Rep. Bill Pascrell said the decision to begin an official impeachment inquiry was not an easy one.
“The House membership did not want to arrive at this moment. Our bar was high. But Donald Trump’s decision to extort a stalwart ally to smear an American political leader and meddle in our elections is banana republicanism,” Pascrell said. “If we allow it to stand unanswered, then we will render the Article I branch and our entire constitutional order null and void.”
The congressman first called for an impeachment inquiry in late May.
A Wall Street Journal Report released Sunday that said Trump repeatedly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with former New York City Mayor Rudy Guliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, on a probe focusing on Hunter Biden, the son of the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to take on Trump next year.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the elder or younger Biden, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company that was once investigated by the country’s former prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, who was formally dismissed by Ukraine’s parliament after a series of protests over his blocking a number of high-profile corruption cases.
Further reports indicate Trump froze close to $400 million in military aid to Ukraine ahead of his conversation with Zelensky.
House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi announced the beginning of an official impeachment inquiry Tuesday afternoon.
“Doing the right thing is not someone else’s job: It is our job,” Pascrell said. “There can be no question that Trump’s crimes and obstruction of justice have not abated but accelerated because of failure to constrain him. In this context polling and electoral considerations mean nothing. And if, upon overwhelming evidence the House of Representatives ratifies articles of impeachment of Donald Trump and the Senate rejects that evidence, that dereliction will be their burden to bear, not ours. The coming months will be a major challenge for all of us. We’re all in this democratic endeavor together.”