Hours after finally announcing their decision to hold the vote on sending their delayed articles of impeachment to the Senate, the Democrat-led House impeachment investigation committee released new materials to the press that Democrats say prove a trial in the Senate cannot be “full and fair” without documents they’ve demanded from Trump.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delayed the transfer of the impeachment articles against President Trump for nearly a month in an attempt to pressure Senate Republicans to hold an impeachment trial that effectively retries the case the House Democrats were supposed to have already proven convincingly. Amid mounting pressure, including from key Democrats in the Senate, Pelosi finally caved Tuesday, the Democrats holding a press conference to announce that they would vote on sending the articles on Wednesday.
Tuesday night, on the eve of the big vote, House investigators released new documents that have “spurred Democrats to renew calls for the White House to turn over documents related to the Ukraine pressure campaign that it has refused to share with Congress,” reports The Washington Post, which promptly reported on the conveniently timed document dump.
Along with the new materials, the chairs of the Democrat-led House Intelligence, Oversight, Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees issued a joint statement Tuesday night saying the “new evidence” means “there cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate” until Trump hands over the demanded information he has thus far withheld.
“All of this new evidence confirms what we already know: the President and his associates pressured Ukrainian officials to announce investigations that would benefit the President politically,” reads the statement, as reported by the Post. “There cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate without the documents that President Trump is refusing to provide to Congress.”