The Daily - An Impeachment Inquiry Begins

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has begun a formal impeachment investigation of President Trump, saying he “must be held accountable.” We spoke to our colleague who was at the announcement and to one of the lawmakers who helped convince Ms. Pelosi that it was time. Guests: Nicholas Fandos, who covers Congress for The New York Times, and Representative Mikie Sherrill, Democrat of New Jersey. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Though the outcome is uncertain, the inquiry raises the possibility that Mr. Trump could become only the fourth president in American history to face impeachment.After months of caution from House Democrats, why is this happening now? “They believe the new accusations against Mr. Trump are simple and serious enough to be grasped,” our colleague Carl Hulse writes in a news analysis.Here’s how the impeachment process works.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the Speaker of the House has begun a formal impeachment inquiry into the president, saying he must be held accountable. My colleague Nick Fandos was there. be held accountable. My colleague Nick Fandos was there. And a conversation with one of the lawmakers who helped convince Pelosi it was time. It's Wednesday, September 25th. Nick, give us the scene at the Capitol yesterday. So, it's Tuesday afternoon, 5 p.m., and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, we've all been waiting to hear from all day,

walks out of her office in front of a set of microphones and waiting television cameras to address the American people and a big group of reporters. Good afternoon. Last Tuesday we observed the anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution on September 17th. Sadly, on that day, the intelligent community inspector general formally notified the Congress that the administration was forbidding him from turning over a whistleblower complaint on Constitution Day. This is a violation of law. And proceeds in a relatively short but weighty speech to lay out a growing set of concerns that she has about behavior alleged to have taken place by President Trump, his attempts to

hide that behavior. Shortly thereafter, press reports began to break of a phone call by the president of the United States calling upon a foreign power to intervene in his election. This is a breach of his constitutional responsibilities. She talks about the work that six of her house committees have been doing for months now, investigating various aspects of the president and his misbehavior. For the past several months, we have various aspects of the president and his misbehavior. For the past several months, we have been investigating in our committees and litigating in the courts. And after a long windup as we're all sitting there waiting for her to say these words,

she finally announces that after months of resisting, of questioning whether Democrats' case was strong enough, warning that impeachment was too divisive. She finally said a set of words that many of us have been wondering and waiting if she would get to. Therefore, today, which is that the House will now begin a full I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment investigation of President Trump. I'm directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry. The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.

And Nick, what exactly does this mean? What is going to happen as a result of this announcement by Pelosi? So what the speaker is essentially asking these committees to do, what is going to happen as a result of this announcement by Pelosi? So what the speaker is essentially asking these committees to do, the committees which, again, have already been investigating President Trump for months, in the case of the Judiciary Committee, they've even done so under the auspices of potentially recommending articles of impeachment. But now the speaker's saying, I want each of you, five committees that aren't the Judiciary Committee, to pull together your best case about potentially impeachable conduct and then share it with the Judiciary Committee, which is going to weigh whether or not our case is strong enough to bring it before the American people and before the Senate. And so on the one hand, her announcement today doesn't change some of the mechanics of what's going on right now in the House or what's going to go on. But what it does

is it lends a certain amount of authority and momentum to these investigations. So I think what this ensures today is that there is going to be a full and drawn out and frankly quite divisive debate about whether or not to ultimately vote on impeachment. I don't think the vote to impeach the president is yet assured, but it means that this is going to be a very live question that's going to reshape American politics and large swaths of American life in the coming months. We've seen battles between the president and Democrats for the better part of three years now. I don't think we've seen anything quite like this.

So how exactly did we get here, given that we have watched Speaker Pelosi resist calls from her members for months now to open an inquiry like this? Why, in a matter of days after the Ukraine story broke, is this happening? Well, it's a really remarkable story because... Good afternoon. We just concluded... There was a kind of cryptic announcement from Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,

about this whistleblower complaint. First of all, I want to thank the whistleblower for coming forward, for having the courage... But the contents were unknown. That whole purpose is being frustrated here because the director of national intelligence has made the unprecedented decision not to share the complaint with Congress.

It took just a few days for information about this complaint to start coming out in reports in The Times and elsewhere that suggested this thing was tied to a set of interactions that the president had had with leaders of Ukraine, pressuring the Ukrainian government to help them dig up dirt, essentially, on Joe Biden, the leading Democratic rival in 2020 for President Trump, about unsubstantiated corruption allegations involving Mr. Biden's son and Ukraine. And all of a sudden, there were just these cascading stories. Now to that breaking new report about a whistleblower who reported a troubling promise President Trump may have made to a foreign leader.

President Trump's communications with a foreign leader were concerning enough to prompt a whistleblower complaint. We now know Ukraine was involved. And then the president himself starts stepping in and confirming various aspects of these reports. Right. The conversation I had was largely congratulatory, was largely corruption, all of the corruption taking place, was largely the fact that we don't want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating the corruption already in the Ukraine.

But then another element entered the story, which is a mysterious decision by the United States government to withhold almost $400 million in security aid to Ukraine. So you had questions emerging very quickly about whether President Trump hadn't been trying to hold out a quid pro quo, that if he got help with these investigations, the aid money would get released to Ukraine. As far as withholding funds, those funds were paid. They were fully paid. And again, the president gave some credence to that theory. He shot down the idea of a quid pro quo, but he acknowledged he was the one who asked that the aid be held up.

And I'd withhold again, and I'll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute. And so all of a sudden, the debate that had been totally about one thing, about Russia and about 2016 and about obstruction of justice became about something that was fresh, that's happening in real time, that echoes with many of the charges Democrats have leveled against the president, but are also something new and deeply troubling, I think, for a lot of Democrats. Welcome back to Morning Joe. As we've mentioned this morning, there is a new op-ed in the Washington Post authored by seven freshman Democrats. And it's around this time that

seven freshmen, moderate freshmen from purple districts, come forward late Monday night with an op-ed in the Washington Post. Now, this is a group of individuals who've been opposed to impeachment. They're from districts that in in many cases, voted for President Trump in 2016. They say their voters are not interested in impeachment. They didn't run on impeachment. But all of them have backgrounds, it's worth noting, in national security. And they say, given the facts that we're learning, if we can substantiate these things, this behavior is just too far beyond the pale. We didn't serve our country. We didn't run for office to let this kind of behavior go unchecked. And we see no other option but to potentially vote to impeach President Trump if these things turn out to be true.

The people have a right to inquire. They have a right to know. And from there, it just becomes an outright cascade. We're going to investigate it, present all the facts to the American people, and then decide how best to proceed at the end of that process. And to do anything else, given the gravity of the president's obscene violation of the law, would really be an affront to democracy. Monday night and into Tuesday, Democrats from every corner of the House Democratic Caucus

began coming out and stating that they've reached similar conclusions. Right now, if the reports are accurate, it's far beyond anything that we've seen up to this point. And so we're going to take appropriate measures. By early Tuesday, more than 150 Democrats had come out on the record in favor of impeachment proceedings, a little bit more than half of the House caucus. And it got to the point where by early Tuesday afternoon, it seemed as if Democrats were very quickly approaching not just the majority of their caucus, but a majority of the House of Representatives that supported a full impeachment investigation of President Trump and potentially might be willing to vote to impeach him. And what did this sudden support for impeachment among these moderate Democrats,

what did that mean for Nancy Pelosi? Remember, these moderates have a really special place in Nancy Pelosi's eyes and the House Democrats' eyes. I mean, they are the reason that she is speaker. They are the reason that Democrats won the majority last year. They hold basically the keys to all of Democrats' power in Washington. And if they lose their seats, Democrats lose their power in Washington. So she has been listening to them for months as they say, we're not ready on impeachment and wants to ensure that they are not put at undue political risk. So when they start to change their tune and come to her and say, we don't feel we need to be protected on this anymore. In fact, we're ready to get out and lead. That solves the

internal political dynamic. But it also is a sign to her that, you know, these folks who are in many cases from swing districts that President Trump won, you know, they're looking around on the ground and they may be the best proxy in her eyes for the country in some ways. And if they're ready for impeachment, then perhaps the time has come that the country, too, is ready to move forward with this. And so as these moderates go, so goes Nancy Pelosi and Nancy Pelosi thinks so perhaps goes the United States. That's right. That's right. Nick, how do the Democrats foresee this all playing out in the best possible scenario for them?

Here's what Democrats who argue strenuously for impeachment say. In their best case, they build a strong case against the president. They voted out with a overwhelming Democratic vote in the House. And then they put the president on trial in the Senate, and they force Republicans who control that chamber, every last one of them, to go on the record, either exonerating or condemning President Trump for his actions. And they are, I think, beginning to increasingly reject the idea that the politics of this may just be bad for Democrats if they end up with an acquittal. They think that by putting Republicans in that tough spot, it may be

both clarifying for the country and may lead to surprising results. Nick, I know it's been a long day. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. After the break, we talked to one of the House freshmen who is now supporting impeachment, Congresswoman Mikey Sherrill of New Jersey. We'll be right back. Oh, wait, there. Is that it? Okay. Hello? Hey, it's Michael Barbaro from the New York Times. I'm trying to reach Congresswoman Sherrill.

Hi, it's Mikey Sherrill. How are you? We're trying—we don't use our landline very often. You pick up your own phone. I could have been anybody. Right, I know. Well, we don't get our landline very often. You pick up your own phone. I could have been anybody. Right. I know. Well, we don't get tons of calls, I think. I shouldn't even say that because I never answer the landline.

So I just saw it ringing and grabbed it. Right. I'm just kidding. I spoke with Congresswoman Sherrill on Tuesday afternoon, moments before Speaker Pelosi announced she was opening the impeachment inquiry. So I have to imagine this feels like a pretty historic day in your office and in your chamber of Congress. It does feel like a historic day. It does feel important. But I am hoping that we can, after today, get back to the reasons that I'm really here to legislate on health care and taxes and infrastructure. Well, but this conversation is going to be about impeachment with apologies because— No, certainly.

After months and months of saying that you don't think impeachment is the right step. You have released a statement saying that you're open to the possibility that it is. So let's talk about that. To start, I wonder if you could read from the statement that you released on Monday night about this. Okay. We are now faced with accusations from numerous sources that our president attempted to pressure a foreign government

to investigate one of his rivals in the next presidential election. In other words, the president of the United States is attempting to fix the election. I think these accusations should be addressed with all of the tools at Congress's disposal, including articles of impeachment. I did not run for Congress to impeach the president. I ran to make the lives of New Jerseyans better. But I have long said that Congress is a co-equal branch of government and has constitutional oversight duties, I can't imagine that you made this decision lightly. I want to talk about what happened in the lead up to your decision to release this statement and an op-ed you released with six other moderate Democratic colleagues from the House. Tell me about those conversations that you were having with those colleagues, if you would,

that led to this decision to come out together as you did? So all of us as military veterans and CIA officers have been trained to make hard decisions in tough circumstances. But this wasn't one of those. This wasn't a tough decision for us. This was sort of an obvious decision. And someone asked me earlier, well, who led on this? Nobody led on this. We're all in a chat group. We all text back and forth routinely. And when this news came out, we started talking and saying, this is a huge issue. This is a national security issue. This is different from what we've seen before, and we need to act. And because we all felt the same way about this, and we all saw the national security implications, we thought it would be best to act as a group. Quite frankly, the hardest part of all

this was getting seven Congress people to agree on the language of the op-ed. We had people putting commas in and taking commas out. So that was probably the hardest part of all of this. I'm quite surprised to hear you say that this wasn't a tough decision. You represent purple districts, swing districts. And so it feels like inherently it's a very tough decision in the sense that it may not represent the will of the majority of your constituents. I think it would be a tough decision if this was in some way a political decision. But for all of us, it's always been about what is the best decision for this country. And I've often said, you know, if I look back on this in 10 years or 20 years,

how is our country going to be on better footing because of a decision I made today? And so when you have that as your compass, then a decision like this and seeing the threat to our national security and seeing these grave breaches, the flagrant disregard for our law, it became an easy decision. You know, certainly there will be people in my district who don't support this and across the country. But, you know, I've already heard support from several Republicans in my district who felt like this really was different and this was a line that had been crossed.

Mm-hmm. I want to be sure I understand the line that you're describing, that you feel, and it sounds like some of the Republican constituents that you've heard from feel, was so clearly crossed here. The fact that our president is trying to induce a foreign power to threaten our elections, I think that's a huge national security risk.

The fact that a president is withholding support from a security partner that is trying to fight off Russia, which has presented multiple national security threats over the past several years, to withhold this kind of support, knowing how critical it is that we deter Russian aggression across the world, and to have that aid not arrive to our security partner, not arrive in Ukraine as they are trying to fight that aggression, I just think it's so incredibly offensive to put that kind of support and that kind of fight that they have going on in jeopardy and in peril. One of the reasons we understand that Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not pursue impeachment

following the Russia investigation is because she did not want to endanger House members such as yourself. It now appears that your coming forward helped lead Pelosi to the place that she's in,

where she says that the House will pursue an impeachment inquiry. Did you speak with Pelosi before you came forward? So we put together our op-ed. We had all been speaking. And then when we finalized it and sent it to the Washington Post, we called up the speaker to say,

look, this will be coming out, and this is our thought process, and this is why we did this. So you weren't really seeking permission. You were telling her you were doing it. What did she say? Right, because we'd done it, but we also, maybe it's our military background. We don't like to surprise other members of the unit. So we had sent the op-ed off and then, you know, said we'd like to sit down and just talk through what we've been working on. And she said, thank you for coming to me. You know, this is a very strong case.

You've really presented some critical voices in national security, and I appreciate that. So when did you realize that she was going to, in a sense, follow your statement, your lead, and back the idea of an impeachment inquiry? I think about half an hour ago, maybe. Wow. So just within the last hour or so. Right. And what did you think when she did that? I wasn't surprised, given our conversation and her response to what we had said and what we were doing. So when she came out and said, this is where the house is going, that seemed like a logical continuation of the conversation we'd had last night.

I wonder if it feels to you, as it does to several of our colleagues here at the Times, that your statement and the statement of these six others made a very big difference and may have actually kind of broken the dam. I think it was an important statement. I think our party needed to lay out the case. And I think to have that case come from a group of people that have a history of service to the country, that don't have a history of being partisan, I do think that was a powerful statement. You said you've heard from people in your district, including Republicans,

but obviously it's far too early to understand how your voters will come down on this. I wonder, does that matter to you? Are you comfortable with the idea that this decision could theoretically cost you your seat in Congress? It matters to me in the sense that I have a vision for the future of this country that I think is important and that I think will help not just New Jerseyans, but all Americans. So I think it would be a shame if after 2020, we still had President Trump in office because I don't think he's been good for this country. In that sense, no, I'm not totally comfortable with the possibility that this will

cost me, because to me, that means I haven't made the case well enough, that I haven't done what I think I and I think, you know, other freshmen members that I've written this op-ed with, you know, the case that I think Gil Cisneros and Jason Crow and Chrissy Houlihan and Elaine Luria and Alyssa Slack and Abigail Spanberg and I can make to the American people about what the president has done. And if we don't do that well enough and we lose our seats, yeah, I'm not really comfortable with that because I think we have a better vision for the future than the president does. And yet, it's a risk that I think we all felt we had to take to defend our national security. Congresswoman, in your letter, you said that if the allegations are true, and you emphasized if, this is an impeachable offense. The way you're talking

now, it seems like you're pretty clear that this is an impeachable offense. The way you're talking now, it seems like you're pretty clear that this is an impeachable offense. Do I have that right? Am I missing something? I think we have a group of people that have signed on to this op-ed, and this is where the group is. I think I am pretty confident that these are impeachable offenses. Now, whether that's the decision that we as a caucus will make, that's a different thing. And I think there's many things that will go into that decision for the caucus. But I certainly think these actions do represent an impeachable offense. Congresswoman, thank you very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Have a good day. You too. Bye-bye. Mr. President, Congress is moving towards impeachment. How do you feel about that? I think it's ridiculous. It's a witch hunt. I'm leading in the polls. They have no idea how they stop me. The only way they can try is through impeachment.

On Tuesday, President Trump mocked the Democratic plans to open an impeachment inquiry, even as he took steps to defuse the situation. The Times reports that the president's aides were working on a plan to release a transcript of his call with Ukraine's president, release a redacted version of the whistleblower's complaint, and allow the whistleblower to speak with congressional investigators. As of Tuesday night, 204 members of the House support an impeachment inquiry. Democrats need 218 votes to impeach. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. I welcome the judgment this morning of the Supreme Court. That judgment is unanimous. That judgment is unambiguous. And that judgment is unqualified. On Tuesday, Britain's highest court ruled that Prime Minister Boris Johnson acted unlawfully when he suspended Parliament in order to prevent lawmakers from blocking his plan to leave the European Union by October 31st.

Unlawful because it prevented or frustrated Parliament in the discharge of its core duties. And it did so at a crucial time for our country. The ruling immediately ended Parliament's suspension and delivered the latest in a series of embarrassing defeats to Johnson. I strongly disagree with what the justices have found. I don't think that it's right, but we will go ahead and, of course, follow. Speaking at the United Nations, Johnson said he would respect the court's decision. I think the most important thing is we get on and deliver Brexit on October the 31st.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Babarro. See you tomorrow.