Utah Delegation Reacts to Impeachment Inquiry

Updated 5:40 p.m. MDT 9/25/19: U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opened an impeachment inquiry Tuesday into President Donald Trump. So far, only half of Utah’s delegation have made statements regarding the development.

Rep. Chris Stewart, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote in a Tuesday tweet that he does not want to draw any conclusions, but claims to be committed to uncovering the facts.

In an interview with CNN, Stewart said of the allegation "I'm not saying this is nothing ... I'm simply asking people to not draw conclusions before they know anything about this."

But when KUER spoke with the Congressman on Wednesday, he also said he’s worried that the impeachment inquiry is politically motivated.
 
"Some people have been seeking this president's impeachment since the day he was elected," Stewart said. "And so my position is just like it was [Tuesday], and that was if you call for impeachment based on this, you're being completely unfair and frankly just entirely political."
 

Rep. Rob Bishop has rejected the notion of an impeachment according to a press release on Tuesday. He said that the inquiry is “a political effort to minimize the voice of the people.” According to Bishop, “Impeachment is the ultimate power Congress has over a president and should be used as a last resort, not for purely political purposes.”

On Wednesday, Rep. John Curtis introduced a resolution to send the whistleblower report to the House and Senate. In a press release Tuesday, he said he has “the utmost confidence in the investigative tools Congress has at its disposal to help us determine the facts.”

 
Utah’s lone Democrat, Rep. Ben McAdams, released a statement Wednesday afternoon. He said he supports the House resolution to release the whistleblower complaint. But he added that while the transcript suggests President Trump may have been “improperly using his influence … we need to get all the facts on the table before deciding how to proceed.”

In an online town hall Wednesday evening, Sen. Mike Lee said that he doesn’t see the transcript as a problem for the President, and that he thinks the impeachment proceedings will backfire.

“If the House Democrats are foolish enough to bring impeachment charges on the basis of this, I don’t think that’s going to help their cause, and I think that the American people are going to see that this is something that will ultimately help Donald Trump, not hurt him. I don’t think that’s what they want.”

In a brief interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, Sen. Mitt Romney said he found the memo from President Trump to be “deeply troubling.”

Since the inquiry, however, Romney has not released any official statements about the impeachment proceedings.