Elissa Slotkin Announces Support for Impeachment, Booed and Cheered at Chaotic Town Hall

 

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI-08) announced in a Monday morning op-ed that she will vote in favor of both articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump before speaking at a town hall in her home district.

“Over the past year, while an increasing number of my colleagues started calling for impeachment and pro-impeachment protesters started rallying at my events, I remained unconvinced,” Slotkin wrote in an article for the Detroit Free Press. “While the President had said and done some seriously troubling things, I ultimately believed that the American people would render a judgment at the ballot box in 2020. That changed with the events surrounding the President’s actions with Ukraine.”

As was the case with her Monday town hall, Slotkin was booed by constituents when she returned to her home district in October to discuss her support for the impeachment inquiry. The first-term congresswoman is one of 31 Democrats representing a district President Trump carried in 2016. The president won Slotkin’s district by seven percentage points and picked up a five-point victory in the district of Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI-11), who had yet to reveal her stance on the articles of impeachment as of Monday afternoon.

“To be clear, presidents from both parties have leveraged the powerful role of the United States to get foreign countries to do what’s in our interest. It’s quite standard, as senior U.S. officials wield leverage to increase our own national security,” Slotkin said in her Monday op-ed. “But here’s the fundamental difference: President Trump used the power of the presidency for his own benefit, to give himself some advantage in the very election that would determine whether he remained in office.”

Slotkin said she took the weekend to look at “the full body of available information, and tried to make an objective decision on my vote.”

“The vote that we will take this week will be on two articles of impeachment,” she continued. “I will be voting yes on both. And I want all of my constituents to know why.”

On the abuse of power article, Slotkin said she believes the president “illegally solicited the help of foreigners to influence the American political process.”

“On obstruction of Congress: As I went back and did my research on the previous impeachment processes, it became clear that, in contrast to the proceedings against Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Clinton, President Trump sent out unprecedented guidance to refuse and ignore the requests and subpoenas of the inquiry,” Slotkin said of the second article of impeachment.

As a former CIA officer, Slotkin concluded her article by claiming that “the security of the country is at stake.”

“There are some decisions in life that have to be made based on what you know in your bones is right. And this is one of those times,” she said.

Slotkin addressed a crowd of more than 400 at Oakland University in Rochester just hours after she announced her support for the articles of impeachment. She was repeatedly interrupted with jeers and applause from the audience and barely could be heard over the noises from the crowd during many portions of her speech.

“Four more years! Four more years!” some pro-Trump constituents chanted at one point.

President Trump will be in Michigan Wednesday night—the same day of the House impeachment vote—for a “Merry Christmas Rally” at the Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek. Four Republicans have launched campaigns to challenge Slotkin in 2020.

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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].