More headaches for Trump: Republicans who complained about impeachment got what they wanted when Pelosi called their bluff
Moments before the House voted on the historic resolution laying out the ground rules for the first impeachment inquiry of the 21st Century, House speaker Nancy Pelosi shot back at reporters asking about Republicans.
No, she would not respond to their claims that the impeachment investigation had so far been unfair to Donald Trump, and has denied him proper due process. This wasn’t about those complaints, she said.
But, more than a month since she first announced the start of the impeachment inquiry, it is hard not to note that, at some level, Ms Pelosi and the Democrats she leads in the House were absolutely responding to those complaints. The problem for Republicans now, however, is that in calling their bluff, Ms Pelosi has only made the president’s headache that much worse.
“These actions, this process is open hearings seeking the truth and making it available to the American people, will inform Congress on the very difficult decisions we will have to make in the future as to whether to impeach the president. That decision has not been made,” she said.
Ms Pelosi continued, saying that decision will be made “based on the truth. I don’t know why the Republicans are afraid of the truth.”
The passage of the resolution — which was roughly passed along party lines, with two Democrats voting against the measure alongside a unified Republican caucus that also voted “nay” — isn’t just an empty headline you’ve been seeing for months now.
What it means is that Democrats will now be holding many of those hearings we’ve heard leaks about out in public. Major American news channels are likely to run those hearings live, driving an audience that we can only imagine will be bigger than we’ve already seen. That’s saying something, considering the president’s impeachment has already driven huge viewership and readership to news outlets.
For proof of that, all one needs to do is consider James Comey, the former FBI director fired by Mr Trump after he refused to intervene in the investigations into Mr Trump’s team and its ties to Russia. During Mr Comey’s 2017 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, more than 18 million viewers tuned in for the hours-long hearing on a Thursday morning.
So, assuming a figure like former top Ukraine diplomat Wiliam Taylor is invited back to testify in the open, that means that there may be millions of people watching as he reiterates his claim that he was told that the president insisted on a seemingly explicit exchange of American military aid for a publicly acknowledged investigation into Joe Biden.
It also means that, in the realm of social media, snippets of all this testimony will be shared and spread almost just as fast. It’s not hard to imagine where things go from here in this battle over public opinion, especially considering the closed-door format has been accompanied by a rise in public opinion supporting the impeachment effort.
Of course, it is not all bad news for Mr Trump, Republicans and the White House. The president will now have an avenue to mount a defence against these claims, and to address the evidence. Republicans who complained about the process have helped to win him that much, which is a right that Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon both enjoyed.
But, the White House and Republicans have largely shown that they’re sticking to the same script. This whole thing is unfair, they’re saying.
Either way, the American people will have a chance to weigh the evidence alongside the politicians in Washington now. Ms Pelosi called the Republican bluff.
Read more
Congress tightens pressure on Trump with key impeachment vote
John Bolton ‘summoned to testify in Trump impeachment probe’
The impeachment process has made it clear we live in an oligarchy
Trump urges Republicans to 'close' impeachment process in Twitter rant
