As swing-district House Democrats move decisively towards impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is looking more open to the prospect that she ever has.
Seven purple-district Democrats penned a letter in the Washington Post Monday calling President Donald Trump’s actions with the Ukrainian President an “impeachable offense.” While not quite committing to impeachment proceedings, they expressed a decided openness to the prospect.
On Pelosi’s part, she has long resisted the siren song of impeachment out of concern for those same freshmen, to protect her members from districts that aren’t clamoring for the President’s political blood. Now that at least some of them are going out on that limb, she’s free to to follow.
According to Politico, she will meet with committee chairmen, and then the full caucus on Tuesday to figure out next steps.
The hearing on Thursday, where acting DNI Joseph Maguire will go before the House Intelligence Committee to discuss the whistleblower’s withheld testimony, is now seen as the deciding factor in how to move forward. If the administration continues to obstruct Congress from fulfilling its oversight duties, Democrats will likely be spurred to take extreme action.
So far, President Donald Trump has admitted to speaking on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late July about former Vice President Joe Biden and “corruption.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump pressured Zelensky “about eight times” to dig up political dirt on Hunter Biden in the course of the call. And though Trump denied it just Monday, hours later the Washington Post reported that he did ask then-acting OMB Director Mick Mulvaney to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to use as leverage in the days before the conversation.
Less is known about the whistleblower’s blocked testimony — the complaint concerns a promise Trump made to a foreign leader, believed to be Zelensky.
