Today, Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (AZ-08) sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler demanding Chairman Nadler cancel all impeachment proceedings in the Judiciary Committee until his three-pronged test as outlined on MSNBC on November 26, 2018 is achieved. Text of the letter is available here and below.

December 4, 2019

The Honorable Jerrold Nadler
Chairman
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Chairman Nadler,

I call on you to cancel any and all upcoming Judiciary Committee hearings regarding impeachment. The process to date has failed to not only meet the basic standards of respecting minority rights for committee procedures and providing due process to the President, but has also violated your own standards for any impeachment proceeding.

During an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on November 26, 2018 you outlined a three-pronged test that you said would allow for a legitimate impeachment proceeding.

You said….

“There are really three questions, I think.

Number one, has the President committed impeachable offenses?

Number two, do those offenses rise to the gravity that’s worth putting the country through the trauma of an impeachment proceeding?

And number three, because you don’t want to tear the country apart…you don’t want half of the country to say to the other half for the next 30 years, we won the election, you stole it from us.  You have to be able to think at the beginning of the impeachment process that the evidence is so clear, of offenses so grave, that once you’ve laid out all the evidence a good fraction of the opposition, voters, will reluctantly admit to themselves they had to do it.  Otherwise you have a partisan impeachment which will tear the country apart.  If you meet those three tests, I think you do the impeachment.”

Well, Chairman Nadler, your own three-pronged test for impeachment has failed on all three counts.

First, the evidence and testimony have not revealed any impeachable offenses.

Second, there is nothing that rises to the gravity that’s worth putting the country through the trauma of impeachment.

And third, you and House Democrat leadership ARE tearing the country apart.  You said the evidence needs to be clear.  It is not.  You said offenses need to be grave.  They are not. You said that once the evidence is laid out that the opposition will admit “they had to do it”.   That has not happened, in fact polling and the lack of one single Republican vote on the impeachment inquiry resolution, reveal the opposite is true. 

In fact, what you and your Democratic colleagues have done is opposite of what you said had to be done. This is a partisan impeachment and it is tearing the country apart. 

As such, Mr. Chairman, I ask you to keep your word and stand up to pressures from your own leadership who want to deliver an impeachment vote by Christmas and cancel Judiciary proceedings until each of your three prongs have been achieved. These proceedings have failed to meet your own standards that you have publicly outlined. Follow your own advice and cancel these hearings. Get back to the work of the American people and focus on issues they want us to achieve like lowering health care costs, passing a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada and securing our borders. These political hearings do little to achieve progress for the country and by your own words will tear the country apart. 

Respectfully,

Debbie Lesko
Member of Congress