17 Dec,
2019 19:53 / Updated 3 minutes ago
US
President Donald Trump has written a withering letter to House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi, denouncing the impeachment proceedings against him as an “ illegal,
partisan attempted coup” against American democracy and the 2016 election.
The
articles of impeachment, adopted along partisan lines by the House Judiciary
Committee last week, contain “no crimes, no misdemeanors, no offenses
whatsoever,” Trump wrote in the letter, made public by the White House on Tuesday.
By
proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of
office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are
declaring open war on American Democracy.
The
president accused House Democrats of daring to invoke the Founding Fathers
while acting in “unfettered contempt” of their words and
deeds, turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into a
grounds for impeachment. He called the accusation of obstructing Congress “preposterous
and dangerous,” with potential to block every executive going forward.
“You have
developed a full-fledged case of what many in the media call Trump Derangement
Syndrome,” the
president wrote, accusing the Democrats of spending the past three years trying
to overturn the 2016 election. “You view democracy as your enemy!”
You
are the ones interfering in America’s elections. You are the ones subverting
America’s Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing
pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political and
partisan gain.
Trump also
invoked last week’s report of the Justice Department’s Inspector General to
accuse the FBI leadership of being “corrupt and incompetent,” and
referred to the so-called Russiagate investigation as a “witch hunt” and
an ultimately debunked conspiracy theory.
Trump also
invoked last week’s report of the Justice Department’s Inspector General to
accuse the FBI leadership of being “corrupt and incompetent,” and referred to
the so-called Russiagate investigation as a “witch hunt” and an ultimately
debunked conspiracy theory.
Taking a
moment to observe that the House gave him no chance to defend himself, Trump
said that “more due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem
Witch Trials,” referring to the notorious 17th century moral panic in
the Massachusetts colony.
The
impeachment is “nothing more than an illegal, partisan attempted coup,” Trump
wrote, adding that any member of Congress who votes for it “is showing
how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America’s
Constitutional order.”
At the end
of the six-page document, Trump says he has “no expectation” the
Democrats will actually abandon their impeachment “fantasy,” and
that he wrote the letter “for the purpose of history and to put my
thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.”
The
extraordinary document may even represent Trump’s official and final position
in the matter, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) has
already said he did not intend to dignify the House accusations with a trial,
but simply hold a vote to dismiss them.
The full
House vote on the articles of impeachment has yet to take place; a committee is
currently hashing out the rules for the floor debate, and the actual vote is
expected some time on Thursday. The vote is widely expected to go along party
lines, with the Democrat majority in the House voting to impeach the president
– and the Senate voting to not convict, thereby allowing Trump to remain in
office and run for re-election in 2020.
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