Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) criticized his Democratic colleagues on Wednesday for sidestepping the House vote required to launch a formal impeachment inquiry in order to bypass a fair hearing for President Donald Trump.
“They really don’t know what they’re doing and I think this is the problem that we’re having. The speaker came out yesterday and said that she’s starting an impeachment inquiry … an inquiry actually requires a vote,” Collins told Fox News host Martha MacCallum. “What they’re trying to avoid here is actually going on the record. And an investigation? How many more investigations do we need to do — have they not looked at the Judiciary Committee for the nine months? This is all we’re doing.”
Collins’ remarks come only a day after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that House Democrats would be moving forward with an impeachment inquiry. The move was in response to a whistleblower’s testimony accusing Trump of asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for using his position as vice president to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into his son’s business dealings.
The reports were not confirmed at the time of Pelosi’s decision, and it wasn’t until a day later that the White House released a transcript of Trump’s exchange with Zelensky.
“They’re trying to avoid a vote on inquiry, but there’s also another reason: if they actually went to an inquiry, then all of a sudden there is due process rights,” Collins said. “There’s actually a process for the president in this, there’s actually equal subpoena powers that have been in the previous inquiries for both the Democrats and the Republicans — it becomes a fair hearing.”
“They don’t want a fair hearing, they want the hearings for show,” he continued. “They want to put their only ex parte, one-sided hearings. That’s why they don’t want to go through the inquiry. And they also don’t want to put themselves on record as actually doing that.”
Collins, who serves as the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, noted that while the transcript failed to corroborate Democrats’ claims that Trump threatened to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine over the investigation, the party has largely been muting their response rather than walking it back.
“There’s this round-about ‘well, let’s just discuss it, let’s have an investigation.’ Well, the president has provided it all. I mean, we’re doing this, we’re seeing a transcript,” Collins said. “What Nancy Pelosi did yesterday was a disservice to the House. What she did yesterday hurt the institution, not only of the House, but also of our nation, when she went ahead with an attack of an impeachment without really knowing that what she was asking for was already being done.”
“I think there are Democrats who are concerned that they are ahead of their skis a little bit on this,” he continued. “I think they are looking at it from a perspective of saying, you know, what are we actually doing here because none of these.”