Judiciary chairman throws a cold water on Kavanaugh impeachment

congress

Jerry Nadler says the committee is too busy 'impeaching the president' to consider investigating the Supreme Court justice.

The House Judiciary Committee is too close to "impeaching the president" to take immediate action on a potential investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Monday.

"We have our hands full with impeaching the president right now, and that's going to be while," said Nadler on WNYC when Brian Lehrer.

Story Continued Below

It is a matter of fact that it is possible for the courts to be able to judge the subject of judicial proceedings.

Nadler's interview comes from the Senate. Democrats and presidential candidates to impeach Kavanaugh after a New York Times story over the weekend reported a new allegation of sexual misconduct against justice from his time as a student at Yale.

FBI Director Christopher Wray appears to be a feature of FBI Director Christopher Wray. Nadler said his panel's primary focus would be that Kavanaugh lied to the Senate.

"These deeds that he allegedly did years ago," Nadler said.

At the time, Nadler complained that the Senate only got a fraction of Kavanaugh's records from his White House tenure, which ran from 2001 to 2006, when he served in the White House as counsel and later as a staff secretary. He said it was urgent to receive because of the potential for Kavanaugh to rule over matters of policy in the White House.

Last month, Nadler asked the National Archives to release a large cache of records related to Supreme Court Brett Justice Kavanaugh's time in George Bush's White House.

Nadler's comments on Kavanaugh. Trump. Nadler emphasized that in his view, it's imperative that Trump be impeached to deter wrongdoing by future presidents. He also said that the Congress has already made the decision. What's missing, he said, is educating the public on those findings.

"In my personal opinion, impeachment is imperative because it is going to be removed from office – the Senate will not do that – but because we have to vindicate the Constitution," he said. "We have to show that the kind of self-dealing enrichment that this president is engaged in … that the kind of public corruption he's been involved in, that the kind of obstruction of justice that the Mueller report documents – five instances of which The Court of Justice has not been allowed to do anything about it.

Nadler's position on impeachment puts it much further ahead Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has said the House must continue to investigate and decide on the issue. It's not a public opinion that does not favor political impeachment but insists that the decision will not be political but rather based on factual merits.

Nadler hinted at the divide among Democrats, noting that some of his colleagues are reluctant to use the terms "impeachment inquiry" or "impeachment investigation" to describe what the House is doing. Nadler, though, told a hearing that his panel will agree on obstruction of justice allegations against trump as an "impeachment hearing."

"We are involved in an investigation to determine whether articles of impeachment to the House. That's what we're doing, "he said. "The term impeachment investigation, the term impeachment inquiry has no legal meaning. Shorthand for an investigation into whether or not articles of impeachment. That's what we're doing and we're doing it officially. "

"I have said this in my opinion that it has not been possible for other reasons, but for other reasons, it has been more reluctant -being reluctant to use the term impeachment inquiry or impeachment investigation." said. "But as I said those terms have no official meaning."

As for the prospect of an impeachment vote in the House of Commons, Nadler said there is a math challenge within the Democratic caucus to get 218 votes of support for impeachment.

"There's a maximum of 236 possible votes, namely 235 Democrats and Justin Amash" – the former Republican who shed his party affiliation after coming out of support of Trump's removal, Nadler said. "We are going to hear the hearings that we're going to hold now – a very aggressive series of hearings on very serious offenses committed by the president. impeachment. "