WASHINGTON (CN) – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi chose seven lawmakers from her Democratic caucus Wednesday to serve as impeachment managers in the Senate trial of President Donald Trump.
Representative Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, will lead the team, only one of whom is not a lawyer. The other members of the team are Representatives Jerry Nadler, who chairs the Judiciary Committee; Hakeem Jeffries, who clerked for a respected judge in the Southern District of New York; Val Demings, a former law enforcement officer in Florida; Zoe Lofgren, who was a House staffer during the impeachment of President Richard Nixon; Jason Crow, a litigator in private practice; and Sylvia Garcia, the first woman to be elected to the Harris County Commissioner's Court.
In announcing her picks this morning, Pelosi emphasized the evidence that has trickled into House committees during the month since Trump’s impeachment.
"Time has been our friend in all of this because it wielded incriminating evidence, more truth into the public domain," Pelosi said.
Among other evidence, White House emails shaken loose through litigation by the nonprofit Center on Public Integrity have shown that Trump’s political appointee at the Office of Management and Budget ordered a hold on aid to Ukraine some 90 minutes after the July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani’s under indictment in the Southern District of New York, has been cooperating with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s continuing investigation. Just Tuesday night, the House Committees last night strengthened the links between Trump and the scandal that sparked his impeachment for abuse of power with the release of an explosive trove of evidence.
The batch of files exposed covert surveillance of ousted U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, ties to a Russian mafia-linked oligarch under federal indictment and intimate details of the pressure campaign on newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Impeachment managers lay out the case for removal from office at a Senate trial.
With today's announcement, Democrats have chosen their team to act effectively as the president's prosecutors.
The White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, will select their team serving essentially as Trump's defense attorneys at some unspecified time.
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