Rep. Goodlatte: Initiate investigation of the violation of our election laws

In 1967 I was elected to the House of Representatives, to serve there with honorable people like George H.W. Bush, Gerry Ford and Bob Dole. My family had been Republicans since the time of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. I left the Party in 2007 when my former colleagues, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld persuaded George W. Bush to claim the right to torture as a Presidential prerogative. His father would never have done that.

In June, 1973, I had made the first floor speech to suggest the impeachment of Richard Nixon for obstruction of justice. A year later, the House Judiciary Committee, with four Republicans, including later Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen, voting Aye, impeached Nixon on the charge of obstruction of justice.

Now I'm urging Republicans to do some soul-searching about what should be a fairly simple decision...to support, rather than continue to block committee investigations, not just into President Trump's actions, but into the now-admitted fact that his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and son, Donald Jr. attended a meeting with a known Russian agent, to solicit information (clearly an item of value in a tough campaign) from an enemy government seeking to influence our political process. This is clearly a violation of our election laws.

More importantly, it justifies inquiry, as the Senate has agreed, by not just their Intelligence Committee, but by the House Judiciary Committee, which will also have jurisdiction over impeachment proceedings if the facts ultimately show obstruction of justice by President Trump.

I therefore ask if you will join me in this petition to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Goodlatte, asking him to initiate an immediate investigation of the violation of our election laws by people of either party in assisting the Russian invasion of our electoral process, with all hearings to be public

Respectfully,

Pete McCloskey, Republican Member of Congress, 1967-83