Sunday Talk Shows

Hoyer: We are going to move as fast ‘as the facts and truth dictate’ on open hearings

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Sunday would not commit to a timeline on open hearings in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

“Time is not constraining us, the truth and the facts are constraining us. We are going to move as soon as the facts and the truth dictate,” Hoyer said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

{mosads}“When [Intelligence Committee Chair] Adam Schiff [D-Calif.] is determined that he is through what he needs to have in terms of testimony and evidence, he will then, pursuant to the resolution, submit it to the Judiciary Committee and the Judiciary Committee will proceed in a manner giving the rights to the president and the Republicans that exceed, frankly, the rights that were available to the minority” during the Clinton impeachment, he added.

Pressed by host Margaret Brennan on the short amount of time left before the Thanksgiving holiday, Hoyer responded: “You ask me a question I don’t know the answer to, because I don’t know what witnesses are going to come forward, what they’re going to say.”

Hoyer also said Republicans didn’t vote in favor of inquiry rules last week because House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told them it was a “procedural vote.”

House Democrats in September opened a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump amid allegations he pressured Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden and his son.