Dems feel growing pressure on impeachment | TheHill - The Hill

But a group of liberals in her ranks have pressed on, introducing articles of impeachment while threatening additional floor votes on the legislation. And this week's explosive testimony by Trump's former personal attorney, who lodged a string of allegations that the president broke numerous laws before and since he took office, has only fueled the impeachment push — and complicated efforts by Democratic leaders to prevent debate over the volatile "I" word from cascading into an intraparty free-for-all.

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Appearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Michael Cohen told lawmakers that Trump had a direct hand in distributing hush money payments to a porn star during the 2016 campaign — payments that would violate campaign finance laws — and also steered an unsuccessful effort to expand his business empire in Russia even as he was seeking the White House. 

"Do I think the hearing made a difference? One-hundred percent," said Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist who is spending millions of dollars on a grass-roots impeachment campaign. "Because we now have public evidence confirming what we've been saying about the president's crimes, corruption and cover-ups. And now we've got it on the record in front of the American people. 

"The question now is, what do you want to do about it?"

Pelosi, joined by other top Democrats, sought to put the brakes on the impeachment talk following the hearing, noting the "divisive" nature of the issue and arguing the need to see more evidence of presidential wrongdoing before taking a step as momentous as ousting the president. 

"Let us see what the facts are, what the law is, and what the behavior is of the president," she told reporters Thursday.

Pelosi is drawing on history in her cautious approach. She was on Capitol Hill in 1998 when GOP leaders impeached former President Clinton — a move that backfired on the Republicans, who had almost no bipartisan support — and she doesn't want to give Trump a boost and energize Republican voters heading into the 2020 cycle.

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Andrew Herman, an expert in congressional investigations and ethics at the Miller & Chevalier law firm, said Pelosi's discretion makes good political sense, since Trump still enjoys overwhelming support from Republican voters and there's no bipartisan appetite for impeachment in the Capitol. He noted that former President Nixon resigned only after public sentiment turned against him, even among Republican voters, causing GOP lawmakers to do the same.

"The Democrats have to make a judgment at some point about whether his conduct justifies it from a constitutional perspective," Herman said, "but also whether it makes sense for them to proceed from a political perspective."

But even a number of those rank-and-file members suggested Cohen's testimony lent undeniable momentum to the case for impeachment.

"If you are asking me if it seems likely the president could be removed from office based on what we know, is it more likely today than it was on Tuesday, I think the answer to that is yes," he told CNN.

"I think it possibly could lead to impeachment," she told the network. 

On Friday, Maloney emphasized that she's in no rush to join the impeachment push, saying that while “there certainly were troubling issues raised in the hearing," lawmakers "still have more facts to collect." 

Advocates, meanwhile, are growing impatient amid the wait for the outside investigations to end. Steyer characterized the Mueller report as "a catchphrase for delay," lamenting that "it's March 1 and we've had one public hearing."

Citing Nixon, Steyer was quick to acknowledge the need to build public support for impeachment. But that, he added, is only more reason for Democrats to get moving on more public hearings like the Cohen testimony, which drew almost 16 million viewers on Wednesday, according to Nielsen.

"They will be must-see TV," he said. "It will be the soap opera to end all soap operas."

Steyer said his group, Need to Impeach, added 30,000 new supporters the day after Cohen's hearing alone. "And normally we add about 10 [thousand]," he said. 

The hearings, however, could prove to be a Catch-22 for Democratic leaders: the more they air allegations against the president in the public square, the greater the clamor may be among the Democratic base for impeachment — a dynamic that could put even greater pressure on leadership to address the issue even before the Mueller report is released.

"It is inarguable that it makes for great viewing and that it gins up a tremendous amount of trouble for Trump," said Herman. 

"How that plays out in the long run I don't know."

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https://thehill.com/homenews/house/432288-dems-feel-growing-pressure-on-impeachment

2019-03-02 19:00:30Z