The White House press secretary said there is frustration over the closed doors impeachment inquiry in the House.
“It’s hard to message anything that’s going on behind closed doors and in secret,” Grisham told Fox. “It’s like you’re fighting a ghost, you’re fighting against the air. So we’re doing the best we can.”
Congressional Republicans and Trump have blasted Democrats for not holding impeachment hearings and depositions in public or not voting to launch an inquiry. It culminated on Wednesday when a number of House Republicans gathered at a private House hearing and attempted to listen in on testimony. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said a vote it isn’t required under the rules.
Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a resolution condemning Democrats’ handling of the investigation, saying that more than 40 GOP Senators are willing to sign on.
“What you’re doing today, in my view, is unfair to the president is dangerous to the presidency,” Graham said at a press conference before adding “there’s a way to do it—a right way and a wrong way—and you’ve chosen the wrong way.”
If Republicans did the same as the House Democrats, Graham claimed the mainstream media “would be beating the [expletive] out of all of us.”
“The purpose of the resolution is to let the House know that the process you’re engaging in regarding the attempted impeachment of President Trump is out-of-bounds, inconsistent with due process as we know it,” Graham said. “It’s a substantial deviation from what the House has done in the past regarding impeachment of other presidents.”
“God help future presidents,” he also told reporters.
The nonbinding resolution gives Senate Republicans a chance to show support for President Trump at a moment when Trump is urging his GOP allies to get tougher and fight harder for him as the House impeachment probe continues.
Graham previously said that Congress has set precedent for how impeachment proceedings should be handled, noting how it was done during the cases of former President Andrew Johnson, former President Richard Nixon, and former President Bill Clinton.
The current format of the impeachment inquiry, he argued, is illegitimate because “Republicans are being shut out.”
A resolution in the Senate would need at least 60 votes to pass.
