abusing his power. in the language of the drafters, to corruptly solicit election help from ukraine and of obstructing congress investigation into the affair. now, tomorrow evening the committee, which is utterly divided along party lines, will debate. by thursday, they could be voting, setting the stage for the entire house to decide perhaps by next week whether to impeach. and even as they weigh that next move, the president is lashing out. his attorney general is on the attack over the russia investigation. democrats in red districts are wondering how to proceed. and by the way, the russians also happen to be visiting. it has been a big day. it is a big night. i want to start at the white house with cnn s jim acosta. how is the president feeling tonight about all of this? do we know? reporter: anderson, i think we have a sense. he s at a rally right now in pennsylvania. he said that his supporters should not lose sleep over these articles of impeachment. he said that these articl
be watching the live statements from the members of the house judiciary committee in the historic time as they formally have the statements to begin discussing and debate on those two articles of impeachment set for a house vote on impeachment next week. ac 360 starts now. good evening, thanks for joining us. any citizen can say the president did something wrong only 435 elected represent he was have the sole rate and the awesome responsibility for saying a president should be removed from office for it. today some of the lawmakers spoke. they put it all on paper in formal articles of impeachment for only the fourth time ever. nine pages containing two articles drafted by democratic members of the house judiciary. accuseding president trump of abusing his power and the language of the drafters to corruptly solicit election help from ukraine and to obstructing congress s investigation into the affair. now tomorrow evening the committee utterly divided along party lines will debate.
committee. our drafters are listening and we ll know late into the night, early morning, whether we have reached a consensus to be able to put out those noticed articles of impeachment of the right now i just want to say that they re ongoing discussions, we re in discussions. we ll be getting engagement, if you will, into the evening. what we want to be able to do is to have articles that are constitutionally grounded and solidified by facts. we have a 300-page document produced by the house intelligence committee, oversight and foreign affairs. we have a very strong document produced by the lawyers for the house judiciary committee. we think that we have the opportunity to match the constitution to the facts and we also want to make sure when we make that presentation on the floor of the house that we will have members who will be able to understand how we made that journey and how those articles of impeachment were drafted. congresswoman sheila jackson
drafters of those articles will keep those bigger things in mind. you had many years working on the other side of capitol hill in the senate. and i wonder what you think when you watched the strategy here which is in the words of the house leadership and also the critic jonathan turley yesterday narrow and focused. move fairly quickly, get it over the senate. as a sort of veterinarian parliamentarian watching it develop, what do you think of that strategy? i think it s the right way to go. i have seen an awful lot of poorly run hearings over the years, so to the extent these have gone well so far, you know, i think it s great. but to go to your deeper point what the speaker has done is fantastic. she checked the different corners of the caucus, made sure everyone s onboard and like a good leader she made the decision to pull the trigger and
impeachment not as violations of technical statutory language like bribery or extortion or using terms like quid pro quo, but talking more broadly as we heard the professors testify about yesterday, the essence of impeachment is about abuse of power and the things that the framers of the constitution feared the most were foreign influence in elections and undermining our national security and putting a president s self-interests above the national interests. those are the things she seemed to hit, and it suggests to me perhaps when drafting the articles of impeachmented, the drafters of those articles will keep those bigger things in mind. you had many years working on the other side of capitol hill in the senate. and i wonder what you think when you watched the strategy here which is in the words of the house leadership and also the critic jonathan turley yesterday narrow and focused. keep it on ukraine, move fairly quickly, get it over the senate.