Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/218

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

On November 8, 2016, nearly 63 million Americans from around the country chose Donald J. Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. Now, less than a year before the next presidential election, 231 House Democrats in Washington, D.C., are trying to undo the will of the American people. As one Democrat admitted, the pursuit of this extreme course of action is because they want to stop President Trump's re-election.

Democrats in the House of Representatives have been working to impeach President Trump since his election. Democrats introduced four separate resolutions in 2017 and 2018 seeking to impeach President Trump. In January 2019, on their first day in power, House Democrats again introduced articles of impeachment. That same day, a newly elected Congresswoman promised to an audience of her supporters, "we're going to go in there and we're going to impeach the [expletive deleted]." Her comments are not isolated. Speaker Nancy Pelosi called President Trump "an impostor" and said it is "dangerous" to allow American voters to evaluate his performance in 2020.

The Democrats' impeachment inquiry is not the organic outgrowth of serious misconduct; it is an orchestrated campaign to upend our political system. The Democrats are trying to impeach a duly elected President based on the accusations and assumptions of unelected bureaucrats who disagreed with President Trump's policy initiatives and processes. They are trying to impeach President Trump because some unelected bureaucrats were discomforted by an elected President's telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They are trying to impeach President Trump because some unelected bureaucrats chafed at an elected President's "outside the beltway" approach to diplomacy.

The sum and substance of the Democrats' case for impeachment is that President Trump abused his authority to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, President Trump's potential political rival, for President Trump's benefit in the 2020 election. Democrats say this pressure campaign encompassed leveraging a White House meeting and the release of U.S. security assistance to force the Ukrainian President to succumb to President Trump's political wishes. Democrats say that Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the President's personal attorney, and a "shadow" group of U.S. officials conspired to benefit the President politically.

The evidence presented does not prove any of these Democrat allegations, and none of the Democrats' witnesses testified to having evidence of bribery, extortion, or any high crime or misdemeanor. i