Free Speech For People Legal Director Ron Fein appeared on Rising Up With Sonali to discuss the first day of public hearings for the ongoing impeachment investigation of Donald Trump.

Wednesday’s public testimony featured acting U.S Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent who gave Congress their accounts of incidents surrounding the Ukraine scandal.

In his discussion with Sonali Kolhatkar, Fein expressed that, “A lot of what we heard from both Taylor and Kent, the other official who testified, is consistent with what we’ve already learned…President Trump led and directed an orchestrated effort to pressure, bribe, and extort the government of Ukraine into publicly announcing what were ultimately spurious allegations or investigations of his principal domestic political opponent…”

The House of Representatives officially launched an impeachment inquiry after an anonymous whistleblower reported a phone conversation in which President Trump pressured the President of Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden. The allegation was subsequently confirmed by a call summary released by the White House. This week’s public testimonies again corroborated that abuse of power.

During the discussion, Fein spoke about Congress’ duty to expand the scope of its inquiry beyond the Ukraine scandal. This week a coalition of national advocacy groups including FSFP published draft articles of impeachment as a framework for Congress to hold Trump fully accountable. 

“The Impeachment For The People articles that we have presented cover a broad range of Trump’s impeachable misconduct. It includes Ukraine but it includes much more,” said Fein.

“These include things like abuse of office to direct law enforcement to harass and investigate his political opponents and the press…it includes corruption of electoral processes…it includes some of his abuses of office to promote discrimination, hostility or violence on the bases of race, color, religion or national origin…” he said.

Watch Ron Fein’s discussion on Rising Up with Sonali below.

 

Analyzing Day 1 of Public Impeachment Hearings from Rising Up With Sonali on Vimeo.