Abbe Lowell, who was Chief Minority Counsel for the House Democrats during the Clinton impeachment process, said current Dems made a mistake in the years-long lead up to the impeachment process against President Donald Trump.
“The Democrats, in my opinion, did not do themselves any good by starting a process that, number one, had them all stating for the last two-and-a-half-years that anything and everything was going to lead to, or be an impeachment,” he said on the new episode of impeachment expert Ross Garber‘s podcast Real Impeachment. Lowell argued that Dems “chipped away” at their credibility, and left themselves open to the GOP counterargument that impeachment proceedings were partisan.
He did argue that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi attempted “admirably not to let this be, ‘We’ll impeach him over anything and everything.’ And it finally got to the point where an event occurred, which made it different in her mind, and in the mind of the other Democratic leaders. That said, you still have all those people who wanted to impeach the president over anything.”
You can listen to the relevant clip in the audio above. You can also check out the full episode here. The relevant quote happens right after 30:00.
Lowell has his own ties to the Trump team even though he’s a Democrat. The attorney, a white collar defense lawyer with the law firm Winston & Strawn, represented the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner amid Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Trump faces impeachment hearings after asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to have former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden investigated. He denied doing this as a quid pro quo for military aide.
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