Words just aren’t Trump’s ‘thing,’ Tom McClintock says as he prepares to fight impeachment

Tom McClintock, a staunch Donald Trump loyalist, wishes the president would be a little more upbeat.

“I think what he is doing and trying to do is enormously popular,” the Elk Grove Republican congressman said of Trump’s presidency. “I think that if he could summon his inner Ronald Reagan, and develop a more cheerful and sunny disposition, it might help his personal popularity. But I think his policies are quite popular here.”

McClintock is about to take a giant leap into the national spotlight. He’s the only California Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, which would write articles of impeachment.

McClintock will seek a seventh congressional term next year, and is running in a district where he’s a strong favorite to win. If anything, he said, impeachment could help trigger the sort of “red wave” that could help that effort.

“I tell folks all the time, look, he (Trump) wasn’t my first choice, wasn’t my second choice, but I sure as hell can tell the difference between a fire and a fireman. And if a fireman is trying to save my house from burning down, I don’t care if he sometimes comes across as a bit of a jerk,” the congressman said.

The House Intelligence Committee plans to start public impeachment hearings Wednesday. It could then turn its findings over to the judiciary panel on which McClintock sits. Judiciary, which would probably begin meeting in December, has 24 Democrats and 17 Republicans.

In an interview, McClintock detailed four points he’s eager to make.

First, the key flashpoint driving the proceedings involves a July 25 30-minute call from Trump to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The president asked Zelensky to work with Rudolph Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, as well as Attorney General William Barr, to look into reports involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Trump has said it was a “perfect” call. In the call, Trump asks Zelensky to “do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” and later notes that there’s “a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that.”

So, McClintock said, “that’s the first fact and I don’t think there’s any dispute about that.”

PolitiFact found that Biden “did urge Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, with the threat of withholding U.S. aid. But that was the position of the wider U.S. government, as well as other international institutions. “ PolitiFact added that it “found no evidence to support the idea that Joe Biden advocated with his son’s interests in mind,” and that “it’s not even clear that the company was actively under investigation or that a change in prosecutors benefited it.”

Asked if Trump should have asked for a favor, McClintock said: “Words aren’t his thing, and the fact is he uses that term (favor) quite often.”

House members, with no apparent Republican support, are looking into whether the administration held back military aid dollars to Ukraine in order to exert pressure on that country to probe the Bidens.

Another McClintock point: Trump has the sole authority to conduct foreign affairs, and wanted to be sure he was not dealing with a corrupt regime.

“The Constitution vests all executive authority in the president. It gives him sole authority to conduct the nation’s affairs with other countries, and it commands him to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” McClintock said.

He cited the 2019 defense bill, which says that before a president releases any funds, he must certify that Ukraine has taken “substantial actions” to make reforms that decrease corruption.

McClintock’s other points involve the Bidens.

He noted that Hunter Biden was tapped by Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian oil and gas company, to sit on its board of directors in 2014, “despite having no experience in either Ukrainian affairs or the oil and gas industry.”

And, McClintock said, “It is also a fact that Joe Biden boasted in a January 2018 Council on Foreign Relations lecture that he had threatened to withhold aid to the Ukraine unless the government fired the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, a fellow named Viktor Shokin.”

Shokin said in a recent affidavit that he was dismissed because he was leading “a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings.” He said he was “forced to leave office, under direct and intense pressure from Joe Biden and the U.S. administration.”

Biden’s campaign has said there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the vice president.

PolitiFact found “It’s unclear whether Burisma was actively under investigation by Shokin. Vitaliy Kasko, who had been Shokin’s deputy overseeing international cooperation, told Bloomberg that the investigation was dormant.”

Hunter Biden told ABC News recently he had not discussed any business arrangements with his father.

Giuliani has said, without offering any evidence, that the vice president sought Shokin’s removal to protect Hunter Biden.

McClintock wants to know more.

Shokin has reportedly said he was fired at the Bidens’ behest. If he is telling the truth, McClintock said, “that certainly establishes probable cause to believe that Biden was involved in a criminal enterprise when he used his official position in this manner.

“Now that has yet to be determined, but the president is responsible for pursuing what seem to be highly credible charges,” the congressman said.

He’d like to have as committee witnesses top Obama administration officials and the vice president himself. Since Democrats run the judiciary panel, that’s unlikely to happen.

In McClintock’s northeastern California district, where he won by 8 percentage points in 2018, Republicans agree that the impeachment process won’t have much effect on the congressman’s election prospects.

“I don’t see any evidence to suggest he’s vulnerable at all,” said Rob Stutzman, a Sacramento-based Republican consultant.

In fact, the impeachment drama “can help, and it can help his fundraising,” said Kirk Uhler, chairman of the Placer County Board of Supervisors. “Trump’s message to ‘drain the swamp’ resonates here.”

Democratic challenger Brynne Kennedy is campaigning on other issues.

“Pacific Gas & Electric is giving millions to candidates and spending on lobbyists while our lights are out. Tom McClintock has been in office for years. What has he done?” asked Kennedy spokesman Todd Stenhouse.

McClintock said voters in his district do mention California’s power issues, as well as homelessness and other local concerns.

“Brynne may not be aware of the fight I have waged for 11 years to restore active lands management to reduce wildfire risk, and the success I have had working with (Democratic Sen.) Dianne Feinstein to streamline fuels reduction in the Tahoe Basin; reforms that I am now working to see expanded throughout the U.S. Forest System,” he said.

McClintock is confident he’ll be fine. As impeachment proceedings continue, he said, “It’s all a question of letting the facts speak for themselves. I am confident that in an open process, where our due process rights are respected, the truth will come out.”