Gives the house the sole power of impeachment and the power to determine its own rules. When president nixon, during the time he was going to be impeached, the chairman of the Rules Committee, chairman madden, actually spoke on house floor and announced there would be a rule governing how that proceeding would move forward. When the clinton articles of impeachment were brought forward, there was a unanimous consent request to kind of govern how we conducted ourselves. And im not sure how likely it would be that we would get a unanimous consent request. I would like to ask unanimous consent without objection to enter into the record a letter sent to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee signed by 70 republican members including kevin mccarthy, the republican leader, and basically, and let me read the key lines here, we will avail ourselves of every parliamentary tool available to us on the committee and house floor, in other words to try to delay and make this process as
impossible as
that is correct. did that impeachment report rely on hearsay to support their insertions? yes. what explanation does chairman schiff provide when asked why hearsay rather than firsthand testimony was incorrectbly presented as evidence? besides his own discussion making up the phone call to start with, he s not provided one because he didn t testify in my committee. did you ask chairman nadler to invite chairman schiff to come testify? i did. just to be clear, you were asked to vote on articles of impeachment against our commander in chief based on a report full of hearsay and you were not permitted to ask the author of the report any questions? that is correct. all i got was a staff member. i would like to note for the record, mr. chairman, chairman schiff refused to discuss the report with the minority, and he was more than willing to appear on fox news sunday, two days ago, it s unfortunately
minutes ago about have we now set a precedent that you can do anything overseas and not get investigated for it. haven t got an answer. as the chairman knows and also my chairman knows because my chairman likes subpoenas, he likes to threaten them, anyway. the secretary of defense responded, he said it was open for negotiation. the secretary of state, part of the document dump was part of that. the document dump from the intelligence committee had documents from the office management and budget in it. if you didn t receive a letter, as we have done in the past when we were in the majority under president obama, president obama in fast and furious and other times, the thing that amazes me, it seems like the majority all of a sudden discovered that the legislative branch and the administrative branch don t play well in the same sandbox. we saw this happen over and
important point, mr. chairman, which links articles i and ii of impeachment articles. do we want to set a precedent that u.s. citizens can become president of the united states by inviting foreign powers to get involved in our election, then once they re in, if congress decides that their conduct is impeachable and involves high crimes and misdemeanors, they can then pull a curtain down over the executive branch and not allow any investigation, not allow subpoenas to be honored and so on. that is a very dangerous prospect that would have terrified and horrified and shocked the framers of our constitution. thank you. do you want to well, i m about to yield to my ranking member who i m sure has lots and lots of questions. i do want to take a moment, i think it s important that we remember this.
collins wrote seven letters to chairman nadler on the committee s consideration of impeachment. on november 12th he wrote regarding the manner in which the intelligence committee conducted their investigation. november 14th wrote chairman nadler demanding the same transparency and fairness that existed in prior impeachment inquiries be prioritized in the current inquiry. on november 18th, he wrote chairman nadler regarding the credibility of a particular witness and chairman schiff s coordination with certain witnesses to conceal basic and relevant facts. november 21st he wrote chairman nad her asking that he obtain all documents and documents from chairman schiff pursuant to house resolution 660 and accompanying procedures. on november 30th, the persistent mr. collins wrote chairman nadler asking for an expanded panel and a balanced composition of academic witnesses to opine