TriggerPhoto/iStock(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump planned to spend much of Wednesday — the day of an expected historic vote in the House of Representatives to impeach him — hunkered down in the White House before traveling to Michigan for a campaign rally.
Trump fired off a series of tweets late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning saying that he expected to be impeached and that those who oppose him are “crazy.”
“Can you believe that I will be impeached today by the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats, AND I DID NOTHING WRONG!” he wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning. “A terrible Thing.”
The president’s only public event Wednesday will take him to Battle Creek, Michigan, where he plans to speak at a rally for his 2020 re-election campaign. He was scheduled to take the stage at 7 p.m., around the same time the House is expected to vote on two articles of impeachment against him.
The White House said he would depart at 4:25 p.m., after hours of debate on the House floor; he often speaks to reporters as he leaves.
Trump tweeted Tuesday night that he was “not worried” about being impeached, calling those who want to impeach him “Crazy.” He shared missives from conservative allies of his who have backed him as the House impeachment inquiry examined whether he used his office to pressure Ukraine for his own personal, political benefit.
A senior aide to the president told ABC News Trump was “ebullient” even as he faced becoming only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
While the president did not want to be impeached, the aide said, he was comfortable sparring with Democrats and planned to claim full and total vindication if the Senate votes against removing him from office in any coming trial.
Trump’s public show of defiance continued a day after he sent a six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi railing against what he calls an “illegal, partisan attempted coup.”
Making no attempt to mask his feelings of personal animus toward Pelosi, the president accused her of being inauthentic for saying she prays for him and that she has approached the process of impeachment in a “prayerful” manner.
He mocked her again on Wednesday.
“This should never happen to another President again,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Say a PRAYER!”
White House lawyers were cut out of the process of drafting Trump’s Tuesday letter to Pelosi and was instead drafted by a team of three White House staffers from outside the White House Counsel’s office.
At the direction of the president, Director of Legislative Affairs Eric Ueland, senior adviser Stephen Miller and Counselor to the Chief of Staff Michael Williams crafted the document.
“The words are the president’s,” a White House official familiar with the process said.
White House counsel Pat Cipollone and his office were cut out of the drafting process but did get a chance to see the letter and make suggestions before it was sent to Pelosi.
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