Rep. Hice statement Opposing Articles of Impeachment

U.S. Representative Jody Hice (R-GA) Wednesday released the following statement after the U.S. House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump. With these baseless charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, President Trump will now stand to be tried in the U.S. Senate in January 2020.  “I voted no on both articles of impeachment. Since the day he was inaugurated, President Trump has been met with open hostility from both the media and political foes alike. Rather than working with the President, House Democrats have squandered an entire year, wasting countless opportunities to enact positive change for America. Instead, their energies and resources have been fixated on a vendetta against the President – an endless cycle of wild allegations and partisan witch-hunt investigations.  Once the impeachment charade began, my Democrat colleagues haphazardly bounced from accusation to accusation – each new charge lacking the evidence to back it up. They’ve based their indictment of the President on presumption, hearsay, and policy disagreements, none of which builds a convincing or compelling case for removing him from office. The weeks of secret, closed-door witness auditions finally led to us hearing from the Democrats’ star witnesses: disgruntled career bureaucrats, who could only testify to gossip and speculative assumptions. When that failed to move the needle, in a desperate bid to strengthen their case, House Democrats then turned to the conjecture of Ivy League academics, who strung together cherry-picked quotes from our Founding Fathers to humor a liberal fairytale. At the end of the day, their crusade ended as it began, as an impeachment in search of a crime.  While my colleagues on the other side of the aisle obsessed over issuing subpoenas, they lost sight of honoring the promises they made to the American people. We leave soon to return to our families for the Christmas season, having accomplished none of the great hopes we had when we entered the 116th Congress. Let’s hope that when we return in 2020 that the Majority reevaluates its priorities so that we may finally get to work on the job the American people sent us to do.”