[Washington Examiner] Rep. Devin Nunes of California charged that Democrats are conducting impeachment in secret in order to hide their paucity of evidence against President Trump.
"I call it faux impeachment," Nunes told the Washington Examiner on Friday. "By running it in the House Intelligence Committee, they’re trying to keep all of the information from the American public. And I understand why, because every witness we have that comes in bombs out for them.
Nunes is calling the Democrat-driven impeachment inquiry illegitimate, insisting that Trump’s attempt to push the Ukraine government to investigate political rival Joe Biden was unequivocally appropriate.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving the impeachment inquiry through the Intelligence Committee, where Nunes, a close Trump ally, serves as the top Republican. In an interview, the congressman sounded confident the inquiry would flop, even amid fresh indications the president might have sought to use U.S. foreign policy levers to affect an agreement from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to target Biden, the former vice president and a Democrat Trump could face in 2020.
"The House has to take a vote in order for them to really start the impeachment process, to give us subpoena power ‐ the Democrats subpoena power, so that you can have a real investigation and then members of Congress can decide whether or not impeachment is appropriate," Nunes said. However, even if a majority of the House votes to support opening an impeachment inquiry, Nunes said he would defer to the White House on whether it should honor subpoenas.
The impeachment inquiry centers around a July telephone call, revealed by a whistleblower complaint, in which Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter. According to a summary transcript that Trump says is accurate, the president asked Zelensky to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr to investigate the Bidens and the origins of the Russia probe overseen by Robert Mueller.
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'I have received information'