WASHINGTON, D.C. — The latest impeachment hearing on Capitol Hill featured committee attorneys for both parties laying out what they believe is the evidence gathered from the 16 witnesses who have testified publicly in the last few weeks.
- Chabot & Jordan disregard credible evidence
- Chabot made false claim during hearing
- Jordan again said whistleblower should testify
But throughout Monday’s hearing, Ohio Republicans Steve Chabot (R-01) and Jim Jordan (R-04) continued to disregard the credible evidence that President Trump attempted to have a foreign leader investigate his political opponent in exchange for military aid.
Instead, the two kept pursuing theories that lack evidence.
Chabot used his time to claim former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, were engaged in corruption with Ukraine — despite there being no evidence.
“The Democrats on the Intelligence Committee, under Chairman [Adam] Schiff, and now the Democrats here are determined to sweep the Biden corruption under the rug, ignore it, not let us call witnesses on it, and instead rush to impeach the president, all to satisfy, I would argue, their radical left wing base,” Chabot said. “What a disservice to the country.”
During the hearing, Chabot played a video that has been used, out of context, by the Trump campaign, to falsely claim the former vice president got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired to protect his son, who was serving on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
In an interview with Spectrum afterward, Chabot was asked why he felt comfortable bringing the video up again since there’s no evidence to back it.
“There are those that say there’s no evidence, but there’s a lot of people who believe that that’s exactly what the vice president was doing,” Chabot said.
Then asked if he feels confident that what he said is 100 percent true, Chabot said: “I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t feel confident that there was evidence that it was true. We don’t know for sure.”
Jordan used his time to call, again, for the whistleblower to testify. He also criticized House Democrats for publishing phone records in their impeachment report that show Republicans closely aligned with Trump interacting with key figures in the Ukraine story.
“One thing they did do in their report is they published the phone records of the president’s personal lawyer, the phone records of a member of the press, and the phone records of the chairman of the Intelligence Committee’s political opponent, [House Intelligence Ranking Member] Representative [Devin] Nunes,” Jordan said. "That’s what these guys did. And that’s their effort to impeach the president of the United States 11 months before an election.”
This may have been the last public hearing before articles of impeachment are voted on.
While Ohio Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are firmly in support of impeaching President Trump, Ohio Republicans have made clear in these hearings that they are firmly against it and will defend the president at all costs.
A vote on impeachment could come within the next week.
