In the face of the Democrats’ ridiculous and overtly partisan impeachment efforts, Representative Jim Jordan launched a fantastic defense of President Trump on Thursday. He blasted Democrats for always having wanted to impeach the president; the call with Zelensky, he explained, was and is nothing more than an excuse for them to do what they planned on doing from the very moment Trump was elected.
“Before Speaker Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry ten weeks ago on September 24th, before the call between President Trump and President Zelensky on July 25th, before the Mueller hearing in front of this committee on July 24th,” Rep. Jordan said while pointing at the Democratic members of the committee, “before all that, sixteen of them had already voted to move forward on impeachment. Sixteen Democrats on the Judiciary Committee had already voted to move forward on impeachment, yet today we’re talking about the positions they’ve already taken are constitutional? Seems a little backward to me. I mean, we’ve got four Democrats, well four people who voted for Clinton, and they can’t agree. Yet today we are talking about the constitutionality…”
“I would argue it is not a fast impeachment, it is a predetermined impeachment,” he went on to say after quoting Prof. Jonathan Tuley, who had called it a “fast impeachment.”
“A predetermined impeachment done in the most unfair, partisan fashion we have ever seen. No subpoena power for Republicans. Depositions done in secret. In the bunker in the basement of the Capitol seventeen people come in for those depositions, no one could be in there except for a handful of folks that Adam Schiff allowed. In those depositions, Chairman Schiff prevented witnesses from answering Republicans’ questions. Every Democrat question got answered. Not every Republican question.”
“Democrats denied Republicans the witnesses that we wanted in the open hearings that took place three weeks ago,” Rep. Jordan continued. “And of course Democrats promised us the whistleblower would testify, and then changed their mind. And they changed their mind why? Because the whole world discovered that Adam Schiff’s staff had talked to the whistleblower, coordinated with the whistleblower — a whistleblower with no first-hand knowledge, biased against the president, who worked with Joe Biden, whose lawyer in January of [20]17 said the impeachment process starts then…”
“That’s the unfair process we’ve been through. And the reason it’s been unfair — let me just cut to the chase — the reason it’s been unfair is that the facts are not on their side. The facts are on the president’s side. Four key facts will not change, have not changed, will never change. We have the transcript, there was no quid pro quo in the transcript. The two guys on the call, President Trump and President Zelensky, both said: ‘No pressure, no pushing, no quid pro quo.’ The Ukrainians, third, did not know that the aid was held up at the time of the phone call. And fourth, and most important, the Ukrainians never started, never promised to start, and never announced an investigation in the time that the aid was paused. Never once.”
.@Jim_Jordan is right: This is a pre-determined impeachment done in the most partisan way ever.
– No GOP subpoena power
– Witnesses stopped from answering GOP questions
– 16 Judiciary Committee Dems voted to impeach in JulyDems rigged it because the facts aren't on their side. pic.twitter.com/sC0EQawZxm
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) December 5, 2019
At that point, Rep. Jordan moved in for the rhetorical kill. “But you know what did happen in those 55 days that the aid was paused? There were five key meetings between President Zelensky and senior officials in our government. Five key meetings. We have the call on July the 25th. The very next day, July 26th, we have Ambassadors Volker, Taylor and Sondland meet with President Zelensky in Kyiv. We then had Ambassador Bolton, end of August, meet with President Zelensky. We then had the vice president meet with President Zelensky on the 1st, and we had two senators — Republican and more importantly Democrat Senator Murphy with Republican Senator Johnson — meet with President Zelensky on September 5th. At none of those five meetings — none of those five meetings! — was aid ever discussed in an exchange for an announcement of an investigation into anybody. Not one of them.” This, Rep. Jordan concluded, is yet more evidence of the incredible unfairness of this impeachment sham.
The congressman from Ohio then switched back to something else Prof. Turley had said in his testimony. “This is scary,” Rep. Jordan said. “How mad the country… that was so well said. This is scary. The Democrats have never accepted the will of the American people. To Mr. Turley’s point: seventeen days ago, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives called the president of the United States an imposter. The guy 63 million Americans voted for, who won an Electoral College majority landslide… the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives called that individual an imposter. That is not healthy for our country. This is not healthy.”
And so, he summarized, “the facts are the facts. They are on the president’s side. That’s what we need to focus on, not some constitutional hearing at the end of the process when you guys have already determined where you’re going to go.”
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