‘They don’t even allege a crime’: Trump adds ‘No crime!’ to ‘No collusion’ and ‘No obstruction’

Donald Trump went on a Twitter tirade Thursday morning where he claimed Democrats are impeaching him without ever alleging a crime.

‘I did nothing wrong. This will be the first Impeachment ever where there was no crime. They don’t even allege a crime. Crazy!’ Trump tweeted a few hours before Thursday’s marathon hearing where the House Judiciary Committee will debate potential amendments to two articles of impeachment against the president.

Trump quoted Fox & Friends in the tweet, citing a new poll that indicates most Americans are now against impeachment.

He also retweeted a post from Wednesday where he quoted Senator Ted Cruz during the Senate hearing where the Texas senator also claims there is no evidence that Trump committed a crime.

‘Zero evidence that any law was broken. They’re not even alleging that a law was broken. This is an abuse of the Constitution. It is using Impeachment as a campaign tool.’ @SenTedCruz’ Trump tweeted Wednesday and brought back to the top of his Twitter page Thursday morning.

By the end of the hearing Thursday, it is expected that the committee will vote on both articles of impeachment separately, starting with abuse of power and followed by obstruction of Congress.

Trump has long denied any wrongdoing connected to the claims Democrats have made in launching the impeachment probe against him, which was launched in late September.

The president insisted he did nothing to obstruct the investigation, which he also claimed during former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe the first two years of his presidency, which concluded in the Spring with the report.

During that investigation he also claimed that he never ‘colluded’ with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election in his favor – which he is also defending himself in regards to his and his allies and administration’s correspondence with Ukraine.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced at the end of September that the House was launching an impeachment inquiry into Trump, stemming from an anonymous whistle-blower complaint that was made public that month.

The complaint, which was based off secondhand information, alleged the president engaged in an improper call with his Ukrainian counterpart over the summer.

A transcript of the call revealed Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate political rival and former Vice President Joe Biden. This sparked Democrats to claim Trump was setting a quid pro quo of military aide in exchange for the probe, and also led to the allegations that the president was soliciting a foreign government to help influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Last week, Pelosi instructed House committee chairmen to move forward with drafting articles of impeachment against Trump following more than a month of closed-door and public hearings.

Despite Trump’s claims that the House is moving forward with impeachment without evidence of a crime, one of the Democrat-called witnesses earlier this month insisted there doesn’t have to be a crime for impeachment.

The Constitution states that a president can be impeached on grounds of committing a high crime or misdemeanor.

Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina who was also called to by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to testify, said there does not need to be proof of a ‘statutory crime’ for Congress to move forward with charging the president with impeachable offenses and removing him from office.

‘Does a high crime and misdemeanor require an actual statutory crime?’ the Democrat’s lawyer Norman Eisen questioned of Gerhardt during the hearing comprised of a panel of Constitution experts.

‘No, it plainly does not,’ the professor claimed. ‘Everything we know about the history of impeachment reinforces the conclusion that impeachable offenses do not have to be crimes and, again, not all crimes are impeachable offenses. We look, again, at the context and gravity of the misconduct.’