CNN
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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ leadership team believed they had successfully convinced one of their famously rogue members — Rep. Shri Thanedar — not to force the party into an untimely vote on impeaching President Donald Trump.
Then Thanedar did it anyway.
The Michigan Democrat had personally signaled to his party’s leadership in recent weeks that he would not offer his articles of impeachment against Trump, according to three people familiar with the conversation.
But the two-term Michigan Democrat blindsided leadership and his Democratic colleagues when he decided to go ahead with the move anyways, the people familiar said. His maneuver — which comes as he faces a tough primary challenger this cycle — will now force the full House to take a vote later Wednesday on whether to advance those impeachment articles.
“I have zero patience for distractions. Any Democrat not focused on getting us to 218 is either wasting our time or helping Republicans — and either way, it’s hurting the mission,” Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona, who leads the centrist New Democrat Coalition’s political arm, told CNN.
In a private Democratic meeting Wednesday morning, multiple lawmakers fumed at the prospect of interrupting their week-long push against the GOP’s tax and spending cuts bill to vote on an unrelated Trump impeachment vote.
Even Rep. Jerry Nadler — the top Democrat on House Judiciary who led the charge against impeaching Trump in 2019 — stood up in front of his colleagues and called the idea “idiotic,” according to a person who was in the room. Nadler was met with applause from the room after his remarks.
The frustration is so high among Jeffries’ leadership team that party leaders have encouraged rank-and-file Democrats — particularly those in competitive seats — that they should express their concerns to Thanedar “strongly and directly,” according to two people familiar with those discussions.
Many Democrats are still hoping that Thanedar doesn’t physically show up to force the vote later Wednesday – which would mean the full House wouldn’t need to vote after all.
CNN has reached out to Thanedar for comment.
Asked Wednesday whether Democratic leadership had attempted to talk him out of the move, Thanedar said: “They would like to focus on Medicaid and focus on SNAP and not so much on this, but this is a process. It’s not going to happen tomorrow or Thursday, but it’s a start.”
“We get into fights where we may or may not win. We’re not only going to fight the winning fights, we’re going to do it because it’s the right thing to do,” Thanedar told CNN of his efforts.
Asked about whether it will help him in a primary, he said: “Primary’s not even for 15 more months. Nobody remembers what happened 15 months ago.”
CNN’s Manu Raju and Alison Main contributed to this report.
