Democrats zoom in on Trump impeachment charges this week

MUELLER PART OF IMPEACHMENT CHARGES?

Democratic lawmakers on Sunday played down the possibility of basing one of the articles of impeachment on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian election interference in 2016. That report cited 10 incidents in which Trump sought to hinder the investigation, but did not draw conclusions on whether Trump obstructed justice.

The best strategy, intelligence panel Chairman Adam Schiff told CBS' "Face the Nation," is to pick the charges supported by "the strongest and most overwhelming evidence and not try to charge everything, even if you could charge other things."

"Nobody wants to put the kitchen sink into these articles," added Pramila Jayapal, a House Judiciary Democrat, in an interview with Reuters. "We need to be focused; we need to be clear. We need to present the best possible case."

House Democrats who must appeal to skeptical independent voters to get re-elected have expressed misgivings about supporting a charge of obstruction of justice based on Mueller.

Judiciary Committee Democrats have said they could instead use Mueller's findings to demonstrate a repeated pattern of misconduct by Trump to support formal charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

"It's part of a pattern" that poses a threat to the integrity of the November 2020 election, Nadler said.

Judiciary Committee Democrats worked through the weekend poring over information from the Intelligence Committee and constitutional law scholars who testified on Wednesday.

Republicans are demanding that Nadler postpone Monday's hearing to give them time to review the material.

"It is impossible for Judiciary members to sift through thousands and thousands of pages in any meaningful way in a matter of hours," the committee's top Republican, Representative Doug Collins, told Nadler in a weekend letter.

Nadler dismissed the contention, saying that the documents presented on Saturday were basically the intelligence committee report released earlier in the week to both Republicans and Democrats.

Republican Matt Gaetz, a Trump supporter on the Judiciary Committee, told ABC the president's impeachment was "inevitable" as Republicans began to emphasize the vote margin as the thing to watch. They will not have any defectors, Republican lawmakers said on Sunday, but Democrats will be under increasing pressure to vote against impeachment.

Reuters