Radio Recap – Breaking: Impeachment Articles Pass House Judiciary Committee

Today the House Judiciary Committee voted to report the articles of impeachment out of committee. There will be a full vote on the floor of the House next week.

On today’s Jay Sekulow Live we discussed the House Judiciary voting in favor of the articles of impeachment on a purely partisan, party-line vote.

Chairman Nadler revealed the motives behind impeachment yesterday, essentially that they don’t trust the American voters, when he said:

We cannot rely on an election to solve our problems, when the President threatens the very integrity of that election.

After the House vote next week, which will likely pass, the Senate will take up the articles of impeachment. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell described what he thinks is going to happen in the Senate:

The case is so darn weak coming over from the House, we all know how it’s going to end. There’s no chance the President is going to be removed from office.

Today’s vote was not unexpected other than the fact that it took place today. We were expecting the vote to occur last night. The vote was along party lines. It was on the two counts, “Abuse of Power” and also “Obstruction of Congress”. These were the two counts that had been discussed.

What was interesting last night when I was watching the markup hearing, and we were all anticipating a vote around ten o’clock, and of course Chairman Nadler decided not to have the vote. The sentiment was that he wanted higher television ratings, and I’m not sure he got that today.

ACLJ Director of Government Affairs Thann Bennett made the following point:

I think it was the continuation of a political circus, honestly. They convened Wednesday for opening statements and had fourteen hours of debate, yesterday. During those fourteen hours, Chairman Nadler didn’t see fit to tell the GOP side of the aisle that he wasn’t going to vote on those articles until this morning.

Maybe I’m cynical here, but I think it was to have more cameras in the room, just to make sure that vote was on television. When they reconvened this morning, at ten o’clock, they were only in the room for a few minutes. They went home for a few hours and came back for a few minutes to vote on these two articles. At the end of the day, you’re left with the same thing you had when they began this process a couple of days ago: two paper thin articles of impeachment that have been sent to the floor of the House.

They passed two articles that do not have an allegation of criminality.

There will be more to come next week when the articles come up for a vote before the full House of Representatives. We’ll keep you informed.

You can listen to the entire episode here.