Trump impeachment report to come after Thanksgiving: Schiff

The US House Judiciary Committee will receive the report about the impeachment of US President Donald Trump “soon after” the Thanksgiving recess, says House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who is leading an inquiry amid the Ukraine scandal.

Schiff said in a "Dear Colleague" letter sent to members of the House Democratic Caucus on Monday that the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform committees continue to investigate Trump over accusations of a quid pro quo with Ukraine.

“Over the course of our inquiry, we have uncovered a months-long effort in which President Trump again sought foreign interference in our elections for his personal and political benefit at the expense of our national interest. As the evidence conclusively shows, President Trump conditioned official acts—a White House meeting desperately desired by the new Ukrainian president and critical US military assistance—on Ukraine announcing sham, politically-motivated investigations that would help President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign,” wrote the California Democrat.

‘Consciousness of guilt’

The impeachment inquiry centers on a July 25 phone call, in which the US president asked his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to investigate his potential 2020 rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

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“The corrupt intent made plain in the record of the July 25 call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky has been supplemented by significant evidence showing the extent of the president’s abuse of power both before and after the July 25 telephone call,” Schiff said. “This conduct directed by the president not only became more ‘insidious’ over time, but was known to the vice president, the president’s chief of staff, the secretary of state, and others down the line.”

He further denounced the “unprecedented campaign of obstruction” by the White House through defying House subpoenas.

“In fact, the Committees did not receive a single document from any executive branch agencies pursuant to our subpoenas,” he continued. “And, yet, this effort to stonewall failed in the face of repeated witness testimony that provided the committees with direct evidence of the president’s actions and identified records documenting the president’s effort and the complicity of senior officials in it.”

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The Trump administration’s attempts to block officials from testifying before the committees will also be included in the upcoming report, a prerequisite for a possible vote in the Democratic-led House on articles of impeachment.

“Such obstruction was the basis of the third article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. Further, we will be forced to infer from this obstruction that the testimony of these witnesses would tend to incriminate the president further since he would have encouraged—rather than blocked—the testimony of senior officials like Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former National Security Advisor Ambassador John Bolton, if he believed it would somehow be helpful to him,” said the California lawmaker. “The fact that the president has uniformly instructed all executive branch agencies and senior officials to obstruct the investigation further demonstrates consciousness of guilt on the part of the president.”

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