Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday said impeachment has “been a positive” for Democrats, despite last week’s vote to acquit President Trump.
Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters that the impeachment process was beneficial for the party.
“It’s been a positive for us,” Schumer said, adding that Democratic “data shows every one of their [Republican] Senate candidates has had problems.”
Schumer’s comments follow allegations that have been made by Republicans for months — that Democrats were pursuing the impeachment inquiry into the president for political purposes. But those efforts could also lead to a backlash, as the president has slammed the entire process as a “hoax” and used the ordeal to energize supporters and raise millions of dollars.
Trump was acquitted last week on both charges against him: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The impeachment inquiry focused largely on Trump’s efforts to press Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden’s dealings in Kiev, including Hunter Biden’s past board position with Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, and his father’s role in ousting a prosecutor who had been looking into the firm’s founder.
Trump’s request came after millions in U.S. military aid to Ukraine had been frozen, which Democrats argued showed a “quid pro quo” arrangement. Trump denied it.
While the impeachment trial is over, both parties continue to investigate the underlying issues, and Attorney General Bill Barr confirmed that the Justice Department is reviewing further information related to the Ukraine controversy to gauge its credibility.
Meanwhile, Schumer was asked Tuesday whether impeachment and the Ukraine controversy have adversely impacted Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.
“I have no idea,” he said. “I have no idea. I don’t.”
Biden, on Tuesday, abruptly announced that he wouldn’t spend primary night in New Hampshire as planned and, instead, was traveling to South Carolina to headline a newly scheduled kick-off rally in the state he has long considered his campaign’s firewall.
“We’re going to head to South Carolina tonight,” Biden told reporters as he visited a polling station with voting underway in the state that holds the first primary in the race for the White House. “And I’m going to Nevada… We’ve got to look at them all.”
