Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Wednesday that he was dropping a plan to send House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) a letter warning that Republicans wouldn’t remove Trump from office over a Ukraine phone call.
Graham, asked about the letter, told reporters that he was instead going to offer a resolution condemning the House’s impeachment inquiry process.
{mosads}”No, I’m going to do a resolution saying that the process I think is unfair,” Graham said, asked if he was still sending the letter to Pelosi.
Graham first floated the letter earlier this month during a “Fox & Friends” interview, saying that he was going to ask other Senate Republicans to sign a letter to Pelosi saying that they “do not believe the transcript of the phone call between the president and the Ukraine is an impeachable offense.”
“They’re about to destroy the nation for no good reason,” Graham said at the time. “And I want Nancy Pelosi to know that Republican senators are not going to impeach this president based on this transcript, so she can stop now before she destroys the country.”
House Democrats are in the middle of an impeachment inquiry centered on Trump asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to work with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to “look into” former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Democrats want to know if Trump tied aid to Ukraine to them opening an investigation.
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great,” Trump told Zelensky in the July 25 call according to notes released by the White House.
Graham has emerged as one of Trump’s loudest supporters in the Senate amid the House impeachment inquiry.
But his plan to send a letter drew pushback from some of his GOP colleagues during a closed-door lunch last week.
Republican senators
warned that the letter could be a distraction and divide a caucus that they felt had otherwise been largely unified so far on their impeachment messaging.
Senators also argued that the letter could highlight perceived splits in the caucus, based on who did or did not sign the letter.
Graham told The Hill last week that he was considering the feedback from his colleagues.
“Some people didn’t like the approach and I’m taking their concerns under advisement. And I’ll do what I’ll need to do,” he said.
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