WASHINGTON – Charleston US Representative Joe Cunningham said on Tuesday that he intends to vote in favor of a House resolution this week that will set the ground rules for the ongoing impeachment investigation against President Donald Trump.
The vote, which is expected on Thursday, is not about Trump’s impeachment – an issue on which Cunningham emphasized that he remains firmly indecisive – but simply to clarify the process as he moves into an increasingly public phase.
Still, the decision by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., To hold a voting process, however, put the vulnerable freshman Democrat in a precarious political position, forcing him to take a side for the first time in a polarizing debate that he has generally avoided so far.
Cunningham was one of the last Democratic survivors in the impeachment investigation. His decision means that the resolution will almost certainly have enough votes to pass.
In an interview with the Post and Courier, Cunningham said he sees the vote as a way to make the investigation more transparent, which he said would make it easier to come to a conclusion about whether Trump should be impeached.
“It’s something that my colleagues from across the aisle have been asking for for weeks, so I hope it gives them some satisfaction and, in general, it is a good measure to clarify these hearings and ensure that we respect due process,” Cunningham said.
The resolution describes how the House Intelligence Committee will conduct public hearings and the Judiciary Committee can begin to draft potential impeachment articles. It also gives the White House the opportunity to “present its case and respond to the evidence”.
Republicans, who mostly rejected the whole notion that Trump did anything objectionable in asking the Ukrainian president to investigate his domestic political rivals, must still overwhelmingly oppose the resolution.
Hours before Cunningham’s decision, the Republican National Congress Committee framed it as a moment of truth as to whether Cunningham will follow the vast majority of other Democrats in support of the impeachment process.
Trump supporters in South Carolina have protested outside Cunningham’s district offices in recent weeks to try to pressure him to oppose the impeachment investigation.
Camille Gallo, a spokesman for the NRCC, said that “Cunningham’s unbalanced base wants to remove the president from office,” but noted that his first congressional district extending from Charleston to Hilton Head Island supported Trump in 2016.
The district is expected to be one of the most competitive in the country next year, after Cunningham won a frustrating mid-term victory in 2018, becoming the first Democrat to represent Lowcountry in four decades.
Republicans made the seat one of their main targets across the country, while Democrats vowed to vigorously defend it.
Anticipating the likelihood that Republicans would frame Cunningham’s support for the resolution as a proxy for him to support the wider impeachment issue, Cunningham said such a move would be “dishonest”.
“That’s why people hate politics and that’s really why I got in the race in the first place,” said Cunningham, “because I was tired of seeing these kinds of antics and antics.”
Cunningham reiterated that he found allegations that Trump used military aid as a lever to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son “very worrying”, even though he has not yet decided whether it would be objectionable.
“It just highlights the seriousness and the need for something like this (resolution) to ensure that there is a level playing field, due process and an air of justice throughout the process,” said Cunningham.
Given that he is not on the intelligence or judiciary committees, Cunningham said he will remain focused on his other legislative work while hearings take place in the background.
On Tuesday, for example, the House Veterans Affairs Committee introduced two Cunningham bills – one to allow veterans to remotely appeal from their personal computers and the other to direct the Veterans Affairs Department to conduct a study. on access to care for veteran women.
With some of Cunningham’s constituents opposing impeachment and others supporting it, the congressman said he was aware of the fact that it will be impossible to satisfy everyone.
“Where I am is we are going to allow the facts to appear, and where the facts go the law must go,” he said.
Follow Jamie Lovegrove on Twitter @jslovegrove.