in our politics lead as lawmakers prepare to vote on impeachment, a reminder some of them have done this before. five of the house judiciary committee members who will vote on whether or not to impeach president trump are facing the same decision 21 years ago deciding whether to impeach bill clinton as dana bash reports. reporter: jerry nadler in 2019 sounds a lot like republican james sensenbrenner in 1998. now sensenbrenner say democrats have wanted to oust trump. they haven t liked him from the beginning of the term. reporter: like jerry nadler said there about the gop and clinton. there are some members of the
expressed concern about the possibility of becoming just the third president in u.s. history to be impeached. reporter: in just three hours the house judiciary committee will begin debating two articles of impeachment against president trump. abuse of power and obstruction of congress. i have an obligation to uphold my oath and hold this president accountable. reporter: then tomorrow the committee will vote on whether to send the impeachment bill to the entire house where it will need a simple majority to pass. after that, the case goes to a trial in the senate where trump and mitch mcconnell are at odds over what that trial should look like. a senate trial will have to be the first item of business in january. reporter: democrats say impeaching the president isn t a decision they re making lightly. we re taking this action for future generations, not for this congress. reporter: but at his rally in pennsylvania, trump blasted democrats for backing off, accusing him of br
i m brooke baldwin. thank you for being with me the last two hours. let s go washington. the lead with jake tapper starts right now. senator lindsey graham says russia not ukraine hacked the democrats in 2016. someone might want to tell his golf buddy, president trump. the lead starts right now. just hours away from the first committee debate on articles of impeachment as new cnn reporting reveals what the senate trial might look like and it is possible president trump will not be happy about it. just the facts. today the justice department watch dog stood by his report showing no evidence of a deep state plot to launch that investigation into the trump campaign but a whole lot of evidence of serious fbi misconduct during that investigation. plus new details on a wild, deadly horrific shootout, at a
they ultimately concluded that the fbi did not act with with political bias. that they launched an investigation into the possible collusion between russian intelligence and the trump campaign with a solid and legal foundation. they did identify some missteps, inadequacies in fbi procedure and behavior but overarching the important conclusion the i.g. reached is those actions did not influence how that investigation was launched or the conclusions that it ultimately reached. we live in a time of such division. there isn t even agreement within the leadership of this justice department on this. take a listen to this exchange between the inspector general and your colleague senator klobuchar. do you agree with attorney general barr that the investigation was predicated on the thinnest of suspicions? well, i m not going to get into a comparison of his view. he s free to have his opinion. we have our finding and i stand by our conclusion.
could deliver on military assistance. it hadn t been delivered. he needs to present himself as strong and prepared for the job and that doesn t help you do that. isn t there also a chance he s doing it for trump? the point is they can t afford to have scott, there has been a lot of reporting by the new york times was talking to unnamed ukrainian officials who are officially saying they came close to giving in, to caving on this and launching some investigations because they were so desperate for the aid. look, it seems like everybody who says something that helps exonerate trump in this case, there s a reason why they have to do it. we can t believe them. everybody who comes forward and says we ve got to impeach trump, well, they have been imbued with superpowers of truth and honesty. we have the two top people in the ukraine saying i was never pressured on the call and sondland never hassled me about this and never made this explicit link. you can say what you want about t