Nancy Pelosi: 'Dangerous' to let election determine Trump’s fate
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats it would be “dangerous” to skip impeachment and wait for the 2020 election to determine whether President Trump should remain in office. “That dangerous position only adds to the urgency of our action, because the President is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections,” the California lawmaker said to fellow Democrats in a memo sent Monday. Pelosi said the call to skip impeachment proceedings and let voters decide next year is “the weak response” to the hearings Democrats have been holding as part of the impeachment proceedings.
Democrats are working to establish that Trump tried to use millions of dollars in security aid to get Ukrainian government officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a top political rival. Pelosi has insisted Democrats have not decided yet whether or not to draft articles of impeachment, but in the memo to Democrats, she sounded convinced. “The facts are uncontested,” Pelosi wrote to her Democratic colleagues, “that the President abused his power for his own personal, political benefit, at the expense of our national security interests."
The House Intelligence Committee Tuesday will begin the second week of public impeachment proceedings. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Kurt Volker are slated to testify. Republicans are uniformly opposed to the impeachment inquiry and said Democrats should wait until the November 2020 elections so voters can decide whether Trump deserves to remain in office.
