Georgia Rep. Doug Collins used House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler’s opening statements about the founding ideals of America against him as the body’s first public impeachment hearings opened Wednesday.
“We heard the chairman talk a lot about the Founding Fathers, about the Founding Fathers being concerned about foreign influence,” Collins, the ranking Republican on the committee, said. “But what he didn’t quote was the founders being really, really concerned about a political impeachment.”
During his opening remarks, Nadler, a Democrat, said President Trump had committed an unprecedented level of abuse of power during his July 25 phone call with the president of Ukraine in which he pressed him to do him a political “favor.”
“Never before has a president engaged in the course of conduct, that included all of the acts that most concerned the framers,” Nadler said of the call.
“The patriots who founded our country were not fearful men. They fought a war. They witnessed terrible violence. They overthrew a king,” he continued.
Nadler said Democrats need to be similarly courageous as they take on Trump.
Collins and Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill have routinely slammed the impeachment investigation as a “sham” and without merit.
“This may be a new time and a new place. This is not an impeachment. This is a waste of time,” Collins responded. “This didn’t start with [Robert Muller] or anything else; this started with tears in Brooklyn.”
