The Republican members of Michigan’s congressional delegation sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week calling for more transparency in the impeachment inquiry.
They say while the procedural bill on impeachment (which passed the House Thursday) “attempts to bring a veneer of transparency to the proceedings,” it still “falls far short and instead continues to undermine the bedrock principle of due process.”
“As members of the Michigan delegation who do not sit on your self-determined impeachment inquiry committees—Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Oversight, or Foreign Affairs—we have been prevented vital access and material shared in the process. As a result, our constituents have been left in the dark,” states their letter.
Reps. Tim Walberg (R-MI-07), Jack Bergman (R-MI-01), Paul Mitchell (R-MI-10), Bill Huizenga (R-MI-02), John Moolenaar (R-MI-04), and Fred Upton (R-MI-06) signed the letter. The Republicans reveal that members who serve on the aforementioned committees “have been instructed not to share their knowledge of material from these proceedings.”
“So the only information available to us and the millions of Michiganders we represent have been selective and misleading leaks to the news media which may not paint a full, trustworthy picture,” the letter continues, saying the impeachment resolution “fails to afford the minority party with important due process rights.”
They urge Speaker Pelosi to institute a more “transparent process” based on the precedent “set under the impeachment hearings of Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.”
“As some point in the foreseeable future, members of Congress may be asked to vote on impeachment. To make such a determination with incomplete information, and without the ability to take part in the proceedings, would be an affront to our constitutional responsibility,” the letter concludes. “The American people will not have confidence in the inquiry—and our institutions as whole—if their duly elected representatives are unable to fully participate and the basic standards of fairness are not met.”
After the passage of the impeachment resolution, Bergman said it would’ve been more appropriate to hold the vote “on April Fool’s Day than on Halloween.”
“The impeachment sham against Donald Trump that Nancy Pelosi and her puppets are pushing in Congress is a joke and a ploy to undermine the 2016 election results,” he said.
Today’s vote in the House on impeachment would’ve been more appropriate on April Fool’s Day than on Halloween.
The impeachment sham against @realDonaldTrump that Nancy Pelosi and her puppets are pushing in Congress is a joke and a ploy to undermine the 2016 election results.
— Rep. Jack Bergman (@RepJackBergman) October 31, 2019
Upton called the vote on the impeachment resolution a “further distraction from working on important, bipartisan issues.”
Today’s vote also only serves as further distraction from working on important, bipartisan issues. This week was wasted talking all about this vote – even though it simply reaffirms the current broken process – and now…
— Rep. Fred Upton (@RepFredUpton) October 31, 2019
“This week was wasted talking about this vote—even though it simply reaffirms the current broken process—and now there are only 16 legislative days scheduled for the remainder of the year, leaving little time to do the nation’s business,” he said.
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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].
