Conor Lamb supports impeachment: 'What the president did was wrong'

U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb said Thursday he plans to vote in favor of both impeachment articles Democrats plan to lodge against President Donald Trump.

The Mt. Lebanon Democrat — a rising-star politician serving his first full year in Congress — said the last few weeks of evidence and testimony in Washington convinced him that Trump should be removed from office for abusing his power and endangering the American people.

“I did not come to Congress to impeach the president,” Lamb said in a statement. “But, I took an oath to protect our country and defend the Constitution. What the president did was wrong. It made our country less safe.”

Lamb, 35, who ascended to office by winning over areas where Trump clinched victories in 2016, joins at least seven House Democrats who now say they will support the impeachment articles expected to go before the full House next week.

“I believe that the evidence is overwhelming that the president abused his power and obstructed Congress, both of which are impeachable offenses under the Constitution,” U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, a Democrat from Forest Hills, said in a statement echoing Lamb’s concerns.

Two House Democrats, northeastern Pennsylvania Rep. Matt Cartwright and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of the Philadelphia suburbs, have declined to say how they will vote as of late Thursday, the Associated Press reports.

Meanwhile, all nine Republican House members from Pennsylvania have declared they will vote against impeachment.

Political backlash at stake

Lamb flipped a historically red region blue by ousting two Trump-backed candidates in back-to-back special and general elections in the spring and fall of last year. The former federal prosecutor and Marine campaigned as a moderate willing to cross party lines.

Around the country, federal lawmakers in highly polarized, politically divided districts like Lamb’s tend to be less vocal about hot-button issues for fear of political repercussions, said Adam Schiffer, associate professor of political science at Texas Christian University.

“Ultimately, everybody has to take a vote, and it’s hardest for somebody like Lamb,” said Schiffer, whose focus areas include electoral behavior, the national news media and U.S. presidential politics. “People like Lamb obviously are cross-pressured. Folks like that often tend to not want to comment on things like this. They’d rather work on passing bills that are good for their constituents or taking relatively non-controversial stances.”

If Lamb had decided against impeachment, “he would almost certainly have primary challengers lining up against him” and face staunch backlash from fellow Democratic supporters and funders, Schiffer said.

But by being vocal about his support for impeachment, Lamb risks alienating voters who continue to support Trump, as well as those who dismiss impeachment as neither pragmatic nor necessary.

“The parties need those moderates the most,” Schiffer said. “They’re the ones who are determining the majority control of Congress.”

Impeachment ‘extremely important’ to both parties

A recent New York Times survey based on responses from more than 110,000 people found that “impeachment is extremely important to both parties” — just for very different reasons, Schiffer said.

A majority of Democrats view impeaching Trump to be a policy priority. Devoted Trump supporters say impeachment absolutely should not happen, that Trump is “great, he’s totally innocent, the other side is out to get him, they’re lying,” Schiffer said.

“But for the more ambivalent Republicans — say, the suburbanites who voted for Trump somewhat reluctantly — it is probably more of a sense of what Democrats said during the (former President Bill) Clinton impeachment. They may be thinking, ‘Yeah, this was wrong, but it doesn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense,’ ” Schiffer said.

To those questioning whether the impeachment inquiry is a waste of time, Lamb said that it “is not stopping us from getting good, bipartisan work done.” He cited bipartisan collaboration on a recent trade deal and a planned vote on a bill to slash prescription drug prices and add dental and hearing benefits to Medicare plans.

Thursday night’s anticipated party-line vote by the House Judiciary Committee tees up a full House vote next week.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sounded confident that Democrats will have the votes to impeach the president without Republican support, but she said it is up to individual lawmakers to weigh the evidence.

Democrats pointed out that the investigations go back to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the 2016 election that put Trump in the White House. They say his dealings with Ukraine have benefited its aggressive neighbor Russia, not the U.S., and he must be prevented from “corrupting” U.S. elections again and cheating his way to a second term next year.

Lamb said he believes “the president withheld weapons from the Ukrainians, even though Congress agreed that the weapons were needed to fight the Russians.”

“Instead of using his office to oppose Russian aggression, the president used it to oppose his political opponent,” Lamb said. “This served his personal interests, but not our national security interests. The president has admitted these facts and refuses to acknowledge that he did anything wrong.”

Trump has refused to participate in the proceedings, tweeting criticisms as he did Thursday from the sidelines.

The Judiciary Committee session drew out over two days, with both sides appealing to Americans’ sense of history. Democrats described a sense of duty to stop what one called the president’s “constitutional crime spree,” and Republicans decried what one referred to as a “hot garbage’’ impeachment attempt.

Trump, apparently watching the live proceedings on television, tweeted his criticism of two Democratic women on the panel, Reps. Veronica Escobar and Sheila Jackson Lee, both of Texas. He called their comments about his actions inaccurate.

“Very sad,” Trump tweeted.