3 House Democrats back off Trump impeachment bid

Measure initiating articles of impeachment against Trump loses co-sponsors as party appears unwilling to back effort to remove the president.

By World Israel News Staff

Three Democratic House lawmakers, including the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, have dropped their support for a bid to impeach President Donald Trump, amid growing signs the Democratic party is no longer willing to pursue efforts to impeach the president.

House Democrats impeached Trump twice during his first term in office, with the lower chamber of Congress voting narrowly in December 2019 that the president’s phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, urging an investigation into Joe Biden, constituted an abuse of power.

In January 2021, just days before the end of his term, House Democrats voted again to impeach Trump, citing his comments before and during January 6^th of that year.

In both cases Trump was acquitted by the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is needed to convict and remove a president from office.

Following his return to office this January, a group of Democrats in the House resumed efforts to impeach Trump, with Michigan Rep. Shri Thanedar drafting seven articles of impeachment against the president, including allegations of bribery, corruption and what he called  “tyrannical overreach.”

After Thanedar announced the introduction of the articles on Monday, four other House Democrats signed on to the proposal, including a senior lawmaker and member of the party’s leadership in the House.

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, ranking member of the powerful Judiciary Committee and head of New York’s House delegation, initially became a cosponsor of the articles of impeachment, along with Maryland representative Kweisi Mfume, and Jan Schakowsky and Robin Kelly of Illinois.

On Tuesday, however, Nadler, Kelly, and Mfume all withdrew their support for the proposal, formally striking their names off the draft in the House registrar.

Spokespeople for Kelly and Mfume said that the two had been misled into believing that the measure had the support of the party leadership.

Thanedar said that despite the setback, he would continue with the impeachment bid.

“I cannot speak for the actions of other members. But I am doing this because Trump has blatantly violated the Constitution,” he told The Hill.

Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, House Democratic Caucus chairman, said that House Democrats would not support the impeachment proposal, saying the measure would be unlikely to gain traction in Congress with both chambers under Republican control.