Trump ally Lindsey Graham lashes out at Democrats’ impeachment inquiry: ‘It’s a danger to the presidency’

Lindsey Graham has lashed out at the Democrat-backed impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives, calling the effort to indict Donald Trump “out of bounds” and a danger to the American presidency.

The strong words accompanied a measure he introduced in the Senate to formally condemn the inquiry for being run behind closed doors, and come as the president has publicly chided his Republican backers to defend him more strongly against the attacks that have left the White House scrambling for a working defence to the probe that has jeopardised his time in office and derailed the likelihood of any major legislative victories before the election next year.

“What you’re doing today, in my view, is unfair to the president, is dangerous to the presidency, and I think 41 Republican senators and growing is a strong signal to our House colleagues that you’re off script here,” Mr Graham said during a press conference on Capitol Hill, referring to the number of co-sponsors he has so far attracted to his resolution.

The South Carolina senator, who has emerged as a fervent defender of the president, claimed during that conference that the president was being treated unfairly by the press, and said that Mr Trump had not been given the same level of transparency and due process as past presidents facing impeachment.

“If we pulled this stunt, you would be eating us alive,” Mr Graham said, chiding Democrats for what he described as selectively leaking portions of the closed-door testimonies from top State Department officials.

The House impeachment inquiry was announced last month and House members have been conducting interviews as part of that investigation since. Should they choose to proceed, Democrats would introduce formal articles of impeachment and probably conduct further hearings in public.

Democrats are looking into whether Mr Trump inappropriately used his office to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, a potential political rival in the 2020 general election. And, although the White House has attempted to block top State Department officials from testifying about their interactions with the White House in relation to Ukraine, a string of high-ranking officials have chosen to cooperate anyway, raising significant concerns for the president.

Among those who have cooperated with the probe is Bill Taylor, the top diplomat to Ukraine, who testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. Mr Taylor, according to his prepared remarks to the committee that have since been leaked to the press, indicated that the White House had expressed explicitly that $391 million in military aide to Ukraine was contingent upon Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky announcing publicly that his government was investigating the Bidens. Mr Trump has accused Mr Biden, without proof, of abusing his power as vice president in order to benefit the Ukrainian oil company Burisma, which at the time employed his son, Hunter Biden.

That testimony — alongside closed-door remarks from America’s EU ambassador Gordan Sondland and former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch — has raised alarm among Republicans in Washington, many of whom have told reporters in recent days that they are struggling to defend Mr Trump in light of revelations like those from Mr Taylor that allege a quid pro quo.

“How do you defend the indefensible?” one Republican source told CNN following Mr Taylor’s testimony. “We can’t defend the substance, all we can do is talk about process.”

It is in that spirit that Republicans have acted, with Mr Graham’s resolution condemning the process coming just a day after a crew of House Republicans stormed a secure Capitol Hill facility, interrupting the closed-door deposition of Laura Cooper, a Pentagon official with jurisdiction over Ukraine. The efforts, which were largely dismissed as a political ploy to distract and derail the testimony, was led by Trump ally and representative Matt Gaetz. The gambit sought to draw attention to the apparent secrecy of the testimony, even though several of the Republicans would have been able to sit in on the testimony since they are members of the committee conducting the hearing.

Mr Graham’s continued support for the president comes after the two publicly clashed over Mr Trump’s decision to pull American troops out of Syria, which was and continues to be seen as a decision that has put American-allied Kurdish fighters who helped fight back against Isis at risk. That decision, while technically unrelated to the Ukrainian fiasco, was widely derided by Republicans in Congress, and raised the prospect that they could be pushed to abandon the president just as he faces down perhaps the toughest political fight of his career.

The resolution’s support in the Senate shows that it remains unlikely that the president would be removed from office, as it would require two-thirds of the Senate to convict Mr Trump on impeachment. Democrats could, however, vote to impeach Mr Trump with a simple majority in the House.