Rep. Steve Scalise on “Soviet Style Impeachment Process”

Rep. Steve Scalise responds to Democrat Impeachment resolution, “And when we talk about the vote I think its important to note that you see that not only did every single Republican reject this Soviet style impeachment process, but we were even joined by Democrats who couldn’t stand it any more.

If you look at where we are right now, we’re at an important point in history. Clearly there are people that we served with that don’t like the results of the 2016 election, and that’s their prerogative, but the country next year will be deciding who our President is going to be. It should not be Nancy Pelosi in a small group of people that she selects that get to determine who gets to be our President.

If you look at the resolution today, they talk about fairness. Now if they really think that they can tell people its fair that only the chairman, gets to decide who the witnesses are and they give us an opportunity to call witnesses, but if the chair says that they don’t like the witnesses, the witnesses don’t come forward.

They allow the president to have legal council in the room unless the chairman decides that they don’t want the President’s legal council in the room. That’s never happened before. With the Clinton impeachment, with the Nixon impeachment, Republican and Democrat alike, both sides were treated equally, both sides could call witnesses, the President’s legal council was in the room, not at the discretion of the chair, but because its fair.

And so when you look at this Soviet style process, it shows you that they don’t really want to get to the truth, they want to remove a sitting president. In fact the author of the articles of impeachment said if they don’t impeach the president he will get reelected. Now that’s not why we have impeachment.

Alexander Hamilton made it very clear. His concern, when they were trying to promote the Constitution, was that he didn’t want to see impeachment used for political purposes, yet that’s what happened today. He predicted it and it happened today. Its a sham, it shouldn’t have happened. Its a tainted process that Adam Schiff’s been conducting that Nadler might one day conduct. The House deserves better. The People of this country deserve better.

We should be tackling real problems. We could have lower prescription drug prices today but Pelosi won’t bring those bills to the floor because she’s infatuated with impeachment. Our troops could be properly funded but Pelosi is infatuated with impeachment. In fact we could have better trade relations with Canada and Mexico and create 160,000 new jobs today, but Pelosi’s infatuated with impeachment. We deserve better.”