As House Democrats continue to gather evidence pointing toward President Donald Trump abusing the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into investigating a political rival, Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., says Republicans are turning to “scorched earth” tactics to disrupt the impeachment inquiry.
Republicans disrupted closed-door House Intelligence Committee proceedings Wednesday morning, forcing the panel to postpone business for the day.
In an interview, Welch, who is a member of the oversight and intelligence committees, said members of the Republican Party also violated security protocols when they demonstrated in the committee room.
“They stormed our committee today. They’ve occupied, they’ve interfered with our ability for the Republicans and Democrats who were in that room to hear the testimony,” Welch said.
Welch blamed the president for the disruptive actions and said he expects more Republican obstruction of the investigation into Trump’s conduct.
“He’s inciting them and there’s a significant block of Republicans who are basically willing to be the foot soldiers of the president’s scorched earth policy,” Vermont’s lone House member said.
The disruption comes the day after William Taylor, a longtime diplomat who currently is in charge of the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, shed further light on the July 25 phone call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the U.S. president asked Ukraine to look into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
Behind closed doors on Tuesday, Taylor told the intelligence committee Trump had decided not to give nearly $400 million in military aid or grant a meeting in the White House with Zelensky, unless Ukraine opened investigations into Hunter Biden and alleged Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
In Taylor’s written testimony he said it was his understanding that the delay in U.S. military aid to Ukraine was explicitly tied to Zelensky’s willingness to investigate the Biden family and the 2016 presidential election.
Taylor also threw the testimony of Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, into question.
Last week, Sondland said he was unaware of efforts by Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to coerce Ukraine into launching an investigation into the family of one of Trump’s possible 2020 general election opponents.
Taylor refuted that claim in his opening statement to lawmakers. He said that Sondland had told him that the meeting with Trump and the release of aid “was dependent” on announcing an investigation into Hunter Biden.
“He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations,” Taylor recounted of Sondland to investigative committees on Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening, Welch told MSNBC he believes Sondland could be in danger of facing perjury charges for his testimony.
“When he presented himself, he was kind of a rich guy who bought an ambassadorship, and he pretended that it was a good day for him,” Welch said. “Of course the evidence is now coming out that in fact he was a very active instrument to try to essentially assist Giuliani in the effort to have this rogue foreign policy.”
“Ambassador Sondland has some reason to be worried about how his testimony is going to be evaluated when reviewed by potential prosecutors,” Welch added.
While some members of Congress have credited Taylor’s testimony as a turning point in the impeachment inquiry, Welch said it simply “reinforces” the evidence in the transcript of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky, which kickstarted the formal impeachment proceedings a month ago.
“From the beginning, that phone call with the president, I think, is the smoking gun. If Watergate had the tapes, this issue has the phone call where the president is asking a foreign leader to interfere in U.S. elections,” Welch said.
“That’s a crime. It’s against the law for me, any member of Congress, any citizen really, to solicit foreign assistance in our campaigns.”
On Thursday, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, confirmed to the press that military aid was withheld, in part, to pressure Ukraine into investigating the country’s possible involvement in the last presidential election.
Mulvaney’s comments are in direct conflict with Trump’s repeated claims that U.S. financial support was not tied to a promise the Ukrainian government look into either Hunter Biden or its role in the 2016 election.
Since Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., declared the lower chamber would be conducting a formal impeachment inquiry, Trump has complained it is part of a “hoax” and the continuation of a “witch hunt” that he has had to contend with since he took office.
Welch said impeachment was “an extremely serious remedy” and that the current inquiry is “not about getting anybody” but about enforcing the law.
“It’s going to be a bitter fight all the way through,” he said.
