New book details how Democrats 'botched' two attempts to impeach Trump: Pelosi 'has always hated impeachment'

A new book is offering an in-depth look at how Democratic lawmakers ultimately botched two opportunities to impeach former President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, October 18, co-authors Karoun Demirjian and Rachael Badea appeared on CNN where they discussed their new book titled, "Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress's Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump."

"This is not really a Trump book so much as this book about the people who failed to check him," Demirjian explained. "And we take a really hard look at both Democrats and Republicans to examine what was going on behind the scenes Basically, why they made the decisions that they made and what sorts of missed opportunities were there that they could have taken advantage of, that might have really turned history in a different direction."

She added, "We look at how Republicans ... It's very well established the general narrative is that Republicans just sided with the President. Democrats did absolutely everything they could, and they just couldn't withstand the overwhelming support and rally around the flag of the Republicans did around Trump.

"And we found that that wasn't really completely the case. There were moments where the GOP was so angry at President Trump, especially around the January 6 riot against the Capitol, that they were ready to break with him, but Democrats didn't take advantage of those moments."

Demirjian went on to offer an explanation for Democrats dropping the ball as she suggested the "political blowback" was a big factor in their handling of the impeachment trial.

"We also found instances where Democrats had the opportunity to call Republican witnesses to run down their subpoenas to the courts to prove that you cannot mess with Congress when it comes to their right to oversee, check, flex their full constitutional muscle against a rogue president," she said. "And they chose not to because they were worried about the political blowback, about potential situations at the polls that they found inconvenient."

Badea also explained House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) critical role in the impeachment trial.

"A key theme in our book is Pelosi's sort of fear of impeachment," Badea explained. "I mean, we've covered her for a long time, and reporters who have sort of know that she has always hated impeachment. And the first part of our book talks about how she worked overtime to try to make it stop it from happening.

"And then once she sort of got pitched into the first impeachment after it was discovered that Trump tried to strongarm Ukraine, she put it on a quick timeline because she worried about blowback for her frontliners."

Offering insight on Pelosi's proposed timeline, Badea said, "She wanted it done by Christmas. She did not want investigators pulling a bunch of investigative threads, even though you had people like Jamie Raskin who were arguing that we need to this case when Ukraine is failing to reach the public. We need to expand and broaden and talk about Trump's emoluments violations."

"Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress's Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump" was released on October 4, 2022.

CNN / Unchecked authorswww.youtube.com

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