'Ridiculous' Trump impeachment based on 'gossip', says US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross
Wilbur Ross warns the impeachment process against Donald Trump could have a bad effect on business.
Wednesday 2 October 2019 14:28, UK
One of Donald Trump's most senior cabinet members has dismissed the impeachment process against the US president as "patently ridiculous" and suggested the whistleblower at the heart of it should be confronted by Mr Trump.
In an interview with Sky News, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross warned that if the impeachment were successful "it would be bad for the economy and bad for the market".
He claimed that the impeachment process, which revolves around whether Mr Trump inappropriately used a phone call with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to attempt to undermine Joe Biden's presidential campaign, was "improper" and was based on "gossip".
"What we have here is an anonymous alleged whistleblower with no direct knowledge of the facts; in short - gossip," he said.
"In any court of law it would be inadmissible as hearsay.
"The process is seriously flawed. The notion that a defendant doesn't have the ability to confront the accuser, and the accuser's bona fides don't have to be brought under scrutiny, is patently ridiculous."
The comments, which imply the whistleblower should not have his anonymity, will raise further concerns about the White House's attitude to the process.
The impeachment case was triggered when an intelligence officer used a whistleblower process to report concerns about Mr Trump's phone call with Mr Zelenskiy in July, which the whistleblower alleges was not documented or stored in the appropriate way.
Mr Ross, who leads the White House's business and trade policy, suggested that the accusation would never have happened had the whistleblowing rules not been changed earlier this year.
"The Democrats talked about impeachment since the day after the election. They've been hellbent for leather to impeach, looking for any pretext on which to do it," he said.
"First it was the Mueller report and when that turned out to be a nothing-ball thing, now suddenly mysteriously the intelligence community relaxed the rules on whistleblowers.
"Suddenly in the summer when it became clear the Mueller was nothing, suddenly covertly the whistleblower rules were changed to allow for gossip. It'd be very interesting to find out just how did that come about, it's very convenient."
The intelligence community inspector general has denied that the rules were changed in this way.
Challenged on whether he was merely positing a conspiracy theory, Mr Ross said: "I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but it does makes one wonder.
"All I can say is it's mysterious, it should be looked into, I'm confident that it will be looked into."
Mr Ross said Mr Trump was "obviously very unhappy with this process because it's not a proper process. They're not even following proper procedure".
He added: "They talk about a cover-up, but how is it a cover-up when the president voluntarily - not under subpoena - but voluntarily released the transcripts of the conversation, then held a press conference with the other party... what the hell kind of a cover-up is that?"
Mr Ross, who has been in the UK visiting American businesses, also warned that many of them were concerned about the state of the Brexit negotiations.
"They're very nervous," he said. "They've spent the better part of a billion dollars on measures to mitigate problems. They are very, very uncertain about the outcome and particularly worried about supply chain implications.
"UPS told us there are 78 million cross-border checks coming into place. That's a lot in a year."
Commenting on Britain's continued involvement with Chinese tech giant Huawei, who are banned in the US but are bidding to be part of the process to install new 5G hardware in the UK, Mr Ross said: "I think it should discomfort the UK. We think people should be very cautious.
"If you were about to buy a new car but there was a 10% chance you would be killed because of a defect, would you buy it? I don't think so.
"I promise you there's far more than a 10% chance of something untoward happening with Huawei equipment."
Huawei's president of government affairs, Victor Zhang, responded: "This claim by the US Commerce Secretary is without foundation and is not supported by a shred of evidence.
"Huawei products serve billions of customers around the world and in 30 years we have not had a significant security incident.
"As we've seen before, these baseless allegations are simply part of a political campaign by the US government to further the objectives of its trade policy.
"Cyber security is a challenge we all face and Huawei is committed to working in partnership with all responsible parties to improve standards worldwide."