Watch: GOP Congressman Capsizes Democrats As They Attempt To Change Basis For Impeachment
Congressman John Ratcliffe (R-TX) dumped on Democrats Tuesday for wanting to change the charges for the basis of the impeachment inquiry from quid pro quo to bribery.
Ratcliffe brought the floor to the attention of the words Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said last week during her press conference. The Speaker of the House said, “that President Trump committed the impeachable offense of bribery, evidenced in his July 25th call transcript with President Zelensky. In concert with that, multiple Democratic members of this committee gave T.V. and radio interviews over this past week discussing how the president’s conduct supported his impeachment for committing bribery.”
Justly, Ratcliffe pointed out that up until last week the Democrat’s reason for the inquiry was the quid pro quo. The congressman from Texas said that it “struck me as very odd because for the longest time this was all about quid pro quo, according to the whistleblower complaint, but after witness after witness began saying there was no quid pro quo or even that quid pro quo was not even possible, we saw a shift from the Democrats.”
Ratcliffe had a stack of the ten released deposition transcripts on his desk and showed that not once bribery was mentioned in the six weeks of interviews.
“In fact, in these 3,500 pages of sworn testimony in just these ten transcripts released thus far, the word ‘bribery’ appears in these 3,500 pages exactly one time. And ironically, it appears not in a description of President Trump’s alleged conduct. It appears in the description of Vice President [Joe] Biden’s alleged conduct,” he said.
“This is important because as early as next week, my Democratic colleagues are going to say, ‘We need to vote on the evidence from this impeachment inquiry on the impeachment of the president for bribery,’ and they’re going to send a report to the Judiciary Committee. Because there’s more Democrats than Republicans, it’s likely going to pass. When that happens, the American people need to be clear that when the Democrats, what they are describing as bribery, not a single witness is describing as bribery,” Ratcliffe continued.