Democrats look to next steps in impeachment

President Trump’s critics and allies discussed the next phase of the House’s impeachment inquiry on Sunday after two weeks of testimony concluded Thursday.

House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said he wanted to hear from his constituents before making a decision on the next stage of the inquiry.

{mosads}”I want to discuss this with my constituents and colleagues before I make a final judgment on this,” Schiff told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

“At the end of the day this is a decision about [what] the founding fathers had in mind…I have to think this is very much central to what they were concerned about, that is an unethical man or woman takes this office and uses it for own political gain,” Schiff added.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), meanwhile, defended the pace of the inquiry even as the fight to compel testimony from some witnesses remains tied up in court.

“Most importantly the president invoked an upcoming election – there’s an urgency to make sure the election and the ballot box have integrity, and if he’s asking a foreign government to interfere, we are on the clock to make sure that election is protected,” Swalwell told anchor Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) called Trump’s attempts to persuade Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden “the global version of Watergate.”

“When you think back to Watergate, they didn’t close their eyes when a paranoid president, who was up for election and looking for dirt on a political opponent, got involved with having people break into an office and steal information on their opponents from a filing cabinet,” Klobuchar told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week.”

“Well, this is the global version of Watergate where a president is trying to get dirt on a political opponent from a world leader,” she added.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the number two Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that after the first public hearings, “I don’t think any Democrat in the Congress looked at what happened the last two weeks and said ‘gosh, there’s nothing there.’”

“One thing is true: every single day and every single piece of testimony brought up new information,” Himes told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”

Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, touted polling showing declining support for impeachment, telling Brennan numerous Democrats who represent districts that voted for Trump “have to go back home and say ‘I know I promised to lower your drug prices, I know I promised to keep the great economy going… but we’re impeaching the president.’”

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Wallace, following testimony by ex-National Security Council official Fiona Hill, that “I don’t know, nor do you, nor do any of us” whether Russia or Ukraine was behind the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.