Rep. Matt Gaetz on impeachment battle and looming Senate phase
GOP defends President Trump from Democrats' impeachment obsession; insight from Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., said on “Justice with Judge Jeanine” on Saturday night that everything House Democrats did regarding President Trump’s impeachment “was driven for television consumption because they had no actual evidence.”
Without any Republican support, the House on Wednesday night voted to impeach President Trump for "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress" related to his dealings with Ukraine, making Trump the third American president ever to be impeached.
On Saturday, hours before Gaetz made the statement on “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” Trump mocked House Democrats during a Turning Point USA event in West Palm Beach, Fla., for voting to impeach him without providing any evidence of a crime.
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Gaetz echoed the president’s sentiment on Saturday night, telling host Jeanine Pirro, “The radical left Democrats filled the stockings of their anti-Trump base with rumor and innuendo and ultimately impeachment. But, the rest of America -- we just got a lump of coal.”
“We didn’t get an infrastructure bill, we didn’t get reform to our asylum systems because [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi has been planning this impeachment since the moment she took power. Matter of fact, Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, even campaigned to his fellow Democrats on the notion that he would be the person to bring us to this point.”
“But the real question is why Democrats fail to meet the standard they set for themselves. They promised us a bipartisan impeachment. In reality, the only bipartisan vote was a bipartisan vote against impeachment,” Gaetz, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, continued.
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“They promised us that these hearings would animate a lot of public support for impeachment and we haven’t seen that either. The American people hate this and if Congress continues it they may end up hating us.”
Pelosi, D-Calif., has not yet transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate, indicating she wants reassurances that the Senate would hold a fair trial, likely involving certain Democrat-sought witnesses, before sending over the charges.
Trump has called for an immediate trial, where he expects to be acquitted for the alleged crimes surrounding his efforts to pressure Ukraine to launch politically advantageous investigations. The request came after the administration had withheld millions in military aid to Ukraine, though Trump has denied any quid pro quo was at play.
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“Democrats failed to produce direct evidence, they failed to get the public on their side, there was no quid pro quo; matter of fact, the only direct evidence was the president saying he did not want anything other than [Ukrainian] President Zelensky to do the right thing, to do the work he had campaigned on,” Gaetz told Pirro. “So if I were in the Senate, I’d be looking to get this nonsense behind us and get on to the work of the Trump agenda.”
Fox News’ Nick Givas, Marisa Schultz, Brooke Singman and Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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