Yesterday, Congressman John Curtis (R-UT) voted “no” on impeachment and joined colleagues Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX), Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), and Nancy Mace (R-NC) in releasing the following statement:
“We the undersigned offer the following statement regarding articles of impeachment directed at President Donald J. Trump:
President Trump publicly pressured Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress to accept the demonstrably unconstitutional idea that the Vice President has unilateral authority to ignore the sole slate of electors sent to Congress from each of the states of this Union and to declare who would be President of the United States. He did so leading up to, and during, a massively attended rally which he called for and encouraged.
Moreover, the event was deliberately scheduled to take place at the precise moment at which members of Congress were meeting to carry out our Constitutional duty to count those very electoral votes. This pressure campaign whipped many of those present into a frenzy that contributed, in part, to the assault on the Capitol resulting in the deaths of several American citizens, including at least one Capitol Hill Police Officer.
Therefore, we condemn the President for the words and actions which contributed to these events, and encourage every member of Congress to similarly condemn. While we do not venture to make legal judgement of the president’s intent regarding Wednesday’s demonstration, his actions were reckless. No President should ever, among other things, promote clearly unconstitutional theories that risk the stability of our nation and, in particular, do so to the detriment of the peaceful transition of power.
Unfortunately, rather than conducting a sober review of the facts through hearings and establishing the legal standards under which we would review all that transpired, our Democratic colleagues are rushing impeachment articles through the House of Representatives and beginning to target members of Congress as well with threats of blanket censure, devoid of specific examples of individual members’ actions. Taking these paths undermine due process as established in the Constitution and inflames an already starkly divided nation by politicizing what should be a serious and thoughtful bipartisan review.
The American people should have a voice in this process, just as they should with all processes in this house. After all, a key driver of our division today is a federal city that has too long ignored the people it supposedly works for. This is just another symptom of an oligarchal Congress that won’t give us the requisite time to deliberate and hear from constituents. Here, the people’s house should be giving the people a voice through a transparent and deliberative process.
Voting to impeach the President seven days before his departure from office serves little purpose given the Senate will not be able to hold a trial by that time and risks establishing this impeachment as politically motivated. Furthermore, the articles are flawed, charging crimes that are lacking the requisite element of intent. For these reasons and others, we will not be voting for these articles of impeachment despite our strong belief the President’s actions were wrong.
Above all, we condemn last week’s actions. But we also must denounce this rushed proposed reaction because we seek to stop the division inherent in our current politics. Now is not the time for political maneuvers that offer no remedy to the problems facing our Republic. A tree is known by its fruit, and this effort will bear nothing but further conflict and division.
We must tone down the rhetoric and calm the tensions, something that impeachment will not achieve.
Donald Trump is leaving the oval office next week no matter what. Let our legacy be that we rebuild our nation by moving forward together.”
