Latest Trump Impeachment News: President's Lawyer Tells Democrats To End 'Charade'

The White House late Friday told Democrats they’ve wasted enough time and should end the House impeachment inquiry.

Shortly before a 5 p.m. EST deadline for informing the House Judiciary Committee about whether President Trump would defend himself at next week’s scheduled hearings, White House counsel Pat Cipollone appeared to reject participation.

“House Democrats have wasted enough of America’s time with this charade,” Cipollone wrote in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. “You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings.”

The letter came one day after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi directed the lawmakers to begin drafting articles of impeachment. On Wednesday, the panel held a hearing on the constitutional basis for impeach and history of past impeachment inquiries. Three of the four professors testifying said Trump’s actions toward Ukraine met the threshold of impeachable offenses.

The letter said adopting articles of impeachment would be “reckless” and an “abuse of power by House Democrats.”

The letter did not explicitly say Trump would not participate but called the investigation a “charade.”

Throughout the impeachment process, the White House and Republicans have complained the president had not been allowed to participate to defend himself. Trump has refused to cooperate with investigators, ordering administration officials not to testify and declining to turn over subpoenaed documents.

Trump Thursday urged the Democrats to impeachment quickly so that a trial could be held in the Republican-controlled Senate.

At issue is whether Trump abused the power of his office by withholding $391 in military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s agreement to announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to benefit Trump’s 2020 re-election effort.

Senate Republicans plan to call as witnesses the whistleblower whose complaint touched off the inquiry as well as Biden’s son, Hunter, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led a two-month investigation of Trump’s actions.