On Thursday, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the current House impeachment mangers prosecuting the impeachment case against President Donald Trump in the Senate, opined that Trump’s conduct with respect to temporarily withholding the disbursement of foreign aid funding to Ukraine “puts even President Nixon to shame.” President Richard Nixon, of course, resigned in disgrace following the commencement of House impeachment proceedings against him due to his involvement in the infamous Watergate scandal.
“Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler Thursday accused President Trump of putting his own personal interests above national security and American democracy and charged that Trump is the only president in history to violate his oath of office so flagrantly,” Fox News reported.
“No president has ever used his office to compel a foreign nation to help him cheat in our elections — prior presidents would be shocked to the core by such conduct and rightly so,” the New York Democrat said on the Senate floor, as noted by the outlet.
Reaching a crescendo, Nadler then made his stunning comparison: “This presidential stonewalling of Congress is unprecedented in the 238-year history of our constitutional republic. It puts even President Nixon to shame. Taken together, the articles and the evidence conclusively establish that President Trump has placed his own personal political interests first. He has placed them above our national security, above our free and fair elections, and above our system of checks and balances. This conduct is not America first, it is Donald Trump first.”
The video can be seen here, at Politico.
Earlier today, The Daily Wire’s Hank Berrien reported that earlier this week at the outset of the Senate impeachment trial, Nadler irked infamously moderate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) with his inflammatory rhetoric about Senate complicity in an alleged White House cover-up.
“On Tuesday night, [Nadler], speaking before the Senate as it considers the impeachment of President Trump, stated that senators who voted against allowing additional witnesses who were not called upon by the House were guilty in abetting a White House cover up,” Berrien reported. “Those comments angered a senator who is largely considered to be a swing vote on the decision, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. She reportedly took great offense to Nadler’s remarks, allegedly snapping, ‘I took it as very offensive. As one who is listening attentively and working hard to get to a fair process, I was offended.'”
Nadler’s incendiary rhetoric from earlier in the week included the following:
I’m struck by what we have heard from the president’s counsel so far tonight. They complain about process but they do not seriously contest any of the allegations against the president. They insist that the president has done nothing wrong. But they refuse to allow the evidence and hear from the witnesses; they will not permit the American people to hear form the witnesses, and they lie. And lie, and lie, and lie … the president sometimes relies on a theory of absolute immunity that says that he can order anybody in the executive branch not to testify to the House or the Senate or to a court. Obviously this is ridiculous; it’s been flatly rejected by every federal court to consider the idea. It’s embarrassing; the president’s counsels will talk about this today.