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BREAKING: House Dems to Meet at 4pm Today to Talk Impeachment

Several key Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi will meet at 4pm EST today to discuss impeachment.

Per AP, President Donald Trump ordered his staff to freeze nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine a few days before a phone call in which he pressured the Eastern European nation’s leader to investigate the family of political rival Joe Biden, a revelation that comes as more Democrats move toward impeachment proceedings.

Trump’s order was first reported by The Washington Post and was confirmed to The Associated Press by two people familiar with but not authorized to discuss private conversations. They spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Late Monday, an influential group of freshmen Democrats who served in the military and national security before winning office said Trump’s actions cut to the core of the country’s defenses. Their views, as centrist lawmakers from previously Republican-held districts where Trump has been popular, hold sway with party leadership.

Jon Cooper of the Democratic coalition organization tweeted:

BOOM!! One more tonight — with @RosaDeLauro, we now have 157 House members supporting impeachment proceedings!

NBC reports House Democrats began a potentially pivotal week on Capitol Hill Monday as frustration mounted within the caucus over the slow pace of the impeachment inquiry process against President Donald Trump. Rank-and-file members demanded the release of a recent intelligence community whistleblower complaint against the president.

The pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to accelerate the methodical investigation into the president and his administration — a pace she has argued is necessary to build a case strong enough to win over public support on impeachment — has dramatically escalated over the past week, after Democrats were told that the whistleblower’s complaint would not be released to Congress, as required by law.

Per FoxNews, a slew of key swing-district Democrats late Monday threw their support en masse behind opening a formal impeachment inquiry, as The New York TimesThe Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal reported in the evening that President Trump personally ordered acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to freeze nearly $400M in military aid to Ukraine just days before he pressed the new Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The rapid-fire declarations by the influential Democrats, after seemingly months of teetering on the brink, came just a day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi strongly suggested she was now warming to the idea of impeaching the president. Speaking to Fox News, a House Democratic leadership aide confirmed that the Democratic caucus will meet Tuesday afternoon to discuss the Ukraine matter and how to proceed.

“The horse is out of the barn,” said former Hillary Clinton pollster and strategist Geoff Garin. “Saddle up.”

In remarks to reporters at the United Nations on Monday, Trump denied linking the aid money to Ukraine’s investigative actions. “No, I didn’t — I didn’t do it,” Trump said. He also called the Bidens’ actions in Ukraine a “disgrace,” and added: “It’s very important to talk about corruption. … Why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”

Joe Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president, he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, while Shokin was investigating the natural gas firm Burisma Holdings — where Hunter Biden was on the board.

Trump has long said he wants European countries to pay more for their own defense, and an administration official told the Journal that Trump’s actions on the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July “reflected the president’s concerns about how the U.S. is spending aid money and whether U.S. allies are adequately contributing.”

Another official told the paper that the Trump administration internally maintained at the time that Ukraine’s corruption problems were a consideration in the aid decision. Trump’s decision to freeze Ukraine funding reportedly came more than a week before his call with Zelensky.

This article was written by the staff of TheConservativeOpinion.com 

By Kambree Nelson

Source: theconservativeopinion

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