Page:Impeachment of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States — Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives.pdf/350



DISSENTING VIEWS Congressman Andy Biggs

I concur with Ranking Member Doug Collins' dissenting views and submit my additional statements for the record.

Democrats have sought to remove or delegitimize President Donald J. Trump since the day he won the 2016 presidential election. Representative Al Green (D-TX) expressed his desire to impeach the President while Barack Obama was still President. Media outlets and others stoked this fire and have kept it going for three years.

Their efforts have been uneven and unsuccessful. The most notorious attempt was the Russian "collusion" allegations that consumed more than $30 million and took the time of 19 FBI agents and operatives, hundreds of interviews, and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents. The conclusion was that the Trump campaign did not conspire, coordinate, cooperate, or collude with the Russians to interfere in the 2016 election.

Even now, however, Representatives who sit on the House Judiciary Committee and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI or Intel) insist that they have evidence of "collusion."

In August 2019, a leaker, who had been told about a telephone conversation between President Trump and Ukraine President Zelensky, contacted HPSCI staff. Even though HPSCI Chairman Schiff publicly denied this contact, media accounts exposed that there had indeed been contact, and insinuated that there might have been assistance in drafting the "whistleblower's" complaint, which has launched this latest attack on President Trump.

Speaker Pelosi announced the opening of an impeachment inquiry based on the complaint. During her announcement she made representations of the contents of the complaint, as had Chairman Schiff.

The complaint was proven to be substantively false and utterly without merit when President Trump released a transcript of the phone call.

The testimony presented to the Judiciary Committee came in two hearings. In one hearing three law professors who despise this President urged impeachment. A fourth law professor, who did not and does not support President Trump, stated that this impeachment is based on "wafer thin" evidence which does not support Democrat allegations, in a process that is the fastest in the nation's history.

The only other "evidentiary" hearing consisted of the bizarre scenario where a Democrat staffer, who had testified for thirty minutes, left his spot at the witness table to sit next to Judiciary Chairman Nadler on the dais, and cross examine a Republican staffer for thirty minutes. All this strangeness took place in a hearing where each side was supposed to present its report on the closed-door proceedings of HPSCI. 1