Rep. Elissa Slotkin won a narrow victory over a Republican incumbent in 2018 in a district that Donald Trump won in 2016. But the Michigan Democrat isn’t letting narrow political fear drive her decision on impeachment. In an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press, Slotkin lets her constituents know not just that she will vote to impeach, but why, and how she came to the decision.
Slotkin cites her experience as a CIA analyst who worked under both Democratic and Republican presidents, saying that she used that training as she “took a step back, looked at the full body of available information, and tried to make an objective decision on my vote.” That full body of available information included not just the reports and transcripts from this impeachment inquiry, but articles of impeachment from past presidencies, as well as the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and more.
After all that, Slotkin decided to vote yes on both articles of impeachment.
On abuse of power, she writes, Trump’s “first-person statements, on top of the raft of first- and second-hand accounts provided in sworn testimony, paint a clear picture of a president abusing the power of his office for personal political gain.” Those statements include not just the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky but Trump’s statements to the press, like publicly calling on China to investigate his political rivals.
On obstruction of Congress, “As I went back and did my research on the previous impeachment processes, it became clear that, in contrast to the proceedings against Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Clinton, President Trump sent out unprecedented guidance to refuse and ignore the requests and subpoenas of the inquiry. He did this even though the Constitution gives the House of Representatives the ‘sole power of impeachment,’” Slotkin writes, continuing that “While the President may not have liked the inquiry, he broke with 100 years of tradition by ignoring the subpoenas, and in doing so, obstructed Congress’ authorities.”
Slotkin acknowledges that, coming from the red district she does, this decision may endanger her re-election chances. But “There are some decisions in life that have to be made based on what you know in your bones is right. And this is one of those times.”