The ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, Doug Collins of Gainesville, has sent a letter to committee chairman Jerrold Nadler imploring him to increase the number of witnesses scheduled to testify before his committee when the impeachment hearings resume this week.
"The Committee must ensure it maintains its credibility and its historically preeminent role in the impeachment of presidents by not rushing to articles of impeachment or hearing only from scholars with demonstrated animosity towards the President," Collins said in the letter, which was released over the weekend. "Throughout this hurried and partisan impeachment process, I have consistently requested mere fairness from members of the majority. An equal distribution of experts for the December 4 hearing would be a small concession to demonstrate to the American people this impeachment inquiry is not merely political theater."
"The Committee must ensure it maintains its credibility and its historically preeminent role in the impeachment of presidents by not rushing to articles of impeachment or hearing only from scholars with demonstrated animosity towards the President," Collins, the leading Republican on the Committee, said in closing. "Throughout this hurried and partisan impeachment process, I have consistently requested mere fairness from members of the majority. An equal distribution of experts for the December 4 hearing would be a small concession to demonstrate to the American people this impeachment inquiry is not merely political theater."
To read the full contents of the letter, click here.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, Collins appeared on Fox News Sunday and said the first witnesse Republicans plan to call Wednesday is House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who led the first phase in the impeachment process.
Schiff is in the middle of preparing a report on his committee’s findings after conducting closed-door interviews and public hearings featuring a number of current and former Trump administration officials connected to the administration’s policies and relationship with Ukraine. Republicans have questioned Schiff's credibility due to contact that an anonymous whistleblower had with his staff before filing a complaint which led to the impeachment inquiry, and now they want to question him before the Judiciary Committee.
“My first and foremost witness is Adam Schiff,” Collins told “Fox News Sunday.” He claimed that if Schiff does not make himself available for questioning, it will reflect poorly on his credibility and the work he has done so far.
The New York Times reports that Schiff has said “there’s nothing for me to testify about,” that he isn’t a “fact” witness and that Republicans are only trying to “mollify the president, and that's not a good reason to try to call a member of Congress as a witness.”
