‘Clear and present danger,’ Dems say of Trump’s election cheating

WASHINGTON (CN) – Raising the stakes of the impeachment inquiry, the Democrats accused President Donald Trump on Monday of an ongoing campaign to interfere in the 2020 elections.

“President Trump’s persistent and continuing effort to coerce a foreign country to help him cheat to win an election is a clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security,” Daniel Goldman, a former federal prosecutor known for taking on Russian organized crime, told Congress this morning.

Goldman is one of two lawyers presenting the Democrats’ case for impeachment this morning before the House Judiciary Committee.

“The July 25 call was neither the start nor the end of President Trump’s efforts to use the powers of his office for personal political gain,” Goldman said, referring to the conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that triggered a whistleblower complaint and weeks later these impeachment hearings.

Goldman’s colleague Barry Berke made a point earlier Friday that the call occurred just one day after special counsel Robert Mueller testified before the same committee now investigating Trump. Mueller’s report pointed out that, during the 2016 election contest with Hillary Clinton, Russian operatives tried to hack into Clinton’s servers mere hours after Trump openly invited the Kremlin to do so at a press conference in 2016.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” then-candidate Trump declared in footage replayed before the committee this morning.

Berke told Congress that Trump’s announcement mirrored his most recent one asking China to investigate the Bidens, some three years later.

Democrats wove the two controversies together through a common beneficiary: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Thank God no one is accusing us any more of interfering in U.S. elections,” Putin announced in February 2017, quoted by Goldman this morning. “Now they’re accusing Ukraine.”

As was widely expected, the White House counsel was conspicuously absent from today’s hearing – an absence Chairman Jerry Nadler attributed to Trump’s lack of a defense.

“President Trump chose not to show,” Nadler remarked in his opening statement this morning. “He may not have much to say in his own defense, but he cannot claim that he did not have an opportunity to be heard.”

Referring to evidence that Trump pressured Zelensky to initiate political investigations, Nadler said: “To the members of this committee, to the members of the House, and to my fellow citizens, I want to be absolutely clear: the integrity of our next election is at stake.

“Nothing could be more urgent,” he added.

Like other Republican minority leaders, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member Doug Collins used his statement to seek to delegitimize the proceedings as a political effort to overturn the results of an election.

“For anyone to think that this was not a baked deal is not being honest with themselves,” Collins said. “Presumption is now the standard instead of proof.”

After weeks of testimony from fact witnesses and constitutional law professors, attorneys for Democrats and Republicans have been called to make their cases to the U.S. public in the style of opening arguments at a trial.

Berke simplified the scandal that wrought the impeachment inquiry by opening his remarks through the eyes of a child.

“Dad, does the president have to be a good person?” Berke said his son asked him.

“Like many questions of young children, it had a certain clarity but was hard to answer,” Berke continue.

“I said, ‘Son, it is not a requirement… but that is the hope,’” he continued.

No sooner had proceedings began than Owen Shroyer, a host from the pro-Trump disinformation organ InfoWars, jumped up from his seat and heckled Nadler, repeatedly accusing the New York congressman of treason.

Known long before Trump’s election for propagating 9/11 and Sandy Hook conspiracy theories, InfoWars landed an interview with and endorsement from Trump early in the 2016 presidential campaign and has been known as one of his most prominent defenders ever since.

Capitol Police promptly escorted Shroyer out of the magisterial hall, but passions continued to remain high as House Republicans followed with a flurry of objections demanding that Nadler schedule a minority hearing before today’s proceedings. Nadler denied each motion, going on to argued in his speech that consensus could be possible.

“We agree, for example, that impeachment is a solemn serious undertaking,” the Democrat said.

“If we could drop our blinders for just one moment, I believe we would agree on a common set of facts as well,” he added later.

A whistleblower’s concerns that Trump used the call to exploit his power and invite interference in U.S. elections set off the impeachment inquiry have since been corroborated before the House by more than 100 hours of testimony from 17 fact witnesses, including nonpartisan officials from the State Department, National Security Council and other agencies.