When U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (D-Missouri) was driving to work on Capitol Hill on December 18, he called his father at home in Silver Springs, Maryland.
“It was kind of surreal,” Clay told The American, “driving to the Capitol knowing I was going to take this monumental vote that would indelibly be a part of American history.”
The vote in question was whether or not to impeach President Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Clay would vote yes on both articles of impeachment, which would pass the U.S. House 230 to 197 and 229 to 198, triggering a trial process to be conducted by the U.S. Senate.
Clay called his father, retired Congressman Bill Clay, the first African American to serve in Congress for Missouri, to ask for perspective. The senior Clay had served in the U.S. House during one of the only two previous impeachments of a U.S. president. Almost 11 years ago to that day, President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House for perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice, with the elder Clay voting against those and two other articles that were rejected.
The elder Clay also served in the U.S. House when it initiated impeachment proceedings against President Nixon, though Nixon resigned and began to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee before the matter came to a House floor vote. Before Clinton, the only other U.S. president to be impeached was President Andrew Johnson for High Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1868.
“I just tried to get his perspective on how he viewed the proceedings,” Clay said of calling his father, who had served during the Nixon and Clinton administrations.
Both Johnson and Clinton were acquitted by the U.S. Senate. Trump awaits trial. Clay said he has been fielding calls from friends and political observers impatient with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s pace in proceeding.
“We’re in the process now for setting the rules for how we will proceed,” Clay said he has been telling people. He said Pelosi has to wait while Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer negotiates on the rules with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“It’s not going well,” Clay said of negotiations. “McConnell wants to sweep all of the evidence under the rug and have a brief show trial that acquits the president.”
Clay, who grew up around the halls of power and has served in Congress since 2001, has many personal relationships with Republicans, and he knows some who do not vote the way they feel about Trump.
“I talk to some, and they cannot really justify this president’s actions and his close relationship with Russia with a straight face,” Clay said. “To think that Russia is one of our fiercest adversaries, and to hear the White House parroting the talking points of the Kremlin.”
Most of the evidence against Trump was gathered by federal intelligence agencies, which has placed Trump and his Republican supporters in the unfamiliar position of bashing the nation’s highest law enforcement agencies.
“This is the same GOP that was once the party of law and order,” Clay said.
Clay recalled a conversation he had with U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina), former chair of the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus, who has said that FBI and Department of Justice officials “have some serious explaining to do” about their investigation of Trump.
“Look at you now,” Clay said he told Meadows, “juxtaposed to me, an African-American Democratic member of Congress defending the FBI’s credibility after its history of atrocities against African-American leaders and the black community.”
Clay said his Republican colleagues from Missouri – including U.S. Senators Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley and U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner – stand behind Trump because he remains popular with their base. So they parrot Trump’s argument that impeachment is a merely partisan initiative.
“They don’t care to look at the facts of the case, they only want to attack the process,” Clay said of Missouri Republicans in Congress. “They are emboldened by their base. They think this will do them no harm but only strengthen their political hand.”
Will this position help or hurt Wagner, who looks like she will face her toughest challenge in 2020 from state Senator Jill Schupp (D-Creve Coeur)? “It depends on who you talk to,” Clay said.
As for the most talked-about race in 2020, Clay is yet to pick a second favorite after his candidate, Kamala Harris, dropped out of the Democratic primary.
“Right now voters are trying to decide who will offer the best challenge to Donald Trump,” Clay said. “Whomever Democrats settle on, we as a party really need to be united to get our candidate elected. We can’t have a replay of 2016 and all of those problems that cost us an election. I hope everyone in the party is mature enough to understand the ramifications of not uniting around our candidate.”
