This archive report was first published on 10 November 2019.
Published on November 10, 2019
House Republicans have launched a scorched-earth strategy in response to the impeachment inquiry, demanding testimony from figures at the center of President Trump's unsubstantiated theories.
The witness list includes the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, a researcher loosely connected to an anti-Trump dossier, a Democratic official, and a board member of a Ukrainian energy company.
Despite claims by Republicans that the case against President Trump falls short of proving misconduct, there is already a mountain of evidence against the president, including a reconstructed transcript of a call suggesting he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to begin investigations into the Bidens and an unsubstantiated theory of Democratic collusion in 2016.
Democrats promise that the public hearings, which begin next week, will methodically connect the actions of President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and other Trump loyalists to the president and lay out the case that he abused the levers of his power for personal political advantage.
Representative Mark Meadows, a Republican from North Carolina, said in an interview that Democrats have overstated the case against the president and that their best witnesses and evidence will not stand the test of other evidence and cross-examination.
