The White House will not cooperate with the remaining House impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.
“As you know, your impeachment inquiry is completely baseless and has violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness,” reads a letter from Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president, to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler.
The response was issued less than an hour before a Friday afternoon deadline for lawyers of the president to state whether they would represent him in the next round of the committee’s impeachment proceedings.
“You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings,” Cipollone said in the letter.
The counsel reiterated the president’s tweeted words that “if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so that we can have a fair trial in the Senate and so that our Country can get back to business.”
Pelosi’s go-ahead
This came a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi directed leaders of relevant committees to start drafting articles of impeachment against the president, declaring that Trump had “abused the power of his office.”
Democrats contend the Republican president defied the norms of conduct for the office and violated his sworn obligation to uphold the U.S. Constitution by asking Ukraine to launch an investigation of Joe Biden, the former vice president running for the Democratic Party nomination to challenge Trump next year.
While Pelosi has mentioned no timetable, the Democrat-controlled House could vote to impeach the president before the Christmas holiday recess at the end of the month. That would set the stage for a January trial in the Republican-majority Senate.
Trump contends his phone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been perfect and he did nothing wrong.
Republicans have defended the president, saying Trump was right to press Ukraine to scrutinize the work that Biden’s son did for a Ukrainian natural gas company.
Republicans are also pushing a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won. The U.S. intelligence community concluded it was Ukraine’s giant neighbor, Russia, that did the meddling.
Military aid
Trump’s request to Kyiv came at a time when his administration was withholding $391 million in military assistance approved for Ukraine to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country.
The aid was released in September without Ukraine opening investigations of the Bidens.
The request for such investigations in exchange for military assistance is expected to be among the articles of impeachment against Trump.
This is only the fourth time in U.S. history that an American leader has faced impeachment proceedings.
Articles of impeachment will first be considered by the 41-member House Judiciary panel, where Democrats hold a 24-17 majority.
Two former U.S. presidents — Andrew Johnson in the mid-19th century and Bill Clinton two decades ago — were impeached but not convicted or removed from office by the Senate, while a third — Richard Nixon — resigned in 1974 in the face of certain impeachment.