Dems grapple with impeachment timing as evidence piles up

Democrats are in an impeachment bind.

For the first time, they’re receiving a gusher of evidence to support charges that President Donald Trump abused his power for political and personal gain, pressuring Ukraine’s fledgling government to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.

But as more witnesses come forward to spill more secrets, the more Democrats are nervously eyeing the dwindling congressional calendar and wondering: When should we be satisfied with what we have and bring articles of impeachment to the floor?

“There are two competing pressures here,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Oversight Committee, one of three panels leading the impeachment process. “One is that the president is a one-man crime wave who has generated virtually limitless impeachable offenses and misconduct. On the other hand, we need to develop a process that will close within a period of time that makes sense for the legislative calendar.”

But Raskin said lawmakers are not yet discussing how to make that determination.

“We’re just not there yet,” he said. “We really are still in the throes of the fact investigation.”

Some Democrats say the investigation should continue until the evidence is so overwhelming it pries loose a few Republican votes, delivering a symbolic victory as Democrats hold out hope that impeachment isn’t a purely party-line issue. Others believe Democrats should exhaust the list of willing witnesses before drafting formal articles.

And still others say the House already has enough evidence to move forward with impeachment immediately — from Trump’s own admission that he wants Ukraine and China to investigate Biden, to the summary of his phone call with Ukraine’s president to the text messages of senior ambassadors worried that Trump was withholding military aid and a White House visit to bend Ukraine’s leaders to his will.

“What I think you have in the public domain already is more than sufficient for an article of impeachment,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), an Oversight Committee member.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top allies say they’re still firmly in fact-finding mode and have promised a deliberate approach to the House’s Ukraine investigation with no ironclad time limit. Senior Democrats say they’re eyeing the end of the year as an unofficial outer limit for the House to craft and pass articles of impeachment, but the unpredictable investigation has produced so many leads it’s hard to solidify a deadline.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Republicans Wednesday that he expects Pelosi to approve impeachment articles by Thanksgiving, paving the way for the Senate to deal with a trial by Christmas.

“Everyone’s conscious of the calendar,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, which is expecting to handle the process of drafting articles of impeachment once the other panels conclude the Ukraine probe. “Our expectation should be to have our work done by year’s end.”

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to rack up testimony and evidence from high-level officials who have provided damaging accounts of Trump and his allies’ handling of Ukraine, some speaking to lawmakers even over the objections of the White House and the State Department.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to rack up testimony and evidence from high-level officials who have provided damaging accounts of Trump and his allies’ handling of Ukraine, some speaking to lawmakers even over the objections of the White House and the State Department.

The impeachment investigation has netted nearly 50 hours of testimony from current and former State Department and White House officials, with a long line of additional witnesses prepared to discuss claims that Trump used U.S. diplomatic might to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election.

Members of the investigating committees say it’s conceivable that most interviews of willing witnesses will be finished by next week. Once that’s done, they intend to bring their secretive investigation into the open, and there are early, internal discussions about how to do that.

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is leading the investigation, has said he envisions a combination of public hearings and transcript releases to help shed light on the evidence lawmakers are unearthing.

“We will get to open hearings,” Schiff said Tuesday when asked about GOP complaints that testimony was being taken behind closed doors. Schiff has compared the current phase of the investigation to grand jury proceedings, which are held in secret, before charges are brought that can be litigated publicly.

In that vein, an attorney for Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union and a key witness in the probe, indicated that Sondland would likely honor a request to testify in public but hasn’t yet received one. And Kurt Volker, a former Trump administration representative to Ukraine, was in the Capitol on Wednesday reviewing the transcript of his earlier nine-hour interview, a possible precursor to its public release.

The bulk of private testimony, according to sources who have been in the depositions, has focused on Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as a monthslong campaign by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to push Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden and his son Hunter on unfounded charges. Leads from these interviews continue to multiply, though, adding to the challenge Democrats face with trying to accelerate their efforts.

For example, recent witnesses have indicated that Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and his former national security adviser John Bolton played key roles in the controversy — and neither of them has been called to testify yet. In addition, Democrats have demanded, and so far been denied, cooperation from Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, the White House budget office and the Department of Defense — signaling potentially lengthy legal fights to resolve the disputes.

At the root of Democrats’ dilemma is the origin of the Ukraine investigation itself. The scandal erupted in mid-September, following an anonymous whistleblower complaint, and quickly united Democrats behind a narrow, speedy impeachment process.

Responding to the sudden outcry, the White House released a record of Trump’s call to Zelensky, which Trump has described as “perfect,” even though it confirmed aspects of the damning narrative that has since been painted by diplomats and administration officials. Each day, witnesses filled in components of a high-level scheme that ensnares multiple members of Trump’s inner circle and has rocked the entire U.S. foreign policy establishment.

Yet the deeper the House gets into the inquiry, the more Democrats grow concerned about its sprawling nature.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 House Democrat, quickly answered “no” when asked by reporters on Wednesday whether Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds in Syria bolsters the case for impeachment.

“I don’t think we’ve connected one with the other,” added Jeffries, who leads the House Democratic Caucus. “The actions to the president as it relates to the Trump-Ukraine scandal speak for themselves.”

Pelosi, too, has repeatedly stressed that other grievances Democrats have with Trump — on everything from inaction to address gun violence to the president’s hard-line immigration policies — should be litigated at the ballot box.

Their comments reflect a collective effort by senior Democrats to keep the impeachment inquiry narrowly focused on the Ukraine controversy, and not branch out to include other scandals that have ensnared Trump, his administration and businesses.

“At some point you realize to get additional tranche of information that’s going to take quite awhile, and then you make a decision: Do you wait that much longer or do you go with what we have?” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), a member of the Judiciary Committee. “My view is the most damning evidence basically already came out.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday his “hope” is to wrap up the impeachment inquiry by the end of the year but acknowledged White House resistance has “made the fact-finding phase more difficult.”

Still, the No. 2 House Democrat said the decision by witnesses like former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and former White House Russia adviser Fiona Hill to testify, despite the administration’s attempt to block them, could lead to other reluctant witnesses testifying.

“I think these two witnesses are going to encourage others to come forward and tell the truth, as patriots,” Hoyer said.

“I want to emphasize this is no rush to judgment,” he added when pressed about a timeline. “Only in the most serious circumstances, where the Constitution and the laws have been betrayed purportedly by a president, should the Congress take action.”

Andrew Desiderio and Sarah Ferris contributed to this report.