WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- Lindsey Graham, U.S. Republican senator and an ally of President Donald Trump, said Wednesday he will issue a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, notifying the Democratic congresswoman that Senate Republicans will not support impeaching the president.
In an appearance on Fox News "Fox & Friends" program, Graham, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he wants Pelosi "to know that Republican senators are not going to impeach this president based on" the transcript of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25.
Urging House Democrats to hold a vote on impeachment to make the ongoing impeachment inquiry "legitimate," Graham said he will ask Senate Republicans to sign a letter to Pelosi saying they "do not believe the transcript of the phone call between the president and the Ukraine is an impeachable offense."
"They're about to destroy the nation for no good reason," the senator said of the Democrats. "I've read the transcript. I do not see anything wrong there."
Controversies surrounding the Trump-Zelensky conversation - which also involved interactions between U.S. and Ukrainian officials before and after the call - were revealed by an anonymous whistleblower complaint filed in August, which triggered a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump announced by Pelosi on Sept. 24.
Trump requested that Zelensky cooperate with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and U.S. Attorney General William Barr to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, according to a rough transcript of the call released by the White House. Zelensky, in response, pledged to Trump that his government would look specifically into Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company for which Hunter Biden once worked and which had been accused of corruption,
The president also asked his counterpart to do the United States a "favor" by finding out "what happened with" the computer server used by the Democratic National Committee that investigators probing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election believed was hacked by Russia. "The server, they say Ukraine has it," Trump told Zelensky, the transcript showed.
Graham said that he talked to Giuliani on Tuesday, and that the lawyer claimed to have "a lot of evidence about corruption in the Ukraine that ties back to the Democrats." He said he would like Giuliani to testify on those issues before his committee, where he said the lawyer would be "respectfully treated."
Pelosi on Tuesday slammed a White House letter sent to her the same day saying Trump and his administration won't cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. She said the White House was engaged in "continued efforts to hide the truth of the President's abuse of power from the American people," adding that such actions "will be regarded as further evidence of obstruction."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has said the Senate will have to hold an impeachment trial if the House passed a resolution to remove Trump from office, also blasted the Democrats' efforts against the president.
"Overturning the results of an American election requires the highest level of fairness and due process, as it strikes at the core of our democratic process," the Kentucky Republican tweeted Tuesday. "So far, the House has fallen far short by failing to follow the same basic procedures that it has followed for every other President in our history."
In order to impeach the president, the House will have to pass articles of impeachment, which Trump has admitted the Democratic-controlled House has enough votes to realize. Then the Senate is required by law to hold a trial, and the president will be removed only if two-thirds of the senators voted in support of the impeachment.
Republicans now control the Senate by holding 53 percent of the voting share, meaning Trump would survive an impeachment if the senators voted along party lines.
