Wednesday (October 9): The White House has refused to extend any cooperation by President Donald Trump in the Democrats’ impeachment investigation.
The WH said the efforts being made by the opposition are unconstitutional and an attempt to overturn the democratic process.
“The President has done nothing wrong and the Democrats know it,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said.
“For purely political reasons, the Democrats have decided their desire to overturn the outcome of the 2016 election allows them to conduct a so-called impeachment inquiry that ignores the fundamental rights guaranteed to every American,” she said.
Democrats in the US House of Representatives are examining whether there are grounds to impeach Trump, a Republican, based on a whistleblower’s account that said he asked Ukrainian President Zelenskiy in a July 25 phone call to help investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden.
“These partisan proceedings are an affront to the Constitution-as they are being held behind closed doors and deny the President the right to call witnesses, to cross-examine witnesses, to have access to evidence, and many other basic rights,” she said soon after the White House sent a letter to the Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives informing them of the decision of the Trump Administration.
In the letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone rejected the allegations against President Trump terming it baseless and unconstitutional.
Later a senior administration official told reporters that for the first time in America’s history, the House of Representatives is now purporting to proceed on an impeachment inquiry against the President without conducting a vote on the House floor.
This has never happened in the history of the country. There’s always been, in every prior inquiry into a presidential impeachment, a vote on the House floor, the official asserted.
