House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday named impeachment managers to make the House’s case in the upcoming Senate trial.
The seven managers will be Democratic Representatives Jerry Nadler and Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren of California, Val Demings of Florida, Sylvia Garcia of Texas, and Jason Crow of Colorado, according to a statement from Pelosi’s press office. All the managers are from safe Democratic districts except for Crow, who won election by two percentage points in a district outside of Denver.
Absent from the list of managers was Michigan Representative Justin Amash, a former Republican and current Independent who Democrats had considered for the role to present the impeachment process in a less partisan light.
Pelosi told reporters during a Wednesday press conference that the rebuke of President Trump would be “an impeachment that will last forever.”
“The House has demonstrated its courage and patriotism,” Pelosi said in a press release. “Our Managers reflect those values, and will now honor their responsibility to defend democracy For The People with great seriousness, solemnity and moral strength.”
Lofgren is the only Representative to have participated in the impeachment proceedings against Presidents Nixon, Clinton and Trump. In the 1974 as a law student she helped the House Judiciary Committee draft one of the charges against Nixon, while she sat on the committee when it voted to approve articles of impeachment against Clinton. Lofgren voted against the Clinton articles.
In response to the announcement, President Trump on Wednesday wrote on Twitter that the Democrat-led impeachment process is a “con-job.”
“President Trump has done nothing wrong,” read a statement from the White House. “He looks forward to having the due process rights in the Senate that Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats denied to him, and expects to be fully exonerated.”
If the process moves on schedule, the articles of impeachment will be ceremonially brought into the Senate on Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, Senators Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) sent out a joint letter detailing procedural matters pertaining to the trial.