Pelosi prioritized politics over thorough investigation in Trump’s first impeachment: Book
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As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats mulled the idea of introducing impeachment charges against President Donald Trump in 2019, the California Democrat made a series of decisions that prioritized political strategy over a more thorough investigation in hopes of salvaging the party’s election chances in 2020.
As Democrats considered their options for impeachment in December 2019, Pelosi was caught between progressives who wanted an overarching investigation into any and all crimes Trump may have committed and vulnerable Democrats who sought narrow charges that would wrap up proceedings more quickly, according to a forthcoming book.
Pelosi ultimately decided to focus specifically on one incident, a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and pushed to complete the proceedings by the end of the year.
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“Pelosi knew that Trump would fight them at every turn of their investigation, as he had in every other probe of his business or personal affairs,” wrote journalists Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian in their book Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump. “And experience had taught her that the longer it took to investigate the president, the more inured the public became to the shocking nature of his actions.”
Pelosi had initially been wary of efforts to impeach Trump throughout most of his term, arguing the process was too divisive. However, the House speaker came around to the idea after it was discovered Trump had called Zelensky and threatened to withhold military aid unless the Ukrainian president opened an investigation into President Joe Biden’s son.
The California Democrat decided to use that incident as the focal point of Trump’s first impeachment, pushing to complete the investigation as quickly as possible — even if that meant not gathering interviews from key witnesses, according to the book. The House then impeached Trump on Dec. 18, 2019, on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. He was later acquitted by the Senate.
Democrats knew it would be difficult to convince Republicans to vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment, especially on a fast-tracked timeline. However, they pressed ahead anyway, believing the charges would influence the public to vote him out in 2020, according to the book.
As a result, Democrats focused their efforts on removing Trump from office, warning that his actions could threaten national security if left unchecked. The House Democrats’ campaign arm even poll-tested this framing and found it would be more favorable to independent voters, the book states.
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“It was a message that would resonate with voters, Pelosi argued, and armed with the transcript, a clean kill shot,” the authors wrote. “If Democrats moved quickly, they might even be able to wrap everything up by the holidays, freeing up all of 2020 for campaigning on the pocketbook issues voters actually cared about.”
A spokesperson for Pelosi rejected the idea that the House speaker weighed politics over a thorough investigation, telling Politico the book is a “futile exercise of whataboutism” that “ignores the stranglehold Trump had and continues to have on the Republican Party.”
Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.
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Tags: Nancy Pelosi, Congress, Donald Trump, Impeachment, News
Original Author: Cami Mondeaux
Original Location: Pelosi prioritized politics over thorough investigation in Trump’s first impeachment: Book