This story is about the October 2019 letter from the White House to Nancy Pelosi. Read the December 2019 letter from Trump to Pelosi here.
In a letter addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the White House responded to the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
The White House letter, signed by the president’s counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, accuses Pelosi and fellow House Democratic leaders of violating the constitution.
“For example, you have denied the President the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present, and many other basic rights guaranteed to all Americans,” the letter reads. “You have conducted your proceedings in secret. You have violated civil liberties and the separation of powers by threatening Executive Branch officials, claiming that you will seek to punish those who exercise fundamental constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent. Never before in our history has the House of Representatives-under the control of either political party-taken the American people down the dangerous path you seem determined to pursue.”
Cipollone states that Democrats are using the impeachment inquiry as a way to overturn the results of the 2016 election “and deprive the American people of the President they have freely chosen.”
Read the PDF of the full White House letter to Pelosi and other House Democrat leaders.
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—How the circumstances around Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry differ from Bill Clinton’s
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