'Witch Hunt garbage': Trump blasts news of Pelosi's impeachment inquiry
President Donald Trump on Tuesday reacted with fury to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry, firing off a burst of tweets accusing the speaker of detracting from his keynote address at the United Nations General Assembly with “Witch Hunt garbage.”
“Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage,” Trump wrote on Twitter moments after Pelosi concluded her announcement. “So bad for our Country!”
In five minutes of remarks, Pelosi announced that she was “directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry,” after facing months of increasing pressure from the rest of her caucus.
“For the past several months we have been investigating in our committees and litigating in the courts, so the House can gather all the relevant facts and consider whether to exercise its full Article 1 powers — including a constitutional power of the utmost gravity of articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi’s concession and decision to announce a formal impeachment inquiry comes after a weeklong dribble of news about a call between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart during which the president pressed for a corruption investigation into one of his chief political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden, and Biden’s son Hunter.
The call came to light earlier this month because of a whistleblower complaint filed by a member of the intelligence community raising alarms about the request from Trump. The Trump administration has sought to block lawmakers from viewing the complaint, and details of its contents leaked into the press in subsequent days. Trump himself has seemed to confirm many of the reports, acknowledging in recent days that he both broached the topic of a Biden probe on the phone call and sought to delay hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid meant for Ukraine.
Although the president has denied offering any quid pro quo in exchange for a corruption investigation into Biden, Pelosi and the Democratic Party have said such an offer was not necessary.
“This week the president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically,” Pelosi said on Tuesday. “The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”
She added: “The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
While Trump on Tuesday announced via tweet that he would be releasing a “complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript” of the call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Pelosi asserted that this would not be sufficient for her investigators, instead demanding that the entirety of the complaint be turned over when the acting director of national intelligence testifies on Thursday.
The president used this as fuel for his outrage, tweeting: “They never even saw the transcript of the call. A total Witch Hunt!”
According to the speaker’s outline of what the impeachment probe would look like, the six committees currently investigating the president — Judiciary, Intelligence, Oversight, Finance, Ways and Means, and Foreign Affairs — would “proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.”
The president lashed out at several of those committee heads and Pelosi, asking incredulously: “Can you believe this?” In his fourth tweet in a matter of 10 minutes, Trump offered a familiar refrain, accusing Democrats of “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!”
The president’s reelection campaign had a more positive take on the new developments, calling them evidence that Democrats felt threatened by Trump’s electoral prospects and declaring them a boon to his campaign.
“Democrats can’t beat President Trump on his policies or his stellar record of accomplishment, so they’re trying to turn a Joe Biden scandal into a Trump problem,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “The misguided Democrat impeachment strategy is meant to appease their rabid, extreme, leftist base, but will only serve to embolden and energize President Trump’s supporters and create a landslide victory for the President.”
