Democratic Senator Doug Jones in a bind on impeachment
U.S. Sen. Doug Jones walked into a recent town hall and declared he was ready for whatever his constituents wanted to throw at him. But first, he wanted to address the biggest news from Washington: The House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump. “I’m not making a judgment about where we are on any of this because it’s too early,” Jones said, not waiting to be asked. He noted his potential role as a juror if the issue lands in the Senate. Already considered the Senate’s most endangered Democrat, the senator is facing the uncomfortable possibility of having to vote on removing the president from office while running for reelection in a state where Trump won 62 percent of the vote. Whatever Jones decides, if it comes to that, he’s going to make lots of Alabamians mad. Just the prospect of an impeachment trial and vote is throwing partisan accelerant on a race Jones had wanted focused on safer, bipartisan economic issues. “It’s another drum for (Republicans) to beat in a very red state,” said political scientist Glen Browder, a former Democratic congressman who was part of the moderate Blue Dog coalition. Jones won his seat in a 2017 special election after his opponent, Roy Moore, was accused of sexual misconduct. Republicans consider his victory a one-off and have been eager to take the seat back. The key, they believe, is to make sure Alabama voters remember Jones’ party affiliation. Republicans made clear Tuesday that they see impeachment as an opportunity. “We are all watching and will hold him accountable if he joins his party trying to upend our constitution,” Alabama Republican Party Chairwoman Terry Lathan said Tuesday in a news conference called to needle Jones on impeachment, one of several Republicans held around the country aimed at Democrats in Trump territory. “Alabamians love President Trump and they love a fighter.” To be sure, Jones is not alone in feeling pressure. If the Democratically led House votes to impeach Trump, forcing a trial in the Senate, a vote on whether to convict will be a moment of truth for senators from both parties. Republicans in tough races, like Cory Gardner, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis, will also be forced to make a decision certain to be viewed as picking a side. The fiercely partisan climate has left little middle ground. But few of his colleagues face the hurdles that Jones does. He is the only Democrat elected to a statewide seat, winning his 2017 race by about mere 22,000 votes out of 1.3 million cast. While much of the country saw blue surges in the 2018, Democrats running statewide in Alabama topped out at about 40 percent of the vote. Jones has been preparing to run as a moderate emphasizing issues that cut across party lines — health care, such as the disappearance of rural hospitals in the state, and agriculture. He’s focused on economic issues of concern to some traditional Republican voters, cautioning about how tariffs are threatening the state’s aerospace industry, automobile workers and farmers. “The record I want to emphasize to folks is that I am there for them,” Jones said in an interview last month. “I am not there for a president. I am not there for any of the Democrats. I am there for the people of this state.” An impeachment trial in the Senate would make it harder to keep that focus away from the partisan warfare. “It’s really going to suck all the air out of the room. Good luck trying to have a substantive debate on health insurance…. especially if you’re getting these televised hearings in the House or a trial in a Senate,” said David Hughes, a political scientist at Auburn University in Montgomery. As the impeachment battle lines have been drawn, Jones has tried to cast himself as above the fray. He dismissed Republicans Tuesday for staging a “political stunt” about such a “serious” matter. “As a U.S. senator, it is my obligation to weigh all the facts fairly before making a decision, and we don’t have all the facts yet,” Jones said, breaking from many Democrats who believe that the loose transcript of a phone call and a whistleblower report, both already public, prove Trump abused his power by asking a foreign leader for a political favor. “What I have seen so far raises legitimate concern for our national security and there appears to be evidence of abuse of power. I hope for the sake of our country that we can find the truth together,” Jones said. Jones’ political risk on impeachment includes creating an issue to drive GOP turnout. A vote in favor of Trump could also be distasteful to the Democratic base and donors that provided the strong support to propel him to victory in 2017. “I think it’s a damned if you do and damned if you don’t kind of deal,” Hughes said. But Hughes downplayed the political risk to Jones because he likely wouldn’t be getting the votes of “die-hard” Trump supporters anyway. Zac McCrary, a pollster and former communications director for the Alabama Democratic Party, said he thought the risk of an acquittal vote would be minimal, saying it would be hard to see Alabama Democrats abandoning their sole successful candidate. A crowded Republican primary field is jockeying for the right to challenge Jones in 2020, including Moore, former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, Secretary of State John Merrill, legislator Arnold Mooney and businessman Stanley Adair. Pharmacist Steve Crainich, a 55-year-old lifelong Republican, says he’s undecided about whether he’ll vote for Jones. He was among those who crossed party lines, angering some in his family, when he helped start a Republicans for Doug Jones Facebook group in 2017 because he couldn’t support Moore. A Trump voter, Crainich said he’s looking for more information on whether the president should be impeached and removed from office. But like Jones, he has concerns about Trump’s actions. “The things that he’s done
White House and democrats fight over rules for impeachment
The U.S. Constitution gives the House “the sole power of impeachment” — but it confers that authority without an instruction manual. Now comes the battle royal over exactly what it means. In vowing to halt all cooperation with House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, the White House on Tuesday labeled the investigation “illegitimate” based on its own reading of the Constitution’s vague language. In an eight-page letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone pointed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s failure to call for an official vote to proceed with the inquiry as grounds to claim the process a farce. “You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process,” Cipollone wrote. But Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee, told a federal judge Tuesday that it’s clear the House “sets its own rules” on how the impeachment process will play out. The White House document lacked much in the way of legal arguments, seemingly citing cable TV news appearances as often as case law. And legal experts cast doubt upon its effectiveness. “I think the goal of this letter is to further inflame the president’s supporters and attempt to delegitimize the process in the eyes of his supporters,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. Courts have been historically hesitant to step in as referee for congressional oversight and impeachment. In 1993, the Supreme Court held that impeachment was an issue for the Congress and not the courts. In that case, Walter Nixon, a federal district judge who was removed from office, sought to be reinstated and argued that the full Senate, instead of a committee that was established to hear testimony and collect evidence, should have heard the evidence against him. The court unanimously rejected the challenge, finding impeachment is a function of the legislature that the court had no authority over. As for the current challenge to impeachment, Vladeck said the White House letter “does not strike me as an effort to provide sober legal analysis.” Gregg Nunziata, a Philadelphia attorney who previously served as general counsel and policy adviser to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, said the White House’s letter did not appear to be written in a “traditional good-faith back and forth between the legislative and executive branches.” He called it a “direct assault on the very legitimacy of Congress’ oversight power.” “The Founders very deliberately chose to put the impeachment power in a political branch rather the Supreme Court,” Nunziata told The Associated Press. “They wanted this to be a political process and it is.” G. Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said the letter appeared to act as nothing more than an accelerant on a smoldering fire. “It’s a response that seems to welcome a constitutional crisis rather than defusing one or pointing toward some strategy that would deescalate the situation,” Cross said. After two weeks of a listless and unfocused response to the impeachment probe, the White House letter amounted to a declaration of war. It’s a strategy that risks further provoking Democrats in the impeachment probe, setting up court challenges and the potential for lawmakers to draw up an article of impeachment accusing President Donald Trump of obstructing their investigations. Democrats have said that if the White House does not provide the information, they could write an article of impeachment on obstruction of justice. It is unclear if Democrats would wade into a lengthy legal fight with the administration over documents and testimony or if they would just move straight to considering articles of impeachment. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, Democrat – California, who is leading the Ukraine probe, has said Democrats will “have to decide whether to litigate, or how to litigate.” But they don’t want the fight to drag on for months, as he said the Trump administration seems to want to do. A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday on whether the House had undertaken a formal impeachment inquiry despite not having taken an official vote and whether it can be characterized, under the law, as a “judicial proceeding.” The distinction matters because while grand jury testimony is ordinarily secret, one exception authorizes a judge to disclose it in connection with a judicial proceeding. House Democrats are seeking grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as they conduct the impeachment inquiry. By Jonathan Lemire, Jim Mustian and Mike Balsamo Associated Press Mustian reported from New York. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
