WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st November, 2019) The US House of Representatives vote to approve rules under which to investigate President Donald Trump will likely boost support to impeach him across the United States, Professor Marjorie Cohn, former head of National Lawyers' Guild, told Sputnik.
Earlier in the day, the House voted along strict party lines to approve the rules for conducting the impeachment process against Trump. Only two Democrats voted against the motion with 232 supporting it and all 194 Republicans opposing.
"The draft resolution calls for some public hearings, which will lead to even more public support for impeachment," Cohn, who is also emerita professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson school of Law, San Diego, California said on Thursday. "As witnesses continue to corroborate Trump's wrongdoing, the case for impeachment will grow even stronger."
President Richard Nixon was forced to resign before any impeachment process even started because of the steady accumulation of more widely publicized details discrediting him during the Watergate investigation in 1973-74, Cohn recalled.
"The televised Watergate hearings during the Nixon impeachment process increased public support for impeachment, although Nixon resigned before being impeached," she said.
The Republicans have been attacking the impeachment inquiry and they even challenged the House to take a formal vote on whether to proceed with the inquiry, Cohn acknowledged. But the decisive outcome of Thursday's vote suggested that this tactic had backfired on them, Cohn observed.
The Republicans, she argued, should have been careful about what they asked for because House Nancy Pelosi would not have called for Thursday's vote if she did not think she had the votes to pass the resolution.
"It appears that the House of Representatives is moving the process along since the presidential election is one year away," she added.
House Democrats launched the impeachment inquiry last month over a whistleblower complaint that accused Trump of threatening to freeze military aid to Ukraine if Kiev did not probe Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
