Hearst TV’s WCVB 5, in Boston, aired a segment on our annotation of President Donald Trump’s Dec. 17 letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the impeachment vote. The collaboration is part of FactCheck.org’s 2020 election partnership with Hearst Television Inc.
In the video, Hearst highlights Trump’s statement: “This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers.” Hearst points out, as we did in our annotation, that the Constitution gives the House of Representatives “the sole Power of Impeachment.”
Trump also said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “has repeatedly declared that I did nothing wrong, and that there was No Pressure.” Zelensky has said that he did not feel pressured by Trump, but he took issue with Trump’s hold on military aid to his country. “We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness,” Zelensky said.
The Hearst video segment also looked at Trump’s claim that Rep. Adam Schiff went “so far as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with” Zelensky. Schiff did give his own version of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky, admitting in a congressional hearing that his retelling of the call “was meant to be at least part in parody.”
Trump repeated one of his worst falsehoods of the year in claiming that the whistleblower’s report of the July 25 phone call “bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made.” In fact, the White House memo on the call, which Trump released, corroborates the whistleblower’s three main points about the call. And Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified that the whistleblower’s complaint “is in alignment with” the White House memo.
Watch the full video here. For more on Trump’s letter, see our annotation.