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Nadler clashed with Pelosi, Schiff over first Trump impeachment, argued process 'unconstitutional': book

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Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the head of the House Judiciary Committee, 
sparred with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff over how the 
House would handle impeachment proceedings against then-President Donald 
Trump in 2019, with Nadler arguing that the process was 
“unconstitutional”, according to a new book.

The dispute broke out over Pelosi’s plan to hold a vote on a resolution 
outlining impeachment proceedings against Trump, according to excerpts 
from “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments 
of Donald Trump?” that were obtained by Fox News. 

Nadler argued with Schiff (D-Calif.), the House Intelligence Committee 
chairman whom Pelosi tapped to lead the effort, raising concerns that the 
Judiciary Committee would be unable to cross-examine witnesses as it 
typically does.

“It’s unfair, and it’s unprecedented, and it’s unconstitutional,” Nadler 
told Schiff at one point, according to co-authors Rachael Bade and Karoun 
Demirjian, reporters for Politico and the Washington Post respectively.

“I don’t appreciate your tone,” Schiff? reportedly replied???. “I worry 
you’re putting us in a box for our investigation.”

Trump was facing impeachment over a phone call to Ukrainian President 
Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he asked the leader to announce an 
investigation into Hunter Biden and his father Joe Biden, then a 
Democratic presidential candidate. ?

After being sidelined by Pelosi, Nadler made an “effort to get back” into 
her “good graces,” according to Bade and Demirjian, who reported that the 
longtime Upper West Side rep’s aides “sucked up to her staff relentlessly” 
to emphasize that his panel was prepared to help in the impeachment 
effort.

The brown-nosing proved successful and Pelosi and Schiff ultimately 
reconsidered the role of the Judiciary Committee, although they had “their 
own ideas about how he [Nadler] should run his committee process?.” 

“Pelosi simply didn’t trust the panel — which was stacked with liberal 
crusaders and hotheaded conservatives — to handle the rollout of the 
complex Ukraine narrative with the careful, compelling treatment it 
required,” Bade and Demirjian write, according to Fox News. “She couldn’t 
afford another Nadler screwup. The Judiciary chairman could focus on the 
legal business of crafting the articles of impeachment and have academics 
testify, she allowed. But that was it?.” 

In response, Nadler hired attorneys and his staffers examined records and 
books describing impeachment drives against former Presidents Richard 
Nixon and Andrew Johnson.

His team’s research found both that presidents had been able to defend 
themselves at impeachment hearings before the Judiciary Committee and that 
the president’s lawyers could attend hearings and cross-examine witnesses, 
as well as call their own.  

But Schiff was adamant that Trump would not be able to confront his 
accusers, a stand that Nadler could not abide.

“If we’re going to impeach, we need to show the country that we gave the 
president ample opportunity to defend himself,” Nadler told them, 
according to the book.

T?he authors write that the Californians worried about what Trump’s 
lawyers would say at the hearings, and feared it could ?jeopardize 
Democrats’ messaging before the 2020 election. ?

Nadler’s staff said Trump’s impeachment ?should look “more like Nixon” but 
Schiff’s team opposed that plan, saying “f–k Donald Trump,” the authors 
allege.

“Stick close to the Nixon and Clinton cases,” Nadler ?cautioned at one 
point amid Republican outrage. ??”You have to arm yourself against these 
process complaints.”?

??In one meeting with Schiff’s people, the book says, Judiciary Committee 
counsel Aaron Hiller warned Nadler would “insist on these hearings.”

But Dan Goldman, Schiff’s lead counsel and now a Democratic nominee for 
Congress in New York’s 10th district, was not impressed.

“Jerry Nadler? With him, everything is negotiable,” Goldman ?said at the 
time, the book claims. ?

The tensions came to a head when Schiff sent Nadler a draft of the 
resolution laying out the rules for the impeachment proceedings which 
ignored the New Yorker’s demands.

“These lawless HPSCI bast–ds!” ?a Judiciary Committee aide reportedly 
exploded, using the intelligence committee’s formal acronym.

“It’s dumb,” another reacted. “It’s illegal!”?

Nadler confronted Schiff at a subsequent meeting.

“They’re going to argue we don’t have due process for Trump. Why make that 
argument real?” Nadler asked before warning Schiff: “I write the rules of 
my committee, not you. I resent you telling me how to run my committee.”

“I don’t really care about your resentment,” Schiff ?responded. “Neither 
the Speaker nor I agree.”?

Pelosi, according to the book, wanted to make Trump’s impeachment a 
“national security issue.”?

“Eighty percent-plus [of Americans] say it’s not okay for the president to 
ask for foreign assistance [in an election] — despite Trump asserting that 
he can do it. I just think we need to make this case to rural voters, 
evangelicals, and Republicans?,” she said. ?

Pelosi even used the words of Judge Andrew Napolitano, then a Fox News 
contributor, to suggest a way to sell the impeachment to the president’s 
supporters.

“We need to play up Napolitano saying he committed impeachable offenses,” 
Pelosi allegedly ?said. “The public awareness on the details of this is 
very low … So we need clarity and repetition over and over again. 
‘National security threat.’ ‘Abuse of power.’ ‘No one is above the law.’”

Trump was impeached by the House in December 2019, but was acquitted by 
the Senate in February 2020.

Comments:

jimmie matho
11 hours ago

WOW,....with what we know now, Biden should be impeached immediately upon 
the GOP retaking the house.
it's OPEN and SHUT case.
" I said , I'm leaving here in 6 hours, and  if that guy prosecuting my 
son and our money laundering scheme isn't fired  you aren't getting the 
Billion dollars,  he said you can't do that you're not the President, I 
said  just phone Barrack and ask him."

I condensed a bit but that was the gist


kelly c
11 hours ago

the day she dies will be the happiest day of my life.


Interested
10 hours ago

The impeachment was a hoax.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/27/nadler-clashed-with-pelosi-schiff-over-
first-trump-impeachment-argued-process-unconstitutional-book/

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Nadler clashed with Pelosi, Schiff over first Trump impeachment, argued process 'unconstitutional': book zinn <zinn@reno.us> - 2022-09-28 08:59 +0000

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