Two members of Indiana’s congressional delegation representing Columbus have criticized the impeachment inquiry launched this week against President Donald Trump, calling the move a “partisan power grab” and the whistleblower report at the center of the probe “a big nothing-burger.”
On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, announced a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump stemming from a whistleblower’s complaint that Trump sought help from the Ukrainian government in digging up dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, according to wire reports.
In a rough transcript of the call released Wednesday by the administration, Trump tells Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky he would like the new president to “do us a favor.”
The favor was Trump’s desire for an investigation of 2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and his son, according to wire reports. Trump has denied all wrongdoing, characterizing the call as both “beautiful” and also “nothing.”
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Trump also said he’s willing to release notes detailing a second, earlier phone call with Zelensky, as well as those involving Columbus native and Vice President Mike Pence and the Ukrainian leader.
A media availability was cut short when the vice president was asked about the impeachment controversy at an Indianapolis hospital on Friday. No media questions were allowed at Mike Pence’s visit to Southside Elementary School in Columbus, also on Friday.
Rep. Greg Pence, R-Indiana, took to Twitter to voice his views on the impeachment inquiry, calling the probe a “partisan power grab” by Democrats in a tweet on Wednesday.
“@SpeakerPelosi’s #ImpeachmentAgenda puts a partisan power grab above the American people,” Pence said in the tweet. “@HouseDemocrats were elected on a promise to fix our infrastructure, improve vets care & (decrease) healthcare costs. It seems their #ImpeachmentAgenda is more important than the American people.”
Kyle Robertson, Pence’s spokesman, said by “partisan power grab,” Pence was “referring to the House Democrats that have been trying to impeach President Trump for over two years and essentially overturn the 2016 election results.”
“This is just the latest attack on the president in order to achieve power,” Robertson said. “Democrats want to undermine his agenda so they can replace it with a hyper-partisan impeachment agenda.”
However, if Trump was impeached and removed from office, it would be Pence’s brother and fellow Republican, Vice President Mike Pence, who would be sworn in as president.
On Thursday, Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana spoke to radio stations in Chicago and Fort Wayne about the impeachment inquiry, saying that Democrats cannot “get over the fact that an outsider entrepreneur got through to become president” and that he doesn’t think the inquiry will get past the U.S. House of Representatives.
“We know (the Democrats) hate the idea of an outsider for president, but from day one they’ve been trying to get him and what’s amazing to me is that they do the official impeachment inquiry even before the information comes out, all based on a hearsay whistleblower report that was a big nothing-burger,” Braun told WOWO News in Fort Wayne.
However, Braun said in a later interview with AM560 in Chicago that he had not yet read the whistleblower report, but was “anxious to do so” and would “look at it on its merits.”
“The foundation of (the inquiry), an anonymous, hearsay whistleblower complaint, what court would that stand up in anywhere?” Braun told AM560 in Chicago.
Representatives from Sen. Todd Young, R-Indiana, did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment. He has not issued any public statements.
Democrats have been investigating Trump for months, but the Ukraine situation sparked new and deeper concerns about potential wrongdoing from the White House.
Pelosi and many of her fellow Democrats see the phone call with Zelensky as a glaring example of wrongdoing and because they worry the allegation could foreshadow potential election interference in 2020 that echoes the Russian meddling of 2016.
Currently, six House committees — Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, Intelligence, Oversight and Ways and Means — are investigating a range of Trump’s activities stemming from the president’s business dealings and administration, including former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference in 2016, according to wire reports.
Trump has sought to implicate the former Democratic vice president and his son Hunter Biden in the kind of corruption that has long plagued Ukraine, according to wire reports. Hunter Biden served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic dealings with Kyiv. Although the timing raised concerns among anti-corruption advocates, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by either the former vice president or his son.
