None of the Democrat-called witnesses testifying before the House Intelligence Committee as part of a series of “impeachment inquiry” hearings have been able to identify any impeachable offenses or crimes committed by President Donald Trump, noted Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), in a Thursday interview on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
Scalise said, “Every single witness that the Democrats brought forward — these were their star witnesses, we didn’t even get to bring any of our witnesses, yet — but every one of their witnesses said that there have been no impeachable offenses, no crimes.”
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Scalise continued, “Yovanovitch even admitted, bluntly, ‘There was no bribery,’ and yet [Democrats] are still going to try to move forward with impeaching a president on something that he didn’t do [and] that everyone who they brought forward as a witness said he didn’t do.”
Scalise recalled how Ukrainian foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko said, last Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland had “never” linked U.S. foreign aid to Ukrainian investigations of the 2016 elections or former Vice President Joe Biden’s role in stopping an investigation of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
“The foreign minister of Ukraine, last week, in anticipation of Sondland’s testimony, made it clear, there was never a link between foreign aid and any investigation,” stated Scalise. ” [Gordon Sondland] himself, when pressed … said not one single time did the president make a link between foreign aid and any kind of investigations, and in fact, [Gordon Sondland] said the president said directly, ‘There is no quid pro quo,’ and yet they keep moving forward.”
Many news media outlets falsely framed Sondland’s testimony as confirming a quid pro quo between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, observed Scalise.
Scalise stated, “[Adam Schiff] still vetoes our witnesses. We want to bring the whistleblower forward, the person who started this all. When you see Vindman and Schiff, two days ago, say that they don’t know who the whistleblower is, and then in the next sentence say they can’t answer a question because it’ll reveal who the whistleblower is, those two statements don’t match. One’s true or the other’s true, but they can’t both be true, and they both said it with a straight face. It doesn’t pass the smell test. … How can that be a true statement?”
Democrats’ impeachment push against Trump is a function of their weak selection of aspiring presidential nominees, assessed Scalise.
“They have no field of candidates to run against President Trump,” remarked Scalise. “Many Democrats have even said this is about bloodying up Donald Trump and making it harder for him to get reelected. There’s no impeachable offense, but they just want to try to do damage, because their field is so weak. Last week, three high-profile Democrats talked about getting in the race for president this late in the game, including Deval Patrick.”
Scalise went on, “This is the most interesting. Deval Patrick said Barack Obama encouraged him to get in the race for president, last week. Now, isn’t Barack Obama’s vice president running for president? Why is nobody in the media asking Joe Biden, ‘Why is your president, that you served under, encouraging other Democrats to get in when you’re in?’ That’s a huge swipe at Joe Biden by Barack Obama.”
Trump has a legal obligation to prevent U.S. foreign aid from being lost to corruption, explained Scalise.
“The law says that if you give taxpayer money — foreign aid — to a foreign country, and specifically, in other sets of law, if it’s Ukraine — because they’ve had a history of corruption — that by law, the president, through DoD, has to certify that [the recipient] country is rooting out corruption, and of course you just had a change of government [in Ukraine]. Zelensky had just gotten elected … on a platform of rooting out corruption. … So we were in the process of verifying that he was rooting out corruption, so the president had a legal requirement before he gave the aid to verify that they were cleaning up corruption.”
Witnesses asked by Republicans to “name an impeachable offense” committed by Trump have been unable to do so, concluded Scalise.
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