Heckler derails Donald Trump impeachment hearing: He’s ‘innocent’
The attention of US media was focused on impeachment hearings into President Donald Trump. Then a bag grabbed the headlines.
Impeachment hearings into US President Donald Trump’s conduct took an amusing turn on Monday (US time) with a Republican lawyer’s bag making headlines.
The hearings are centred around Mr Trump’s phone call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky and alleged attempts to influence the 2020 election.
But House Republican lawyer Steve Castor drew some attention online for a shopping bag he brought to the hearing.
Footage, which has gone viral on Twitter, shows him bringing a reusable Whole Foods grocery bag into the hearing and unloading his materials ahead of his testimony.
The bag raised eyebrows among political journalists covering the hearing.
“hey you’re bringing your briefcase today for your nationally televised impeachment hearing right?â€
— j.d. durkin (@jiveDurkey) December 9, 2019
“no no i’ll be fine with this.â€pic.twitter.com/Uw27J337ra
Steve Castor’s briefcase pic.twitter.com/bvepaoBrEy
— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) December 9, 2019
Steve Castor and his reusable grocery bag of hearing materials pic.twitter.com/QxZvDFZHwh
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 9, 2019
Steve Castor, like me and everyone else I know, carries stuff in a reusable supermarket shopping bag.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 9, 2019
Steve Castor is here, with a reusable Whole Foods bag carrying his folders and binders. pic.twitter.com/CZzavG9kfp
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) December 9, 2019
HECKLER
A heckler, who once called for Barack Obama to be lynched, derailed the start of the House impeachment proceedings into US President Donald Trump by screaming at the chairman.
Owen Shroyer, a talk-show host from right-wing conspiracy website Infowars, unleashed as lawyers for Democrats and Republicans on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees arrived to present evidence in the hearing room on Capitol Hill.
Owen Shroyer, who was seated in the public gallery, stood up and loudly heckled Jerrold Nadler moments after the Judiciary Committee Chairman, a Democrat, took his seat.
“Jerry Nadler and the Democrat Party are committing treason against this country!” Mr Shroyer shouted.
“We voted for Donald Trump! And they’re simply removing him because they don’t like him.”
“You’re the one committing treason.
“Trump is innocent!”
Security guards immediately flanked Mr Shroyer and escorted him out of the room.
“Obviously, I shouldn’t have to remind everyone that the audience is here to observe and not to demonstrate,” Mr Nadler said following the heckler’s removal.
Mr Shroyer posted footage of his demonstration and subsequent arrest to Twitter soon after the incident. He followed it up with an eight minute rant in which he explained on video why he disrupted the hearing.
“Until American people take action we’re all going to be apart of this corrupt government,” he said.
“It’s time for all of Americans to rise up and take action … show up to fake impeachment hearings … peacefully and politically take back the USA … unless you take action you won’t have victory.”
Owen Shroyer confronts Jerry Nadler and treasonous Democrats at scam impeachment hearing: https://t.co/gwHlgxN6G6
— J Owen Shroyer (@allidoisowen) December 9, 2019
Mr Shroyer, who has been described in prior reports as a “disciple” of Infowars chief Alex Jones, was at the centre of another controversy earlier this year when he called for former President Barack Obama to be lynched.
The “treasonous” Democratic former president “belongs in jail. He belongs in Guantánamo Bay. I mean look, I’m not saying this should happen but Barack Obama, you know, find the tallest tree and a rope,” Mr Shroyer said at the time.
House Democrats are just days from unveiling formal charges relating to Mr Trump’s alleged abuse of his power, and on Monday made a final pitch to Americans that he deserves to be removed from office because of it.
“The evidence shows that Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States, has put himself before his country,” Mr Nadler said. “He has violated his most basic responsibilities to the people. He has broken his oath. I will honour mine. If you would honour yours, then I urge you to your duty.”
Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, hit back.
“Where is the impeachable offence? Why are we here?” he asked.
“What’s their motive? It’s November 2020.”
The hearings have entered the second stage of the inquiry after Nancy Pelosi last week announced that the US president “leaves us no choice but to act”.
The House Speaker said investigators have uncovered more than sufficient evidence to show that Mr Trump abused his office for political gain, violating the president’s oath to the Constitution and warranting removal.
“Our democracy is what is at stake,” Ms Pelosi said.
She said she was authorising House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler to proceed with drafting articles of impeachment “sadly but with confidence and humility”.
“The president’s actions have seriously violated the Constitution,” Ms Pelosi said.
WHAT HAPPENS NOW?
Democrats are now charging toward a pre-Christmas vote on removing the 45th president, a situation Ms Pelosi hoped to avoid but which now seems inevitable. They are considering multiple articles of impeachment against Mr Trump including abuse of power, obstruction of justice and obstruction of Congress.
The House Judiciary Committee will draft one article of impeachment for each alleged offence, and the House will vote on each article separately. In the House, if a simple majority votes in favour of the articles of impeachment, the chief justice of the Supreme Court will then preside over a trial in the Senate.
A two-thirds majority is required to convict and remove a president from office. But that outcome is unlikely because Republicans control the senate and do not support the impeachment of Mr Trump.
Perhaps anticipating Ms Pelosi’s statement, Mr Trump goaded the Democrats to move quickly, in a tweet posted moments before the announcement.
“If you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business,” he wrote.
“We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is.”
The Do Nothing Democrats had a historically bad day yesterday in the House. They have no Impeachment case and are demeaning our Country. But nothing matters to them, they have gone crazy. Therefore I say, if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2019
.....trial in the Senate, and so that our Country can get back to business. We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is. I was elected to “Clean the Swamp,†and that’s what I am doing!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2019
In a statement, Mr Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale said impeaching the president has long been a Democratic goal, “so they should just get on with it so we can have a fair trial in the Senate and expose The Swamp for what it is”.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham also released a statement criticising Ms Pelosi’s decision to move forward.
“This impeachment process … moves this Country toward the most partisan and illegitimate subversion of the Constitution in our history,” Ms Grisham said.
Counsellor to the President Kellyanne Conway also addressed the issue, saying the White House was “very ready” for a Senate trial.
.@SpeakerPelosi & the Democrats should be ashamed. @realDonaldTrump has done nothing but lead our country - resulting in a booming economy, more jobs & a stronger military, to name just a few of his major accomplishments. 🇺🇸 We look forward to a fair trial in the Senate.
— Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) December 5, 2019
The first House Judiciary Committee hearing opened on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday to debate the constitutional basis for impeachment and whether Mr Trump’s actions meet those standards.
Law professors Noah Feldman, Pamela Karlan and Michael Gerhardt all agreed that Mr Trump committed “the impeachable high crime and misdemeanour of abuse of power” by allegedly attempting to withhold a White House meeting and critical funding from Ukraine as leverage for political favours. He is also accused of soliciting foreign assistance on a phone call with the country’s leader.
Harvard professor Noah Feldman testified that Mr Trump has “committed impeachable high crimes and misdemeanours by corruptly abusing the office of the presidency”.
Tomorrow, Democrats will get THREE constitutional lawyers and Republicans will only get ONE!
— Team Trump (@TeamTrump) December 3, 2019
This entire process is unfair to not only @realDonaldTrump, but the American People!#StopTheSchiffShow pic.twitter.com/gDfqHco5vo
University of North Carolina professor Michael Gerhardt told the hearing that Mr Trump had “committed several impeachable offences … worse than the misconduct of any prior president”.
“If left unchecked, the President will likely continue his pattern of soliciting foreign interference on his behalf in the next election,” he said.
“I just want to stress that if what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable. This is precisely the misconduct that the framers created a Constitution including impeachment to protect against.”
Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan testified that the President’s alleged attempt to “strong arm a foreign leader” would not be considered acceptable politics historical standards.
“It is, instead, a cardinal reason why the Constitution contains an impeachment power,” she said. “Put simply, a candidate for president should resist foreign interference in our elections, not demand it. If we are to keep faith with the Constitution and our Republic, President Trump must be held to account.”
The hearing followed the release of a report detailing the findings of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation last month.
The report alleges the probe into Mr Trump “uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election”.
The House Intelligence Committee voted to send its landmark report on Mr Trump’s conduct to the Judiciary Committee, which will write the articles of impeachment against the President.
At its heart, the 300-page report produced by chairman Adam Schiff’s panel lays out the case that Mr Trump misused the power of his office for personal political gain and obstructed Congress by stonewalling the proceedings like no other president in history.
The report does not offer a judgment on whether Mr Trump’s actions stemming from a July 25 phone call with Ukraine rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanours” warranting impeachment. The entire House will decide that question as soon as this month.
The Republicans’ sole witness to testify Wednesday, Jonathan Turley, a professor at the George Washington University Law School, said “we’re all mad” — but that doesn’t mean impeachment is the answer.
“I get it. You’re mad. The President’s mad. My Republican friends are mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog seems mad — and Luna is a golden doodle and they don’t get mad,” he said.
“So we’re are all mad, and where has it taken us? Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad? Will it only give an invitation for the madness to follow in every future administration?” he added. “This is not how you impeach an American president.
“President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come.”
Mr Trump slammed the case for his impeachment as a “joke” and lambasted his opponents for proceeding with hearings during his trip to a NATO summit in Britain.
“What they are doing is a very bad thing for our country,” he said when asked about the report from the House Intelligence Committee. “It’s a joke.”
Mr Trump said it was a “disgrace” that the House Judiciary Committee was holding a hearing Wednesday to consider drawing up articles of impeachment “when we are in London”.
House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins criticised Wednesday’s hearing during his opening statement by noting that it did not include any fact witnesses, only law professors who he claimed would likely just theorise about impeaching Mr Trump because they were too busy to digest all of the facts at hand.
Democrats claim Mr Trump held back nearly $400 million in military aid from the Ukraine as part of an alleged bribe for political gain. The President is also accused of soliciting foreign interference in the 2016 US election.
The inquiry focuses on a July 25 phone call in which Mr Trump asked Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky to carry out two investigations – which could allegedly benefit him politically – including one targeting Democratic political rival Joe Biden.
During the call, the President asked Mr Zelensky to do him a “favour” and investigate the origins of the Russia probe, which by July had already ended, and to investigate Mr Biden and his son Hunter, who served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company.
Prof. Pamela S. Karlan shutting #DougCollins down is the energy I needed today, "I read the transcripts... because I would not speak about these things w/o reviewing the facts. I'm insulted as a law professor that you'd think I wouldn't care about the facts." #ImpeachingHearings pic.twitter.com/YrG7bPD4An
— Maya Contreras (@mayatcontreras) December 4, 2019
True! https://t.co/Mr1L4Vv3eA
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2019
The requests came immediately after the Ukrainian President thanked Mr Trump for America’s defence support and said his country was “almost ready” to buy more US military technology. Mr Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and described the inquiry as a “witch hunt”.
Republicans on the Intelligence Committee released their own report, exonerating Mr Trump for his actions with Ukraine by saying the military aid was never used as leverage and was eventually released on September 11.
Mr Trump’s impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House would place the President on trial in the Senate, where a Republican majority could protect him from removal.
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