Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., expects impeachment inquiry hearings to soon become public, as House Democrats begin to gear up for the next phase of the investigation into whether President Donald Trump abused the power of his office to pressure Ukraine into investigating a political rival.
“My hope is, we will be starting those before Thanksgiving. That is my hope,” said Welch in a Wednesday interview. “We are moving along pretty efficiently.”
Welch’s comments come a day before the House is scheduled to hold a floor vote on an impeachment resolution which will outline the ground rules for Democrats, Republicans, and the White House moving forward.
The resolution, which is expected to pass because of a Democratic majority in the House, ensures that Republicans can request witnesses and issue subpoenas during the impeachment investigation.
House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and other committee Democrats, including Welch, will have the power to veto Republican requests, a protocol that is similar to previous impeachment proceedings.
Welch, who sits on both the intelligence and government oversight committees, characterized Thursday’s business as laying out the “procedural road map for the public impeachment inquiry” and said the decision to move hearings from behind closed doors into the public addresses the criticisms from the Trump administration and its allies on Capitol Hill.
House Republicans have repeatedly tried to disrupt the impeachment inquiry, calling the closed-door hearings a tactic to smear the president. Last week, Republicans disrupted closed-door intelligence committee proceedings forcing the panel to postpone business for the day.
On Wednesday morning, the president called the investigation nothing more than a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” on Twitter.
Republicans are very unified and energized in our fight on the Impeachment Hoax with the Do Nothing Democrats, and now are starting to go after the Substance even more than the very infair Process because just a casual reading of the Transcript leads EVERYBODY to see that…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 30, 2019
Welch said that despite Republican opposition, House Democrats will be able to move the impeachment resolution forward on Thursday.
“I don’t expect them to stop us from having the floor vote,” he said.
For weeks, the House Intelligence Committee has been investigating the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which the U.S. president asked Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden who served on the board of Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company in the Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.
Last Tuesday, the top U.S. envoy to Ukraine, William Taylor, told House lawmakers that 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.
On Tuesday, Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, told the investigatory panel a transcript of the conversation released by the White House left out key information, according to the New York Times.
The omissions include Trump naming the energy company, Burisma Holdings, according to Vindman’s written testimony.
On Wednesday, Welch and his colleagues on the intelligence committee heard from two Ukraine experts who advised Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine. In early October, Volker handed over text messages to investigators in which Taylor described Trump’s plan to withhold military aid to Ukraine as “crazy.”
Later this week, House members are expected to hear from Timothy Morrison, the National Security Council’s Russia and Europe director, and Robert Blair, a top national security adviser to Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff.
Welch says the parade of witnesses have only reinforced the “smoking gun” in the impeachment investigation: Trump’s own words during the call with Zelensky in July.
“This impeachment inquiry is going to boil down to whether the president of the United States can seek to pressure a foreign government for help on a political campaign,” Welch said.
