President Trump on Friday gave an ultimatum to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — demanding she hold a vote on impeachment and threatening to withhold White House documents and cooperation until she does.
“We’ll be issuing a letter. As everybody knows we’ve been treated very unfairly, very different from anybody else if you go over — not only history, I mean you go over any aspect of life you’ll see how unfairly we’ve been treated,” the president said outside the White House as he prepared to board Marine One to award Purple Hearts to wounded veterans at Walter Reed National
Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
“The lawyers think they’ve never seen anything so unfair, so unjust,” he said about the impeachment effort.
The letter was expected to say officials won’t cooperate with the probe because it was initiated without a vote of the full House.
Without a vote, White House lawyers believe Trump can ignore lawmakers’ requests, meaning the federal courts would likely have to render a decision and potentially slow the march toward impeachment.
Trump also conceded that a vote in the Democratic-led House could go against him but that he was confident that the GOP-controlled Senate would clear him if they held a trial.
“Now, in the House, they have the majority. They all vote with AOC plus three,” he said, referring to progressive freshmen Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley.
“Nancy Pelosi is petrified of them. She is afraid she is going to lose her position. Nancy Pelosi will lose her speakership right after the election when the Republicans take over the house,” he predicted.
The Senate, he added, was far friendlier territory.
“I think this. We have a great relationship in the Senate. I have a 95 percent approval rating in the Republican party. I believe the Senate and I haven’t spoken to that many senators, but I believe the senators look at this as a hoax, a witch hunt. It’s a disgrace. Should have never happened,” the president asserted.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California sent a letter on Thursday to Pelosi calling on her to suspend the impeachment inquiry until “equitable rules and procedures” are set up.
McCarthy criticized Pelosi for the “swiftness and recklessness” which House committee chairs have proceeded and pleaded with the Speaker to ensure Republicans can participate.
“Unfortunately, you have given no clear indication as to how your impeachment inquiry will proceed – including whether key historical precedents or basic standards of due process will be observed,” McCarthy wrote.
“In addition, the swiftness and recklessness with which you have proceeded has already resulted in committee chairs attempting to limit minority participation in scheduled interviews, calling into question the integrity of such an inquiry.”
Pelosi said in response that Democrats would not be slowing down their effort, which was sparked by revelations that Trump had asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Pelosi wrote that “existing rules of the House provide House Committees with full authority to conduct investigations for all matters under their jurisdiction.”
“We hope you and other Republicans share our commitment to following the facts, upholding the Constitution, protecting our national security, and defending the integrity of our elections at such a serious moment in our nation’s history,” she declared.
The commander in chief, meanwhile, also again defended his calls to Zelensky and request that China investigate the Bidens over Hunter Biden’s business dealings in the two countries.
He also portrayed himself as a dedicated corruption fighter, and said he wasn’t trying to hurt Joe Biden’s campaign but only to root out corruption wherever it takes place if Americans are involved.
“What I will always ask for is anything to do with corruption with respect to our country. If a foreign country can help us with respect to corruption and corruption probes — and I don’t care if it’s Biden or anybody else,” he declared.
“If we feel there is corruption we have a right to go to a foreign country just so you know.”
And he claimed that he was investigated by a number of countries prior to his 2016 victory.
“I was investigated, okay? Me. Me. In my campaign I was investigated and they think it could have been by [the] UK. Could have been by Australia. They think it could have been Italy. So when you get down to it, I was investigated, by the Obama administration, by the Obama administration. I was investigated. But as far as I’m concerned, what I want to look at and what we want to investigate, anything having to do with corruption. “
The president also struck a happy note when a reporter noted that House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff — a former federal prosecutor who is leading the impeachment effort — for “four Pinocchios from The Washington Post for claiming he had not spoken to the whistleblower ahead of the release of his complaint.
“He should have gotten those two and a half years ago. That’s a nice question. Let me shake your hand, come here. That’s a very nice question, almost a surprise. I figured that was a trick question right,” said Trump, who has been awarded four Pinocchios himself a number of times.
The president then said that the impeachment effort was helping him politically.
“If you look at what’s happened with my polls through the roof. You know why? Because of this phoney witch hunt. If you look at what happened with the fundraising, we have set a record, the
Republicans, because people are sick and tired of it,” he said.
Evangelical Christians, he continued, were the most energized by the Democrats effort, he said.
“I got a call the other night from pastors, the biggest pastors, evangelical Christians saying we have never seen our religion or any religion so electrified. They say they have never seen
anything like it. Churches are joining, hundreds of thousands of people to a large extent because of you. and your partner the democrats,” he told reporters.
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