Rep. DeFazio: Impeachment is inappropriate

NRCC Comment: “Peter DeFazio is a partisan hack who hates President Trump.” – NRCC Spokeswoman Torunn Sinclair 

In case you missed it…

Oregon Voices

The Oregonian 

Jim Barnett

December 19, 1998

Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., took to the House floor Friday to decry what they said was a partisan drive to impeach President Clinton.

“This is a tragic day in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives and a tragic turn of events for our sacred system of government,” DeFazio said. “The repercussions will reverberate in our society for decades to come.”

During his moment of the historic debate, DeFazio hammered at two themes: that Clinton‘s misdeeds do not rise to the level of impeachment and that Republicans are pursuing impeachment on purely political grounds.

“The founders set an incredibly high bar for impeachment,” DeFazio said. “. . . The Republican majority has not raised and proved offenses that meet the standards set by our founders.”

Constitutional scholars agree that the framers of the Constitution “did not want a president to be impeached simply because a majority of members of Congress disagreed with his policies or found his morals repugnant,” DeFazio said.

Hooley made a similar case.

“We are voting on misleading statements related to a private matter,” she said in prepared remarks. “It’s wrong and disappointing, but it’s not impeachable.”

Hooley also made a last-ditch attempt to lay blame with Republican leaders for not allowing a vote on an alternative resolution to censure Clinton.

“Today I’m sickened, saddened and frustrated with a process that isn’t fair and that won’t allow some of us to vote our conscience,” she said.