By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
United States Senator Roy Blunt criticizes the process Democrats in the United States House have used in their impeachment probe of President Donald Trump.
House Democrats used their majority numbers to push through impeachment rules without any support from House Republicans.
Blunt, a Republican, calls it an unfair process.
“They didn’t even pretend that there was a fair structure put in place on the House side,” Blunt tells KFEQ News in an in-studio interview. “And, you know, there’ll be some national news people that will says, well, these senators only want to talk about process, because they don’t want to talk about the actual problem. That’s really not true.”
Blunt says the vote casts a shadow over the impeachment proceedings.
“I think you saw a very partisan vote there; all the Republicans and two Democrats voting not to go forward and all the other Democrats and one independent voting to go forward,” Blunt says. “It was a party-line decision, which makes it look even more political than it otherwise might.”
Blunt declines to address directly whether President Trump committed an impeachable offense during his phone call to the Ukraine president. He says the Senate will have to deal with whatever charge the House makes if it follows through with impeaching Trump.
Trump has denied doing anything wrong during his July 25th call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy when he first asked for "a favor." Trump asked that the Ukrainian government investigate whether Democrat Joe Biden, then Vice President, and his son Hunter pushed Ukraine into alleged interference in the 2015 U.S. election. Trump seems to have tied release of U.S. military aid to Ukraine to following through on his request.
Biden could well be the Democratic nominee to challenge Trump’s re-election in 2020.
Hunter Biden has resigned from the board of Burisma, one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies since the controversy surfaced. Hunter Biden told ABC News he made a mistake in not calculating the political ramifications of joining the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company while his father had official business in the country as vice president, but denied doing anything improper.
Blunt suggests Congress would be better off dropping impeachment proceedings and let the 2020 presidential election play out.
“Whatever information is out there, whatever facts are out there, the American public can look at and they can decide if this is someone they want to see continue and to see his policies, which on the economy have been extraordinary and on regulation have been extraordinary, whether they want to see the president continue to do that,” Blunt says. “Election day seems like to me the best place to make that decision.”
If the House impeaches Trump, the Senate would hold the trial.
Associated Press contributed to this story.