Republican Rep. John Katko’s complaint with how Democrats are handling the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump is based, largely, on process.
Katko told reporters in central New York on Monday that Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives are, in essence, putting the horse before the cart on the investigation.
“I’m not saying don’t look into the facts,” Katko said. “I mean, they’ve had 22 investigations into this president. They know how to investigate. But when you start an impeachment proceeding at the beginning of an investigation, that means it’s a foregone conclusion and that’s never happened in our nation’s history. That’s why it smacks of politics.”
Katko compared the effort by Democrats to his time as a federal prosecutor and the gang prosecutions he led.
“Do the thorough investigation like I would do on every case,” he said. “I would never pull the trigger on a case until I’ve done a very thorough investigation.”
It’s a complaint that’s not based on the substance of what Trump is alleged to have done — seek to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden — but rather how Democrats are handling the investigation itself.
Katko called both whistleblower complaint and the rough transcript of the call between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart insufficient to begin impeachment. Still, he pointedly did not rule out further investigation of what happened.
Katko was re-elected last year to a central New York House seat that has been for either party one of the most tenuous perches in New York congressional politics. The seat has reliably changed hands for several election cycles between Democrats and Republicans every two years until Katko broke the streak and was re-elected in 2018.
His comments on Monday were in comparison to Republican Rep. Tom Reed, who represents a more conservative district in the Southern Tier and western New York regions. Reed told reporters he has read both the transcript and the complaint.
“I just don’t see that high crimes, impeachable type of offense here,” he said. “To see folks going down this impeachment process, it’s very troublesome to me. The country’s already divided.”