared that his attempts to
stall an impeachment inquiry will prove futile, warning the US president: “You
are not above the law.”
Nancy
Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said Democrats intend to
move full speed ahead with their investigation despite the White House
declaring it illegitimate, pushing the US towards a constitutional crisis.
White House
counsel Pat Cipollone wrote to Pelosi and other Democratic leaders on Tuesday:
“Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any
pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the
executive branch [White House] cannot be expected to participate in it.”
Cipollone’s
eight-page missive objected that the House did not formally vote to begin the
impeachment inquiry, breaking with precedent set in the inquiries into Richard
Nixon and Bill Clinton. It also accused investigators of denying Trump due
process, including the right to see evidence and cross-examine witnesses, and
threatened to end White House cooperation with Congress on important oversight
matters.
The letter
set the stage for a historic clash between the executive and legislative
branches of the US government. Pelosi, who announced the impeachment inquiry
last month after it emerged that Trump pressed Ukraine’s leader to investigate
political rival Joe Biden, delivered a scathing response.
“The White
House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up his betrayal of our
democracy, and to insist that the president is above the law,” she said. “This
letter is manifestly wrong, and is simply another unlawful attempt to hide the
facts of the Trump administration’s brazen efforts to pressure foreign powers
to intervene in the 2020 elections.”
The speaker
added: “The White House should be warned that continued efforts to hide the
truth of the president’s abuse of power from the American people will be
regarded as further evidence of obstruction. Mr President, you are not above
the law. You will be held accountable.”
Trump aides
have begun honing their approach after two weeks of what some allies have
described as a listless and unfocused response to the inquiry. The letter
appeared to put the emphasis on political rebuttal rather than structured legal
argument – signalling a new strategy to counter the impeachment threat by
openly defying Congress’s right to investigate the president for high crimes
and misdemeanours.
The House
Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, said: “President Trump is right to call out
this rushed process because Democrats refuse to protect the transparency and
basic fairness that have been integral to previous impeachment proceedings.”
But the
letter was widely scorned by political analysts and legal experts. George
Conway, a lawyer married to Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, tweeted: “I cannot
fathom how any self-respecting member of the bar could affix his name to this
letter. It’s pure hackery, and it disgraces the profession.”
Gregg
Nunziata, the former chief nominations counsel for Republicans on the Senate
judiciary committee, added on Twitter: “Wow. This letter is bananas. A
barely-lawyered temper tantrum. A middle finger to Congress and its oversight
responsibilities. No member of Congress should accept it. Things are bad.
Things will get worse.”
Cipollone’s
intervention came after the Trump administration abruptly blocked a key witness
in the Ukraine scandal from appearing before the congressional impeachment
inquiry.
The state
department said the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, a
Trump political donor, would not be allowed to appear, even though he had
already travelled from Europe to testify behind closed doors in Washington.
Trump decried the Democratic-led inquiry into whether he abused his office in
the pursuit of personal political gain as a “kangaroo court”.
Democrats
condemned the move, calling it an attempt to obstruct their inquiry, and issued
a subpoena for Sondland, seeking documents by 14 October and a deposition on
Capitol Hill on 16 October.
Schiff said
the ambassador’s no-show was “yet additional strong evidence” of obstruction of
Congress by Trump and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, that will only
strengthen a possible impeachment case.
Meanwhile,
Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has said he will not testify before the
House intelligence committee unless committee members vote to remove its
chairman, Adam Schiff. “I wouldn’t testify in front of that committee until
there is a vote of Congress and he is removed,” Giuliani told the Washington
Post. “Let them hold me in contempt. We’ll go to court. We’ll challenge the
contempt.”
The House
committees leading the fast-moving investigation intend to call and subpoena a
number of Trump administration witnesses. The investigation could lead to the
approval of articles of impeachment against Trump in the House. A trial on
whether to remove him from office would then be held in the Senate, where
Republicans have the upper hand.
Opinion
polls show some worrying signs for Trump. According to the Politico/Morning
Consult survey, 50% of voters would support Trump’s removal, compared to 43% who
would not. A Washington Post/Schar School poll found 49% of Americans think
Trump should be removed from office.
Yet on
Wednesday, in his latest barrage of tweets, Trump cited a mysterious statistic
to fit his worldview: “Only 25 percent want the President Impeached, which is
pretty low considering the volume of Fake News coverage, but pretty high
considering the fact that I did NOTHING wrong. It is all just a continuation of
the greatest Scam and Witch Hunt in the history of our Country!”
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