Report: Senate Democrats in Red States Worried Impeachment Will ‘Spin Out of Control’
Senate Democrats in red states are worried the impeachment process may spin out of control and destroy their chances of winning control of the Senate in 2020, according to a report.
Those Senate Democrats hope the House keeps its impeachment focus on the Ukraine controversy and act relatively quickly before President Trump turns the tables on them, according to a report by The Hill.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who barely kept his seat in 2018, told the outlet, “It’s really incumbent on the House to really be laser-focused. The president is a master of pivoting and deflecting and I think it’s really important to stay focused.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVA) told the Hill, “I think it’s much better if it’s going to be focused because there’s a whole load of hay out there that they’ve been talking about for so long.”
“I just think anytime a foreign entity is involved, it needs to be investigated,” he added.
Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL), who won former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ old seat and is up for reelection next year, said he does not want impeachment to drag on and sink other legislative items.
“Obviously we need to get to the bottom of all this quickly,” he told the Hill. “I want it to come to a head as quickly as possible. I think the American people deserve it to be resolved one way or another.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) also told the Hill the impeachment process should not “drag on for too long.” “It’s September. It ought to take a couple months and that ought to be it,” she said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has said an ongoing investigation into whether to impeach President Trump would stay focused on allegations President Trump tried to pressure Ukraine into finding dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
According to a White House phone call memorandum, Trump in a July 25 phone call asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cooperate with Attorney General William Barr’s efforts to find out how the Russian collusion allegations in 2016 started.
Later in the conversation, Zelensky brought up Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer who is investigating the Bidens’ ties to Ukraine for any wrongdoing.
The younger Biden sat on a board of a Ukrainian energy company whose owner was investigated for corruption the same time the elder Biden pushed for the firing of the chief prosecutor allegedly investigating the company.
Trump encouraged Zelensky to work with him on the investigation, which Democrats have claimed is a request to intervene in the 2020 election.
A Democrat senator who wanted to comment anonymously said that Pelosi wanted to keep the impeachment inquiry narrow, but that “people are worried” about potential political fallout, the Hill reported.
“The stakes go up for both sides at this point,” the senator said