Trump impeachment: Historic committee vote on president's 'abuse of power' postponed

Republicans condemned over refusal to 'accept the facts' of case against White House

After a contentious markup session lasting all of Thursday, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler postponed voting on articles of impeachment to 10.00am on Friday.

Mr Nadler's surprise announcement came after 14 hours of contentious debate, during which Republicans on the committee decried the process by which the articles of impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of congress were being considered, with ranking member Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican, calling the proceedings "an embarrassment" and characterising the finished product as the weakest articles of impeachment in history.

If the full House of Representatives approves the impeachment resolution — which could happen as early as Tuesday — the House will then refer the articles of impeachment to the US senate, which will hold a trial with chief justice John Roberts presiding in place of the vice-president.

The judiciary committee’s Republican members spent most of the day-long session raising many of now-familiar objections to the process by which the House’s Democratic majority has endeavoured to make Mr Trump the third American president to face an impeachment trial in the Senate.

North Dakota Republican Kelly Armstrong complained that "abuse of power" had long been a charge levelled at presidents by members of the opposite political party, but said such an accusation was not a substitute for specific high crimes and misdemeanours. He warned that impeaching Mr Trump on abuse of power charges would set a precedent that Democrats would come to regret.

"The problem we're running into, which is going to last far longer than today and far longer than this congress, is that this will become the new normal," he said. "This will continue, this will move forward in the history of our country. The party who has not held the White House has accused the White House of abuse of power. It started 200 years ago, it will continue into the future, except now — congratulations — it will be impeachment every single time one party controls the House of Representatives and the other is in the White House."

Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen countered that abuse of power is "the most impeachable crime [Trump] can be charged with" because it involves the subversion of America's elections.

"This is the most abusive act we can imagine, trying to influence our elections with foreign interference," he said. "That takes power away from the American people, and it would end our country as we know it — a democracy, a shining city on a hill, and a beacon of hope to people around the world who followed our revolution by giving people the power and not kings."

At times, Republicans invoked complaints some of the committee’s more senior Democrats had made two decades earlier, when they were the minority party during the impeachment of then-President Clinton.

James Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican who chaired the committee during those 1998 sessions, said Democrats’ pursuit of Mr Trump’s impeachment was a “railroad job.”

A significant portion of the day was devoted to debating an amendment offered by Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, meant to eliminate Democrats' first article of impeachment for abuse of power, which Mr Collins called a "carte blanche" that would allow impeachment for anything the majority wants.

Committee members also voted down amendments to strike the article of impeachment for obstruction of congress, and to eliminate the language specifying that Mr Trump should be removed from office from both articles. And as the session stretched into its 13th hour, Mr Sensenbrenner praised Mr Nadler for conducting the proceedings in an “evenhanded” manner.

“But that being said, let me say that the chairman and those on his side of the aisle are dead wrong on all of the issues we have been debating today and last night, as well as beforehand,” he said. “We have heard an awful lot about how if Donald Trump is not impeached and removed from office, he's going to steal the 2020 election - that’s one of the most outlandish predictions I’ve ever heard,” Mr Sensenbrenner continued.

“But what’s happening here is an attempt to steal the 2016 election, three years after the fact. Because if Donald Trump is impeached based on this flimsy record ... that will end up voiding the votes of the 63 million people who voted for Donald Trump for president of the United States.”

Mr Cohen concurred with Mr Sensenbrenner’s praise of Chairman Nadler, but countered that it was the Republicans who were “dead wrong” about the significance of the two articles of impeachment under debate.

“This is in no way stealing an election. If Donald Trump is removed from office, the election of 2016 is not nullified - Mike Pence will be the president, and that’s no walk in the park,” said Mr Cohen.“It’s the same policies - some of them may be a bit worse, maybe a bit better ethics and morals, and a little bit more civility. But as far as policies, it would be about the same.”

Early on, Republican Steve Chabot argued that Democrats had failed to identify an impeachable offence because they had not accused Mr Trump of any violations of criminal law. But Democrat Eric Swalwell responded that the president’s actions which are described in the article for abuse of power “[overlap] with criminal acts,” including “at least two criminal statutory crimes".

Mr Swalwell, a former prosecutor, suggested that Mr Trump may yet “one day” face criminal charges for those actions in addition to being impeached.

While some Republicans criticised Democrats for relying heavily on the testimony of Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, Jamie Raskin reminded his colleagues that the committee was also relying on the testimony of foreign service officer David Holmes, who testified that Mr Trump cared about "big stuff" that could benefit him, such as announcements of investigations into the Bidens.

"It's very clear from multiple witnesses exactly what President Trump wanted to get from President Zelensky – he wanted a statement on television that Ukraine ... was going to investigate Vice President Biden, and a statement contradicting the 2016 understanding by our intelligence committee and Special Counsel Mueller that there'd been a sweeping and systematic campaign by Russia to interfere ... and say that it was Ukraine that interfered."

"That's what he wanted ... he didn't care about corruption!" Mr Raskin continued, noting that Mr Trump had recently been forced to pay a $2m (£1.5m) fine for misusing his own charity foundation, and $25m (£18.6m) in restitution to "students" at his Trump University, which the New York attorney general called a "classic bait and switch operation".

"This is the guy they want us to believe was shaking down the president of Ukraine because he had some secret anti-corruption agenda that actually wasn't related to the Bidens, that wasn't related to rehabilitating the totally discredited Russian conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine — not Russia — that intervened in our campaign in 2016? Come on, get real! Be serious!" he said before chastising Republicans for their preoccupation with process objections and refusal to acknowledge the evidence that the impeachment investigation has uncovered.

"We know they don't accept the facts, we know they don't accept the evidence. They don't like the fact that the depositions took place in the basement? Where should they have been? Would they accept the facts if we'd found some other room?" he asked.

"Enough of these phoney process objections — let's get back to the facts of what happened: The President of the United States shook down a foreign power to come and get involved in our election. That's wrong."