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Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-11), whose district is centered in Morris County and includes parts of Passaic, Essex and Sussex counties, was part of a group who are either military veterans or who worked in some other capacity in national security. Sherrill, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, flew helicopters for the Navy.
The lawmakers said in their op-ed that Trump's attempts to get the Ukrainian president to open a corruption inquiry involving the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is currently the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, crossed a dangerous threshold that could only be addressed with a full inquiry.
Biden's son Hunter was serving on the board of a Ukrainian utility company in 2016 when Joe Biden and representatives of other Western countries demanded the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor for corruption. Trump and his attorney, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, suggested Biden was acting on his son's behalf, but there has been no evidence that Biden or his son acted improperly.
Instead, Democratic lawmakers and others are concerned that Trump threatened to withhold hundreds of millions in military aid over the summer in order to pressure the Ukrainians into investigating Biden, who could be his rival in the 2020 presidential race.
"The president of the United States may have used his position to pressure a foreign country into investigating a political opponent, and he sought to use U.S. taxpayer dollars as leverage to do it. He allegedly sought to use the very security assistance dollars appropriated by Congress to create stability in the world, to help root out corruption and to protect our national security interests, for his own personal gain," Sherill and the other lawmakers wrote in the op-ed.
In addition to the op-ed, Sherrill released a statement Monday expressing concern that Trump was trying to "fix" the election.
"I think these accusations should be addressed with all of the tools at Congress’ disposal, including articles of impeachment. I did not run for Congress to impeach the President. I ran to make the lives of New Jerseyans better.....But I have long said that Congress is a co-equal branch of government and has Constitutional oversight duties as well as duties to legislate for Americans. The President of the United States is threatening our national security," she wrote.
The move comes as Democrats in the House are demanding to see the contents of a whistle-blower complaint alleging Trump made improper demands on a call with a foreign leader in July. The Trump administration has refused to release the complaint, widely believed to involve a call Trump made to Ukraine';s newly elected president.
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