House Democrats’ impeachment vote is nothing but a “sham,” Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., said on Tuesday.
On Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the vote on a resolution to formalize — and establish the parameters — of the Trump impeachment inquiry. It is not an actual article of impeachment, but rather a resolution that sets the ground rules for the process. Fox News has learned the vote will take place Thursday on the House floor.
Appearing on “America’s Newsroom” with host Sandra Smith, Collins, a ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Congress should be focusing on “doing the people’s business.”
“We’ve been telling them it [was] wrong. We gave them plenty of notice that [it] was wrong and not fair to the American people or fair to the president,” said Collins.
He noted that Republicans hadn’t even seen the text of the resolution yet because they “had to write it all out last night.”
“That shows you how desperate they are,” he added.
Collins said Democrats are using the vote as “something to simply cover [the] problems that they’ve had with this investigation all along.”
Republicans hit back Monday at Pelosi over the planned vote, with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham — the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would play a role in a Senate impeachment trial — saying, “A vote now is a bit like un-ringing a bell as House Democrats have selectively leaked information in order to damage President Trump for weeks.”
The White House argued Monday that the move proves Democrats have been conducting an “unauthorized” inquiry.
“We won’t be able to comment fully until we see the actual text, but Speaker Pelosi is finally admitting what the rest of America already knew – that Democrats were conducting an unauthorized impeachment proceeding, refusing to give the President due process, and their secret, shady, closed-door depositions are completely and irreversibly illegitimate,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.
Republicans for weeks have called for a formal House vote, challenging the legitimacy of the current framework for impeachment proceedings in the absence of one. Earlier this month, the White House wrote a defiant eight-page letter to Pelosi and top Democrats saying it would not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.
“We’ll see the Republicans vote against this,” predicted Collins. “Because, again, you can’t fix what the craziness that they’ve done over the past three or four weeks to slam this president and do what they have been doing and now try to make it better.”
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“They tried to have public hearings. There was nothing there; Mueller showed that. They made all kinds of statements about the president that we proved to be false,” he told Smith.
He added that while he has a “problem” with the way this is being handled, it seems “they’ve caved in.”
“So, this is really a disservice to the American people, and Speaker Pelosi is admitting that they’ve been doing it wrong,” Collins concluded.
Fox News’ Alex Pappas, Chad Pergram, Mike Emanuel and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
