Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Senior Member of the House Committees on Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Budget, issued this statement following today’s hearing where the Judiciary Committee received evidence in the impeachment investigation of the President of the United States:

Earlier today, the House Committee on the Judiciary, of which I am a senior member, held another of its hearing in the Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald Trump, and whether the President should be impeached from office. Today, the Committee heard from witnesses who took participated in the investigation of the President and his close associates. The uncontroverted evidence demonstrates that the President sought to manipulate federal aid, appropriated by the Congress of the United States, to serve his own personal goals, over the foreign policy goals of the United States of America. He did this to the detriment of our ally, Ukraine, which ultimately benefitted our implacable foe: Russia. He has then orchestrated a widespread campaign to obstruct congressional discovery of his wrongdoing. By so doing, he has sought the help of a foreign government to interfere in our elections.

“My colleagues on the other side of the political aisle have cited the nation’s economic metrics as a reason not to impeach the President; or they have proffered a series of procedural excuses for why the President’s conduct did not constitute impeachable conduct. Predictably, however, their complaints fall under even the slightest scrutiny. The facts remain unchanged and formidable: the President’s abuse of power threatened the democratic system of government—the power to have and hold free and fair elections; by withholding aid to our ally the President endangered the national security of the United States; and, the act is yet another in a series of acts designed to placate Vladimir Putin and Russia—both which are unanimously blamed by the American intelligence community for interfering in the 2016 election, and did so to help Trump and harm the candidacy of Secretary Hillary Clinton.

“This is a sober and somber time. The uncontested facts show that the President has engaged in a pattern of wrong doing which violates the solemn oath of office he took. For the first two years of this President’s term in office, he evaded accountability for his misconduct. That time has ended and he will now be held to account, For The People. Today’s hearing was yet another step towards that accountability.”