U.S. Democratic MP Joe Cunningham remains undecided – as he has been for weeks – over whether to vote for Donald Trump’s impeachment, even as the House leadership on Thursday took historic steps to try to oust the president from office.
Cunningham’s spokeswoman said the freshman Charleston lawmaker needs to review the impeachment articles, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered her to write during a six-minute speech outside her Washington, DC office, early in the morning. Thursday.
“Joe is closely following the proceedings and the testimony he saw from constitutional scholars and President Trump’s own nominees paints an incredibly worrying picture of the president’s abuse of power,” spokeswoman Rebecca Drago told Post and Courier.
“He will continue to hold the trial until the articles have been written and he has time to scrutinize the articles and all supporting evidence,” she concluded.
Although Cunningham is a lawyer, he is not a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which means he will have no role in defining the final impeachment articles that the House will vote on, potentially before Christmas.
Cunningham, facing reelection in South Carolina’s first coastal congressional district that voted for Trump in 2016, is in a precarious political position as Congress moves on to the next phase of the impeachment inquiry.
He is one of 32 Democrats representing the districts that Trump won.
At the heart of the impeachment investigation is a July liaison with the President of Ukraine, in which Trump pressured the leader to investigate his Democratic political rival Joe Biden, while the White House was denying military aid to the country bordering an aggressive Russia.
Pelosi told reporters in Washington that the president’s actions violated the constitution, “which leaves us with no choice but to act,” she said.
Cunningham in October voted in favor of the House resolution that set the parameters for the impeachment inquiry. He was one of the last House Democrats to state his position on the resolution, and when he finally did in the days leading up to the vote, he emphasized that the vote was not an endorsement for impeachment.
The Republican Party of SC, which has already started field operation efforts in Charleston to try to win back the chair that Cunningham now holds, issued a statement on Thursday criticizing Cunningham for his association with the inquiry.
“In support of this witch hunt, Rep. Joe Cunningham has shown that he will always put the views of the Socialist squad on those of Lowcountry voters,” said Republican State President Drew McKissick in the statement. He warned that hearings “will backfire on Democrats in 2020.”
In a media call at the White House on Thursday afternoon, two officials insisted that there is hope that Democrats will join Republicans in voting against the impeachment inquiry.
Pam Bondi, special adviser to the president and former Florida attorney general, cited Cunningham and his district as an opportunity for Democrats to break with his party.
“You have Congressman Joe Cunningham,” said Bondi, noting that he ran into issues unrelated to impeachment, such as reducing the cost of prescription drugs and supporting military funding.
Bondi is primarily responsible for the White House’s impeachment messages.
“I don’t think this is going to be a vote along the lines of the party,” she said. “There are many Democrats that we think will do the right thing.”
On the same call, senior strategy adviser Tony Sayegh said he was “very sure” that there would be more Democrats voting against impeachment than Republicans.
Other members of the South Carolina delegation also weighed in on Thursday.
House majority leader Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, another South Carolina Democrat in Congress, said the party does not plan to make an early count of how members plan to vote on impeachment, which is one of a leader’s main functions party.
“This is an issue that we think that each of our members assesses who we are, what we are and what kind of country we want to have,” he said.
South Carolina Republicans contested that the investigation is without merit.
“It is impressive to see Parliament Speaker Pelosi pretend that Democrats took this process solemnly and seriously, when it was a predetermined outcome since January 2017,” said Congressman Jeff Duncan, R-Laurens, “That was – for a long time – a verdict in search of a crime. “
The impeachment process begins in the House, where a simple majority vote would be required in the Democratic House to make impeachment charges against the President.
Then he would be brought to a Senate trial controlled by Republicans.
US Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he believed the American people would see the impeachment inquiry, which he called a “farce”.
“Mayor Pelosi is the driver of the impeachment train in name only,” Graham said in a media statement. “The American people understand that Pelosi has two options: to drive the train or to be run over by it.”
Talk to Caitlin Byrd at 843-937-5590 and follow her on Twitter @MaryCaitlinByrd.