House Democratic leaders are planning a relatively speedy impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to get dirt on a political rival. The question is how speedy, and what it will entail. Part of that means focusing exclusively on Ukraine, The Washington Post reports, with a group of House members from battleground districts urging leadership “to keep the messaging around impeachment on national security and the Ukraine probe being led by the House Intelligence Committee and Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) — not on the litany of potential Trump offenses being investigated by other panels.”
Under that plan, investigations into Trump’s finances and potential money laundering, his efforts to profit off the presidency, his hush money payoff to Stormy Daniels, and his obstruction of justice in the investigation into Russian election interference could continue to be investigated, but if the Ukraine investigation moves quickly, those other investigations would be left behind, and in the meantime they would be the subject of reduced focus and few if any public hearings. The calculation there seems to be that the public will respond poorly to the impression (which would be aggressively nurtured by Republicans) of an unfocused investigation searching too broadly for any dirt on Trump—but the problem is that virtually any of those investigations could lead to information that would be impeachable in a world in which any Republicans were ever willing to hold a member of their own party accountable, so leaving them by the wayside has some costs.
The bigger question is what the “need for speed,” as one aide put it, in the Ukraine inquiry will mean. Pelosi told reporters on Thursday that “the facts will determine the timeline.” Democrats are reportedly seeking to balance the concern that too sprawling a set of inquiries might be too much for voters to wrap their heads around with the concern that too quick an investigation could leave the impression of a rush to judgment (a message the Republicans are already pushing on a media that so often embraces Republican talking points). “This process is going to take time. Nobody knows how long it will take to shift public opinion,” a “senior Democratic aide familiar with discussions among the party’s moderate wing” told The Washington Post. Polls show that public opinion has shifted quickly in favor of impeachment, a shift that has to be built on—as many have noted in recent weeks, support for impeaching Richard Nixon gained ground with the public as a result of highly public impeachment hearings. Democrats have to be willing to ignore the dire warnings of political disaster if they pursue impeachment and look at both this week’s polls and history.
It will be a challenge to capitalize on momentum and not let the public get inured to the seriousness of what Trump did without moving too quickly and leaving stones unturned, but Democrats have to strike that balance.