Following a rancorous, marathon debate, the deeply divided House Judiciary Committee failed to vote Thursday night on articles of impeachment against President Trump.
Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) surprised Republican members by announcing that — after some 14 hours of debate — the panel would not vote until Friday morning. It’s not clear if Democratic members of the committee knew of Nadler’s plan.
The Friday session was set to begin at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
Some committee Republicans were heard suggesting Nadler wanted the vote to come at an hour when more Americans would be following the proceedings on TV.
The hearing began with a lengthy session on Wednesday night, but as the New York Times reported, “Thursday’s proceeding was rawer, airing out all the pent-up bitterness of years of near existential political warfare.”
Democrats and Republicans addressed one another as “my friend,” but the committee’s rules and customs of dignified behavior failed to mask their partisan fury.
Republicans contend Democrats are seeking impeachment only because “they don’t like us,” and “hate the president” and used the debate as an opportunity to denounce the entire impeachment process.
But the committee, dominated by the Democrats, was expected to approve the two articles of impeachment on Friday, setting up a vote next week by the full House that could make Trump the 3rd U.S. president ever impeached — and a trial in the Republican-led Senate. In the unlikely event he is convicted, Trump would be ousted from office.
Committee members “feuded for hours over the two articles of impeachment, their tempers flaring and patience wearing thin as they debated amendments proposed by the Republicans to gut the articles or embarrass Democrats,” said the Times.
“As their efforts failed on lopsided votes, the only question was when the president’s defenders would sheath their swords for the day to allow the final roll-call vote to recommend the articles to the full House to go forward.”
The seemingly endless hours lawmakers were willing to devote to their bickering prompted Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) to ask his colleagues for a halt.
“This hearing’s been enough of an institutional embarrassment without putting it on an endless loop, so if I could just offer a modest suggestion if no one has anything new to add they resist the temptation to inflict what we’ve already heard over and over again,” McClintock said.
His appeal went unanswered as his colleagues continued the debate for hours more.
The U.S. Constitution itself came under contentious discussion, including even the power of impeachment and rules for doing so, granted to the House of Representatives.
Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) tried to end that dispute by reading directly from the nation’s founding document, which states that the House “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” This, she emphasized, means that the House can establish any rules it chooses for the process.
Shortly after the start of Thursday’s session, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) offered an amendment to throw out the first article of the impeachment document, which accuses the president of abuse of power. His amendment was subsequently rejected in a roll-call vote on party lines.
The Washington Post summarized “the heart of the Democrats’ case” as “the allegation that Trump tried to leverage a White House meeting and military aid, sought by Ukraine to combat Russian military aggression [and] to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to launch an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden….”
Even as the debate raged, Trump joined in with a flurry of Twitter posts accusing Democrats of lying and “purposely misquoting” him in that July phone call with Ukraine’s president — when, according to a transcript released by the White House, Trump asked for “a favor.”
Trump claims he was seeking the favor for “our Country,” not himself.
Throughout the process, said the Associated Press, the two sides “appealed to Americans’ sense of history — Democrats describing a strong sense of duty to stop what one called the president’s ‘constitutional crime spree’ and Republicans decrying [what they called] the ‘hot garbage’’ impeachment and what it means for the future of the country.”
