Trump advisors think they can create a wedge among Democrats before impeachment vote
In an effort to stave off a Senate impeachment trial, White House officials are preparing a two-pronged campaign to pressure vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in swing districts and inflame tensions within the House Democratic Caucus over the scope of their charges against President Donald Trump.
Trump’s aides still expect the House to approve articles of impeachment after Speaker Nancy Pelosi formally directed the Judiciary Committee to draft charges on Thursday.
But within the administration, hope remains that indecision among House Democratic lawmakers over the substance of their articles of impeachment might stifle a vote, or else compromise vulnerable members representing Trump-friendly districts.
“I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as everyone says, that it’s going to be a party-line vote,” said Pam Bondi, former attorney general of Florida now advising the president on impeachment. “I don’t believe it is.”
House Democrats are currently debating whether to limit the articles to Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, or to include charges of obstruction of justice based on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and claims that Trump has violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution.
“Nothing has been ruled in, nothing has been ruled out,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York told reporters Thursday morning of the status of internal negotiations.
Republicans are hoping for political payoff in the House should Democratic leaders expand the scope of impeachment articles beyond Ukraine – the one controversy that actually united many Democrats around launching an impeachment inquiry back in September.
“It would be an act of desperation,” said John Cornyn, R-Texas, explaining it would reveal that Democrats know the Ukraine episode alone is not sufficient grounds for impeachment.
In the Republican-controlled Senate, however, a broader list of impeachment charges could create new headaches for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican is facing multiple competing interests among Republicans in trying to organize an impeachment trial that is fair but also benefits Trump, who wants to haul in a broad array of witnesses to testify on his behalf.
“The Mueller piece would obviously be a whole new complication,” conceded Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.
‘A significant price to pay’
Trump tweeted from the residence on Thursday morning when Pelosi’s unexpected announcement was broadcast live from the speaker’s balcony.
“I say, if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast,” he tweeted.
White House officials remained focused on impeachment throughout the day, hosting Newt Gingrich – who was speaker of the House during the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton – in the West Wing. Gingrich declined to comment about his visit to the White House.
Before the process pivots to the Senate, the administration plans to increase its regional targeting of media and advertising in the 31 districts currently held by Democrats that Trump won in 2016 – a warning to lawmakers that they risk losing their seats by supporting impeachment, two senior advisers to the president said on Thursday.
The coming vote paves “a very dangerous path forward for Democrats, particularly the 31 that live in districts that the president won, in some cases overwhelmingly,” Tony Sayegh, another of the president’s new impeachment strategists, told a small group of regional journalists. “If they go along with this sham, take their eye off the ball of serving the people, I think there’s going to be a significant price to pay.”
White House officials have been coordinating with Republican congressional staff since September on a messaging strategy to counter impeachment, only settling on a senior communications team – Bondi and Sayegh, a former Treasury Department spokesman – in recent weeks.
Their focus has centered on accusations that the president pressured a newly elected government in Ukraine to announce investigations into one of his political opponents, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter. Trump is accused of leveraging an Oval Office meeting and $391 million in military aid legally appropriated to Ukraine, an embattled ally at war with Russia, in exchange for the political probes.
Given the nature and scope of the House Intelligence Committee’s hearings on impeachment, Sayegh and Bondi said the administration is prepared to argue to the public that charges unrelated to Ukraine would provide the president with additional ammunition to delegitimize the process.
“What issue other than Ukraine came up during the hearings? We think that is a clear indication of how much of a failure the Intel Committee hearings ended up being for them,” Sayegh said. “Now you have, I think, dissension within the Democrat caucus as to, should we focus on what they actually testified to? Or do they now have to add other things that were already resolved?”
Bondi concurred: “Resurrecting Mueller would be the clearest admission of failure by the Democrats on the Ukraine matter,” she said.
Some Democrats agree, concerned that a conflation of Trump’s scandals would complicate their public messaging at a time when the country is already divided over how to proceed.
“I don’t think this will serve the nation very well if this becomes a grab bag of various other charges, however valid they might be,” said Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., a member of the House Ways and Means Committee which has been involved in Trump-related investigations over the past year.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., a member of two committees of jurisdiction over Trump investigations – Intelligence and Oversight and Reform – said she thought most members understood this reality.
“I think there are some that would like to see it be more expansive but I don’t think it’s a significant number,” she said Thursday. “I actually think the majority would prefer it to be straightforward, simple.”
A member of House Democratic leadership, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, does believe the scope should be expanded beyond Ukraine and include findings from the Mueller report as a basis of some articles of impeachment.
But whatever Democrats choose to include in the articles of impeachment could determine the dynamics of a Senate trial, where the president’s team has vowed to call witnesses.
“We believe quite strongly that in order to make the president’s full case, in contradiction to a partisan process that doesn’t allow him to make his full case [in the House], that we need both a full trial and the opportunity to call witnesses ... on the Senate floor,” White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday after he and Bondi, Sayegh and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone met with Republican senators.
The Judiciary Committee, which held a marathon hearing with Mueller in July, has official jurisdiction over producing the articles of impeachment. However, Pelosi has signaled that Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., would be drafting charges in consultation with the chairs of the five other House committees that have been doing investigations into Trump over the past year.
These committees include Intelligence, which has handled the Ukraine inquiry; Ways and Means, which has requested Trump’s tax returns; Oversight and Reform, which has probed violations of the emoluments clause; Foreign Affairs and Financial Services.
Looping in all six committees does not guarantee the articles of impeachment will extend beyond the Ukraine issues, but it does show the extent to which leadership is seeking buy-in from all corners of the Democratic caucus and signals that Pelosi remains uncommitted to the substance of impeachment articles.
Senate trial questions
In a Senate trial, at the top of the White House list for witnesses is testimony from Hunter Biden. Republicans say a chance to question the former vice president’s son could prove that Trump had reason to ask the Ukrainian government to investigate corruption.
Trump’s allies are also eyeing subpoenas for Joe Biden, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and the anonymous whistleblower who first alerted the intelligence community about the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump asked for political investigations after Zelensky outlined his request for military assistance.
But it’s less clear who Trump’s attorneys would call to discount Democratic charges that Trump attempted to obstruct Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, or allegations the president has used his seat of power to advance his private business interests.
Who the White House will be allowed to question on the Senate floor will be determined by an agreement on procedure to be worked out by senators. There is some bipartisan hope on Capitol Hill that McConnell will be able to reach an agreement with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on basic parameters for a trial.
The more ambitious Republicans are with witness requests, the more likely Democrats are to balk. Democrats won’t, for instance, agree to any bipartisan deal on a Senate trial that calls for an appearance by the whistleblower. The more articles of impeachment there are, the more unwieldy the list of witnesses could become — for both parties.
Sayegh and Bondi characterized the last Senate impeachment trial, scrutinizing former President Bill Clinton’s conduct, as a “fair” proceeding under rules unanimously agreed to by Democrats and Republicans.
But asked whether the Trump administration would request similar bipartisanship of McConnell as he sets the parameters for a trial, Sayegh demurred.
“We’re giving that as context to how things have historically been done,” he said. “What we’d like to see is a fair process. We’re not going to tell the Senate what to do.”
Francesca Chambers contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 5, 2019 at 6:58 PM.
